New England Trip

This morning Pumpkin gave us a scare. We couldn’t find her anywhere in the motor home. We searched high and low, and at last it seemed that the only possible hiding place was under and behind the dashboard. After about an hour of searching, sure enough, she climbed out from under the dashboard on the driver’s side. As they say in government, this will require a two-pronged approach for a solution. First: to plug up the under-dashboard spaces with pool noodle pieces. Second: to create a new hiding place that is easy for Pumpkin to use, and hard for Wicket to access. He sometimes plays too rough with her. Although he never hurts her, he is a bother, and when she gets tired of it, she is reluctant to give him the swat he deserves. Puppy training is a challenge.

We spent the day touring the countryside east of Annapolis Royal, taking little back roads out to small communities on the Bay of Fundy coast. Driving through the Annapolis Valley, we felt as if we were in the Shire, with small, neat farmhouses surrounded by well-tended fields and pastures. We never saw any extravagant houses, only modest dwellings, but all of them very well kept. We had seen the same uniformly well-kept but modest homes in the New Brunswick towns as well, with neatly trimmed lawns and shrubbery around even the plainest houses. We were struck by the difference between this place and the US, where housing varies from mansions to slums, and both the finest and worst neighborhoods often lack the sense of community that was so obvious here.

Along the coast, we found a beautiful little village named Cottage Cove where residents gather in a public park on the Bay of Fundy shore for a relaxing Sunday afternoon. We also found Margaretsville, where civic groups offered ice cream and sold souvenirs to visitors on the wharf. Talking to local residents, we learned that although the sales tax is very high (about 13%), businesses get rebates on the sales taxes they pay for business-related expenses, and the entire population has publicly funded health insurance. Had we needed to visit one of their hospitals, which seemed likely for a while, we were told our charges would probably have been just a few dollars. It really seemed as if we might find ourselves in line behind Bilbo Baggins at the market.

We’ve seen no police cars, and traffic has been light. Gas prices are very high, working out to around $6.00 per gallon, though sold by the litre. Many of the roads are very rough, owing primarily to the frost heaving every winter that requires extensive maintenance. Almost everywhere we’ve been, there were stretches of road construction, but the roads are otherwise pretty good. We’ve had some trouble adjusting to the mileage and speed limits in kilometers, but have increasingly gotten used to multiplying km/h by 0.6 to estimate mph.

Returning to the campground tonight, we packed up for an early departure tomorrow, with a long drive to Cape Breton ahead.

Attached are a couple of pictures of the Bay of Fundy coast.