It's Very Nice to Go Travelling: The End of the Road Trip - August 24

The Family at Joggins

The final day of our road trip arrived!  Happily, we ended the road trip enjoying the generous hospitality of our friends Patti and Susan.  We probably hadn't seen them in nine years when they moved from Philly to Maine and it was great catching up with them.  It was also nice to see the girls get to know them. 

Susan gave us some great directions home - avoiding all the mess on 95 (Boston, NYC, NJ, etc.).  It was a great nice drive and we only made a few stops.  It ended up being a 9.5 hour drive from South Portland to Philadelphia.  It didn't seem that long and we were happy to be home.

We were playing Sinatra's Come Fly with Me in the car and so I'll leave you with these lyrics -

It's Nice to Go Travelling  lyrics by Sammy Cahn

It's very nice to go trav'ling
To Paris, London and Rome
It's oh, so nice to go trav'ling
But it's so much nicer
Yes, it's so much nicer to come home

It's very nice to just wander
The camel route to Iraq
It's oh, so nice to just wander
But it's so much nicer
Yes, it's oh so nice to wander back

The mam'selles and frauleins and the senoritas are sweet
But they can't compete 'cause they just don't have
What the models have on Madison Ave

It's very nice to be footloose
With just a toothbrush and comb
It's oh so nice to be footloose
But your heart starts singin'
When you're homeward wingin' across the foam

And you know your fate is
Where the Empire State is
All you contemplate is
The view from Miss Liberty's dome
It's very nice to go trav'ling
But it's oh so nice to come home

You will find the madchen and the gay muchachas are rare
But they can't compare with that sexy line
That parades each day at Sunset and Vine

It's quite the life to play gypsy
And roam as gypsies will roam
It's quite the life to play gypsy
But your heart starts singin'
When you're homeward wingin' across the foam

And the Hudson River
Makes you start to quiver
Like the latest flivver
That's simply drippin' with chrome
It's very nice to go trav'ling
But it's oh so nice to come home

No more customs
Burn the passport
No more packing and unpacking
Light the home fires
Get my slippers
Make a pizza

The Penultimate Day: Belfast, ME and South Portland, ME August 23

That's toast, not chocolate -
she likes it that way.

Hello everyone! We woke up outside Belfast, Maine, and then drove into town after having breakfast at the hotel (see above). Belfast was neat. We walked around for several hours and discovered lots of things:

Belfast has a project-sort-of-thing called Please Be Seated, where (we gathered) local artists design benches and chairs for the public. Zola greatly enjoyed this.

We visited a lot of local stores (like a cheese shop, a candy store, a shoe store - which happened to be the oldest shoe store in America - and an underwear store, out of which it took much persuasion to get Mom and Zola) and then ate lunch (pancakes!) at a diner. We decided to go to the historical society's museum and then get ice cream.

The museum was great (pictures below). I'm not a baseball person, but we found this interesting: Belfast is where now-common wording "at bat... on deck... in the hole" originated. Pictures below.

There was also a vintage sign that said "There are many literary girls in Belfast." I was inclined to agree, seeing as we'd passed six bookstores in town. Other artifacts include several ship models, portraits, and quick biographies of Belfasters of years past.

We got ice cream (which sounds a lot more concise than it was - it was actually a minor ordeal including the dumping of Zola's cone) and then drove to South Portland after discovering a dead bug adhering to the van's antenna. Zola decided to name it Mack.There were already a lot of dead bugs that had been killed on the front of our roof bag, but they were mostly gnats, and this was like half a dragonfly. 

Ahem.

South Portland, a separate city from Portland, was also neat. We went with our awesome friends and hosts, Patti and Susan (and their dog Mackworth) to a park with a lighthouse. Or maybe it was a lighthouse with a park. We played with Mackworth and some other dogs that showed up, and enjoyed the watery scenery. (We couldn't enjoy the water itself because it was edged by huge rock chunks, off which it is easy to fall and die, so they were fenced off.) 

