Sept 23-Oct 5 - New Hampshire

New Hampshire was a mix of beautiful Fall colors & rainy, cloudy weather. Luckily, our RV park was great & we had the place to ourselves most the time. Plenty of books & news of the crashing economy helped us pass time when we couldn't sightsee. We visited Mt. Washington on the advice of our new Florida friends Stuart & Nola, who we met on the Oshkosh trip. It is the highest point in the Eastern U.S. at over 6,000 feet. The weather was beautiful at the base & then we drove through the clouds ("undercast") before reaching sunny skies at the top. The weather observatory clocked a 231 MPH wind in 1934. The building now has chains running over the top of the roof! We drove along small country roads & the very scenic Kancagamus Highway. We stopped at the pond where you're most likely to see moose, but none appeared. We visited several covered bridges. Seems like they were big targets for arsonists back in the day, as many were rebuilt several times. Took a couple hikes to waterfalls. Dennis may not appreciate the waterfalls as much as Barb does, but he's a good sport about it. The Wolfeboro, N.H. scarecrow festival was fun. We saw scarecrows fishing, stomping grapes, enjoying wine on the porch, riding a unicycle & going on vacation. We even met Michael Phelps. Chowderfest reminded us of the fun chili cookoff we attended last winter with Marc & Marcie but the long tasting/voting line did not look fun without M&M to entertain us. We considered calling Marcie to pass the time but gave up & toured instead. We found where "On Golden Pond" was filmed. Both of us have seen the movie but could only remember that it starred the Fondas & everyone worked out their differences. Hmm, guess we'll look for it on the TV listings. Chinese food took the place of chowder & we found a bookstore selling VERY cheap books - 22 books for $5! Barb had a "vision" of photos of a lake reflecting the Fall colors. Barb's visions usually drive Dennis quite crazy because of the work involved in making them reality. We searched nearly 2 weeks, gave up & then stumbled upon the perfect little pond 3 miles from our campsite. Enjoy the realized vision & join us as we envy the people living in that house.

September 16-22 - Boston area

We love the East Coast! It's so easy to jump from state to state & feel like we're making progress. We headed toward Boston for a week to let the leaves start changing color up north. Maybe they'll feel less pressure if we aren't staring at them all day, every day. We stopped at the Battle Road visitor center which had a great presentation on the running battle between Lexington & Concord that began the Revolutionary War. Lit maps showing troop movement supplemented the video. Walking on the Battle Road was beautiful, but eerie. Our RV park was 30 miles south of Boston & offered limo service to the commuter rail station. A real limo! The train & subway worked wonderfully. We walked the Freedom Trail; 2.5 miles each way following a line of bricks set in the sidewalk. We saw many historic sights including Boston Common, Faneuil Hall, Paul Revere's home, Old North Church, Bunker Hill & USS Constitution. The route led us thru the North End, Boston's Italian neighborhood. We ate pastries in the morning & pasta in the afternoon. Hey, we walked 5 miles! It really struck us that this large city was so quiet. No honking horns, yelling people, car alarms. It was downright peaceful & totally unexpected. We drove to Boston for more sightseeing & can offer this recommendation - use public transit! We couldn't park so we had to "drive-by tourist" Beacon Hill, Harvard, Fenway Park & the Cheers bar. We think we drove through the Big Dig. Rhode Island is closer to our campground than downtown Phoenix is to our home. We toured The Breakers 70 room Vanderbilt mansion on our visit to Newport. Barb thought the 5 mansion tour sounded fun, Dennis not so much. Oh well, the others might look like shacks after The Breakers. Gold & platinum (!!) leaf everywhere, plus ornate moldings, mosaic tile ceilings & library walls that looked like the spines of leather bound books. Completely over the top, but incredible! No pictures were allowed indoors. Mystic, CT was our next stop. We skipped Mystic Pizza after learning it wasn't used in the film. We walked along the river & waited for the drawbridge to raise but no boats were around. The drawbridge has two 230-ton counter weights & opens 2,200 times a year, just not for us. We capped the day off with a pilgrimage to Foxwoods casino, of World Poker Tour fame. Too smoky so we headed to the much prettier Mohegan Sun, where Dennis made $2 & Barb did not. Saturday found us trekking all 15 miles back to Rhode Island for Waterfire in Providence. The town is beautiful to start with but then they line the river with wood fires after sundown. People dressed in black float down the river in black boats to restock the huge fires. It looked & smelled wonderful. We walked the whole riverwalk & found candlelit chandeliers under all the bridges & in gazebos. We drove around Brown University before sunset & it is the prettiest school. Newport has a Catholic university that is completely housed in mansions. If Barb wins the lottery, she'll consider paying the $40,000 annual tuition just so she can flunk out of each gorgeous school. Cape Cod was more of a place to sit for a week than see in a day. We drove to Provincetown at the end of the road, a lively place. Everything else is pretty sleepy. We saw the site where Marconi sent the first transatlantic wireless message from Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII. Dennis says "Teddy to Eddy". We toured Plimoth Plantation & Mayflower II where people dressed in period costumes gave us a flavor of Pilgrim & Native life. The work of the day included preparing a large fire pit to make charcoal for the iron forge. The Mayflower crossing took 3 attempts & landed at the tip of Cape Cod but moved to Plymouth when scouts determined it was a better location. We saw Plymouth Rock, which looked nothing like our history books depicted. It's a small rock near the edge of the cove & the myth of stepping on the rock didn't come to fruition until 120 years later. Jeez, we would have been better off at recess than spending time in history class that day! Our Boston swing has been busy & fun but now we're off in search of Fall colors!

