Aaahh! The salt air

June 4 – 8, 2006

The time changed at the Quebec / NB border losing another hour for a total of four. We settled comfortably into a quiet corner of the Walmart parking lot in Edmunston, NB for the night. Edmunston, in the northwest corner of New Brunswick, is a small town built around a pulp and paper mill in a very picturesque green valley.

I noticed some differences and similarities between the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick. In NB, the houses were mostly white clapboard and austere in appearance but still had wide porches across the front, where rocking chairs, swings or gliders offered comfortable refuge. The ski-jump roofs, commonplace in Quebec were rare in NB – more common were high peaked steep ones. The main streets of the small towns were usually long and straight in NB instead of the curvy roads of Quebec. The ostentatious churches common in Quebec and near the border on the NB side petered out and more humble clapboard structures became the norm in the small towns. In larger communities, the churches while large were less flashy.

While driving through the little village of St. Leonard, we were amused that their ‘Auto Sales Used Car Lot’ had only two vehicles for sale and both were festooned with brightly coloured glittering lengths of flashy garland.

On a perfect summery morning, we headed off on the Appalachian Trail, along a ribbon of highway winding through the rounded hills swathed in a mixture of evergreen and deciduous trees. Further along, it was quite apparent that most of the forest had been radically clear-cut, by the design of the reforestation. The road was extremely rough and potholed which meant we had to crawl along trying to avoid the holes in the road. The semi-trailer trucks however still zoomed by at over 100kph so we had to pull over every so often.

Northern NB is ATV country in the summer and snowmobile territory in the winter; many trails followed the main highways, through the trees and over the hills. At Dalhousie, we changed to the Acadian coastal route, which wound along the coast of Chaleur Bay and it was oh so nice to be back to the ocean – the smell of the salt and seaweed put us on a high.

We settled in Bathurst at our usual choice – Walmart, and we stayed for two nights. Because we had so much trouble with our tow bar not locking, we read the manual and reckoned that the bar needed to be disassembled and lubed. We didn’t have the tools or the expertise so we called the manufacturer who recommended a company in Bathurst, EastCoast RV Sales. Their mechanic, Mike had never seen a Demco tow bar before and his first language was French so we had to read the manual to him. Thank goodness, he had a natural mechanical ability. He was a free-lance RV repairman and in the summer was very busy touring the local campsites and maintaining and repairing the travelling RV’s. He took the bar apart and there was a build up of rust inside that was inhibiting the easy movement so he cleaned and lubricated it and it seemed to really ease it. In the meantime, Roger the owner of the company and the other mechanic gathered around and chatted with us about our journey and they talked about living in Bathurst, a small mill town of about 13,000. We wondered how anyone from the area could afford the big RV’s that sold for between $100 and $160 thousand because New Brunswick is known to have a fairly depressed economy. Roger said that a lot of the older folk liked to winter in Florida and didn’t seem to have a problem coming up with the $. They were really caring business people and it felt so good to deal with them. At the end of it all, the bill was for $35 plus taxes – unbelievable in today’s world.

Fernie asked them if there was a Ford dealer in town that would do an oil change on a motorhome. So many times, Ford dealers don’t have bays large enough to handle Maggie. Roger knew the guys who owned the dealership and told us there’d be no problem and gave us directions to get to it. That was late Monday afternoon and we were able to get an 8am appointment with Ford for Wednesday morning. That left us a whole day to explore the coastal area along the Baie des Chaleurs and along the Acadian Peninsula to the tip of Ile Miscou.

The weather was beautiful and the journey along the scenic coastline through the many little villages was so pleasant. We stopped at a little sandy cove and took Caesar out for a walk along the beach. He is addicted to running along the shore and attacking the waves as they break on the sand, so off he ran forgetting he’s an old man of 12 (x 7=84 human years). He’s had a tricky hip problem for a few years now and running over the rocks, he threw it out and was unable to walk – poor little thing. We had to carry him after that. I’ve seen dogs that can run at full speed with only 3 legs but Caesar didn’t have a clue how to walk. Later on, when we got back to Maggie, I popped him a quarter of an aspirin to relieve the pain. It’s sad to see him unable to chase his ball.

We prowled around the Acadian fishing villages of Caraquet, Shippagan and Lameque watching the boats come in and the fishermen scurrying about the busy docks. At the end of the remote peninsula, accessible by bridge is the wild and windswept Ile Miscou. It seems to be unpopulated except for a lonely lighthouse, which was supported by long cables. The storms must be brutal if the lighthouse needs such tethering. One small window on the Oceanside, mid way up the walls had a large windshield wiper. Visiting it on a beautiful sunny day, it was hard to imagine the gales that in the past had dashed and sunk vessels off this coast.