Anyway, then we returned for dinner and cookies and chocolate. It was a nice relaxing end to the day, especially since it preceded a full day of driving. Dad will probably post about that, since he was the one who did the actual driving. Meanwhile, pictures!

Scenes from Belfast, ME

Fun Handel reference

The fine line between "cool" and "eerie"

A fun but not very well explained knot-tying board

Belfast

Historic bank building

Mack our traveling companion

Belfast Harbor

Judging by the six bookstores, I'd say this is accurate.

The museum

Ice cream time

Scenes from South Portland, ME

Looking across the water and
at seagulls in S. Portland

See previous caption

This is like using the microscopes in Bio - they'd
always be focused weird after somebody
without glasses used them.

Dad and his friend Patti (the mayor!)

Zola and Mack (the dog, not the bug)

Not sure what Grace is doing here

Yuckin' it up like in old times

Corn on the cob, Maine style

Susan, Patti, and Mackworth - Thanks!

Digby NS to Belfast, ME - August 22

Crossing the Bay of Fundy - Digby NS to St. John NB Ferry

We had to wake up nice and early to get to the ferry just outside Digby.  We probably didn't need to get there quite as early as we did, but we did not want to miss the boat, as they say!  You can only catch the ferry at 8:00am and 4:00pm during the peak summer season.  It's about a three hour ride across the Bay of Fundy and depending on where you're headed, it is a significant short-cut.

Lined up nice and early - then a lot of waiting

You'll notice there are no pictures of the ferry itself.  It turns out it's hard to get a picture of boat that you are on.  There is also the fact that when we arrived (6:40am) the boat was shrouded in fog.  We drove on and never saw it!

For the first 45 minutes or so, the fog was so thick, that we couldn't see the water or tell that we were moving.  So at first, we just hung out inside the boat and pleasantly passed some time.  It helps that there was a Starbucks, a restaurant, a store, newspapers, a feature film, and plenty of space.

We did things such as...

...prepare for disaster.  We recently read Unthinkable and now we like to have a plan.  So, Jean scouted out the life jackets and life boats, while I studied the map.  Unthinkable is a great book by the way.

...and lounging around

... and Zola had her own lounge

And there was Settlers of Catan - the app, at least.  Jean never plays Catan with us at home - not the baordgame-type.  However, her competitve juices got the better of her on this trip!

With the sun out and the caffeine in, we spent a lot of time checking out the various decks and taking in the view.  Jean, meanwhile, was determined to spot a whale.  She was befriending every passenger who had a pair of binoculars.  Having checked "moose" off her list, seeing a whale was her remaining goal.

Just where they were on the
evacuation map!

Shadowy figures - see Zola waving?

Work being done as we approach
St. John

Looking back across the Bay of Fundy

If you look hard in this photo, you can see the last bit of a group of Harbor Porpoise as they dove under.  I tried to assure Jean that Harbor Porpoise are closely related to whales.

Whale?

At some point, a man from the crew, with a few stripes on his sleeves, came out and indicated that there was a whale off to one side.  We did see a dark spot way off in the distance, but binoculars would have been great.

From St. John to St. Stephen

Driving off the ferry, we headed right for the town of St. Stephen.  This would be our last stop in Canada.  This was a nice town to grab a quick lunch and visit the Chocolate Museum!

Another playground for Zola with the
Chocolate Museum in the background

Looking across at the good ol' US of A

The Chocolate Museum

The Chocolate Museum is a non-profit related to an historic chocolate maker - Ganong's.  It wasn't large, but it was really a good museum.  Happily, they provided unlimited chocolate samples.  Sadly, that didn't prevent us from spending coin at the Ganong's company store!

Zola picking cacao bean

Watching the three remaining hand-dippers
so skilled!

Cracking the safe

 Sick from too much chocolate, we climbed back in the car and made for the border.  It was sad to leave Canada - a reminder that or road trip would be ending soon - but it was nice to be in the USA once again.

Leaving Canada

Next stop, Belfast, ME.