September 11-15 - Maine

Bar Harbor was a beautiful town but tormented Barb as she had to look at yet another cruise ship. After the pouting, we wandered around town & continued on to Acadia National Park. We drove along the rugged coastline. We stopped to view "Thunder Hole" & wandered out the path. This entailed climbing over several rocks until we heard the thundering sound of the waves crashing into a rock cove. Then we found the overlook & paved path that led to it. We jumped the fence to where we should have been. Oops! This time it really was a mistake. 57 miles of gravel carriage roads & stone bridges that criss-cross the park were donated by John D. Rockefeller Jr. because he preferred horse travel to motor travel. We also came across the most stunning garden near Acadia. It appears to be a private garden, not a park. We headed south to the land of very large objects. The Big Indian must have been in front of a gift shop, Eartha is a 42 foot rotating globe in a map store, the LL Bean boot is to celebrate their 90th anniversary, Lenny the 1700 lb chocolate moose was in a candy store & the boulders in front of a house in Kennebunkport put Dale's boulder to shame. Speaking of Kennebunkport, we "visited" former President & Mrs. Bush. Their compound is beautiful but not super-fancy & has an amazing location on its own peninsula. Lots of little outbuildings around the property for their Secret Service detail. There is a pullout on the road across the cove & we stopped to stare for a little while. Just happened to have the binoculars in the Jeep so that was a bonus. Boy weren't we surprised when Barbara Bush herself came outside to walk the dog! That's Mrs. Bush in the hot pink top. While we weren't invited in, we did get a secondhand hot dining tip. Apparently, President & Mrs. Bush are fans of the peanut butter ice cream pie at Mabel's Lobster Claw. What we didn't realize til this glorious creation was in front of us was that it is topped by hot fudge! YUM!!! (Did you know you can click on each picture to see a larger version?)