The area can’t have too many tourists visiting; we tried to find a seafood café and a place to buy fresh fish or lobster with no success. We prowled every fishing pier and no luck. Finally, away from the villages and back on the tourist route, we chanced upon a casual restaurant where we had fish and chips. In the shop attached, we bought a ‘homemade’ palourde (quahog – like a clam) pate pie.

First thing in the morning, we took Maggie to Ford for an oil change and check up. They found that her clearance lights didn’t work and tried to repair them but were unable to as the wiring is only accessible from the inside through the unit’s walls. It’s a warranty item but not Ford’s responsibility rather the motorhome manufacturer, Holiday Rambler’s. We phoned HR to report it and we can have the repair done when we get home. The total bill from Ford was only $49 and they didn’t charge at all for the hour their mechanic spent on the lights. Amazing honest service.

We finally stopped at a large tire shop and asked them about rotating the tires. They took a look and told us there was no need yet and we could have it done after our return to Vancouver. That’s the third business we dealt with in Bathurst, where we were amazed at the honest, friendly service.

Miramichi is only sixty miles down the road from Bathurst. Fernie’s arms, hands and shoulders were terribly painful after the rough drive through the NB interior and I realized it was time I helped with the driving and took Maggie’s wheel. I, not too willingly, drove about twenty miles of the journey. Maggie handles differently than our last motorhome and very different from our Honda and it took some getting used to. In the future, on days where we drive a fairly long distance, I will give Fernie a break (if it’s absolutely necessary!)

The Miramichi Walmart sits high on a bluff and we parked with a panoramic view of the huge bridge across the wide bay. We arrived early and had a long day ahead to tour more of the Acadian Coastal Route. The little town of “Escuminac could be a movie set for a typical Maritime fishing village. Bleak, windswept land; square clapboard houses with high peaked roofs at the backs of which, washing flapped wildly on clothes lines; fishing boats fighting the surf to return to the docks; fishery workers in rubber boots and aprons slopping through the wet docks.

In the centre of the main street stands a memorial statue. In 1959, thirty-five local fishermen perished in a sudden squall in the Northumberland Straits between New Brunswick and PEI. I read the names of the victims and found it so sad that there were 9 or 10 different family names. Families were decimated by the loss of three or four of their members. What a tragedy!

Further along the coast lies Kouchibouguac (try and say that five times) National Park. Bogs and marshes shelter numerous bird and wildlife species and the park is riddled with tempting hiking trails. Caesar was still not able to walk on his hind leg, so we took turns carrying him. Down a long boardwalk, over the salt marshes to a long sand bar and beautiful white sand beach, we were puffed out and couldn’t walk further along the beach. It curtailed our long hikes because his twenty pounds is quite a drag. Endangered ‘piping plovers’ darted through the air all around our heads and dove like bullets into the water coming up with little fish each time. The dunes are fenced off because the silly little plovers lay their eggs on the sand with no protection and the biologists are trying to boost the numbers of these beautiful little birds.

We were worn out when we returned home to Maggie and had an early night.

We intended to head for PEI on June 8th but we woke to high winds and torrential rain so we detoured to Moncton, which has two Walmarts. We chose the newer one on the outskirts of town because it had much more room. We’ve almost always been the only RV in the Walmart lots so far this trip, but this night three others pulled in. I guess tourist season is beginning.

The weather didn’t inhibit our day too much. We drove to the National Historic Site of the Monument Lefebvre in the little Acadian town of Memramcook. It was a large building memorializing Father Lefebvre who brought higher education to the peasant Acadians in the area. We watched a presentation detailing the 18th century deportation of the Acadians by the ‘damned British’ of course - another lesson in our Canadian historical studies. We still don’t quite understand why the Acadians didn’t relate to the other French in Canada and were even unwelcome when some of them returned to France. Even today, they don’t understand the Quebecois attitude and the Acadian dialect is not easily understood either. They feel they are not French. “We are Acadians,” they state with pride. Perhaps it’s because they intermarried with the Miq-maq Indians and maybe also because they were peasants and the arrogant French looked down upon them.

I visited Magnetic Hill in 1970 and it was a quiet rural road with just a small instructional sign beside it. It’s an optical illusion – you put your car in neutral, apparently heading uphill and the car rolls forward up the hill – of course, it’s really down hill. Today, there’s a water park, a zoo, mini-golf, a newly constructed covered bridge, restaurants, hotels, etc., etc., etc. They have even surrounded the ‘hill’ and now charge $5. These kin of tourist traps depress me. I guess it’s different if you have children.

Shediac is the lobster capital of New Brunswick and a short drive over brought us to a town full of hotels, seafood restaurants and campgrounds. Greeting us as we drove in was the world’s largest lobster – a bright red concrete depiction. We bought a cooked two-pound lobster ($17) at a seafood outlet and a bottle of Chardonnay and took them home where we tackled the delectable beast with glee. It was absolutely heavenly!