Back in New Brunswick

We came Sunday to New River Beach Provincial Park which is only a short drive from the border at Calais, Maine on the coast of the Bay of Fundy. This is our second visit and it is just as beautiful as I remembered.

Just a hint to those who might drive up here. You can only bring either 2 bottles of wine or 1 large bottle of liquor or 24 bottles of beer per person, not all three. So we were well over the limit. The border inspectors were very nice and only charged us duty for 12 bottles of beer; $27 Canadian. They also went through our car and camper, but that took just 15 or 20 minutes and nothing was too messed up. We won’t make that mistake again!

We are here just over 6 weeks earlier than we were last year. In addition to the creeping dogwood, which was still blooming last July, I’ve seen several new spring flowering shrubs.

I thought this was a wild azalea; it’s Canada rosebay, and although it is in the genus Rhododendron it is not closely related to the azaleas. It is beautiful and it and the creeping dogwood carpet the woods (along with the mosses) in the campground.

There are also a lot of these guys, some species of Amelanchier, though not the serviceberry I knew from western New York. These flowers are much bigger.

And there was one bush with these pretty cone shaped panicles of flowers. It turns out to be red elderberry.

It’s still quite cool here, and yesterday was cloudy so we opted for a drive to Deer Island. That involved a short ride on a free ferry.

We drove to the far end of the island, Deer Island Point Park.

There’s a small campground there and they actually had 30 amp electrical service and water at the sites. But despite these campers that were sitting there the park is not yet open.

They need to fix their signage before they open.

The spot is known for the Old Sow, a tidal whirlpool. Here the incoming tide is causing the boil you see, but sometimes, under the right conditions, an actual funnel whirlpool is formed.

There is a small commercial ferry that runs from here to Roosevelt Campobello International Park. The park preserves the place where Franklin Roosevelt summered. The island is Canadian, the park is run by both Canada and the U.S. and the only access when the ferry isn’t running is a bridge from the U.S. Not only was that a longer ride than we wanted to take, Bud was not up for four more border crossings. Too bad the ferry wasn’t going.

When the tide isn’t too high this is a through road, though now the mooring lines of the ferry run across it. This car turned around rather than try to drive across that second line. The road to the point is a loop, so you can enter from the other side.

I took a few pictures on the ferry ride off Deer Island.

This is our Apple map navigation screen. We were headed to St. John for some errands, which is why it was 51 more miles. St. John is about 30 miles past our campground from where we were.

This pretty little house was sitting on Macs Island.

There are two ferries that run 18 hours a day. Here we are passing the other ferry midway.

We were on the Deer Island Princess II and the ferry was full.

It only takes a moment to land, they lower the gate and we all drove off.

One of our chores in St. John was to get Canadian money. Another hint to travelers, RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) will not change money if you are not a client. TD (Toronto Dominion) will. And the nice young man gave me 130 loonies and some change for my 100 USD.

So today, on this rainy day, I could walk from my trailer to the laundromat at the end of this building and do my wash. Two loonies to wash and two to dry. If you have sound on, that’s the surf you hear in the background. Now that the rain has stopped we’re going to walk down to the beach to see how high those waves are.