September 7-10 - Tidal Oddities

The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world. We desert dwellers didn't fully understand what this meant until we saw it for ourselves. Our first stop was Hopewell Rocks at the northeastern end of the bay in New Brunswick. High & low tides occur about 6 hours apart as 100 billion tons of water flow in & out of the bay. Yes, billion. The park allows people to walk on the beach for 3 hours on either side of low tide. The beach is completely under water at high tide. There can be a 42 foot difference between high & low tide at Hopewell Rocks! The difference was about 24 feet the day we visited. We walked all around the beach & took so many pictures. The park closed before the evening high tide but we were allowed to walk in after hours - at our own risk. The stairs down to the beach were also closed, but we may not have noticed the signs. The "flowerpot rocks" are enormous former cliffs. Glaciers & rain have caused the erosion at the top & tides have eaten away at their bases. We recommend going to this amazing site, but there is no need to hurry - scientists say the rocks will be there for 100,000 more years. We came upon a welcome sign on our next "moving day". Although we really enjoyed Canada, it was still nice to be home. Mind you, we only drove 10 miles into Maine. Here we found the Reversing Falls. A series of smaller bays come in from the Bay of Fundy. We caught high tide the evening we arrived & low tide the next afternoon. The tidal difference during our visit here was 12 feet. The bays look more like rivers than bays & the water runs "upstream" during high tide. The water looks like it's running the right way during low tide, when rocks & islands appear. The weather was cool & sunny on our low tide day so we spent most of the day hanging out on the shore. The water is smooth between the tides. We heard seals could appear during this time & "Lou Seal" did not disappoint. Barb took 20+ pictures to get the perfect shot of him poking his head out of the water. We saw a drained cove on our way off the peninsula & couldn't help but think about the empty Lake Delton back in Wisconsin. They may have looked the same, but the cove was going to be full again within 6 hours.

August 27-Sept 6 - New Brunswick, Nova Scotia & Prince Edward Island

We headed down the New Brunswick coast to Shediac, self-proclaimed lobster capital of the world. Being good tourists, we took pictures at their 35 foot lobster. Dennis bought a fresh lobster for lunch. Thankfully, it was already cooked since Barb could not have thrown a living thing in boiling water. The McDonalds served McLobster but our timing never worked out. We spent a couple days enjoying this seaside town before moving to Baddeck, NS. We were used to seeing road signs in English & French but in Nova Scotia they were in English & Scottish! We made no progress on learning Scottish. Alexander Graham Bell lived in Baddeck the last 32 years of his life. His mansion is on a peninsula overlooking the lake. The museum was so interesting & we learned he invented much more than the telephone including devices for teaching the deaf & early designs for flight. The easternmost point of our voyage was the Louisbourg Fortress, but the weather was iffy so we didn't tour it. We saw the ferry to Newfoundland, but a combination of weather & cost (about $1,500!) made that a no-go. The ferry schedule had been abandoned & they were going on a load & go basis since tropical storms were coming. Doesn't sound like a 14-17 hour journey would have been too enjoyable! A day trip around the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island was pretty, but we think we like the Oregon Coast better. Hmm, maybe we're becoming travel snobs. We enjoyed a stop at a fishing village & seeing the Acadian areas. The Acadians were French loyalists who were exiled as Canada formed. They re-settled in several areas of the maritime provinces & also in Louisiana, where they are Cajuns. Their flag is the French flag with a gold star in the upper left corner. Dennis finally got his McLobster on our way to Prince Edward Island (PEI). He would have preferred six $1 burgers to one $6 McLobster. We took the ferry to PEI & it was fun to drive the RV into a ship. We explored everywhere & found that we liked the center of the island best. There was a lot of farming & we bought potatoes, blueberries, corn & gouda cheese from the locals. PEI is known for potatoes. Kind of the Idaho of Canada. We also tasted legal (because they pay the taxes) moonshine from the Myriad Distillery. It burns. A visit to a shipbuilding museum taught us that many ships were built on PEI & it seems about half were wrecked on their maiden voyages! We left PEI via the Confederation Bridge, built in 1997. Ferries provided the only access to the island before then. We are now sitting out storm remnants in Hopewell Cape, Nova Scotia. Gustav was here last night & Hanna is coming today. The rain is light but constant & winds are non-existent. There are sights to see so we'll be here a couple days.