How can you not want to try a round of golf when you approach the pro shop and see this off the first tee? Bud and I both succumbed to the lure of the Fundy Park Golf Course. Bud played three rounds in three days, me just two.
You can just picture your ball soaring across these beautiful fairways.
Just don’t look down or you’ll see the very rough rough and the ball eating creek. This is another Canadian National Park golf course designed by Stanley Thompson and is renowned for its elevated tees.
If you’re intrepid enough to walk this is your exit from the first tee.
Even in a cart it’s a steep descent.
And did I mention the ball eating creek? Here it is again across the fairway on hole two.
Looks can be deceiving. The fairway on hole four looks very inviting…
but to get up here to the green you have to cross another ball eating creek.
Here’s another set of stairs, up to the white tee on hole five.
The white tee on hole six looks like a lovely spot to relax,
but not so much when you see where your tee shot has to go.
Whether you’re successful or not, you are rewarded with quite a view when you return to your cart.
The tee shot on hole seven is bad enough,
But there’s another ball eating creek to cross before the green. We spent some time at this one.
Even the par three hole eight has its own creek guarding the green.
And hole nine has two creek crossings. One that you hope you soar over off the tee and another up there in the middle of the fairway.
If you make it past those there’s a steep uphill to the green.
Still, when you’re all done, tired from just nine holes, and you look back across what you’ve just played, you think “Gee that’s a beautiful golf course, it would be nice to try it again.”
We are staying at Fundy National Park, which was our second stop in Canada last year, too. But today the weather was pretty iffy, quite cool with clouds, showers and a little sun, so I looked for what might be a nice drive.
I found this route that looked promising so we loaded up Matey and off we went.
A lot of the route was through the country here. It was lovely and the road was empty. Imagine our surprise when after traveling on roads like this for 30 miles we came to a gate and entrance booths. We’d come to the eastern entrance to Fundy Trail Parkway Provincial Park. (By the way, that’s not dirt on the hood of the truck, it’s spruce pollen. But perhaps because of the humidity or the species, Bud’s allergies aren’t flaring up.)
We paid our entrance fee and the nice young man at the booth told us not to miss the Walton Glen Gorge/Falls Overlook. So we parked and took the trail. It was just under a mile one way.
Along the way we spotted this species of trillium in bloom. This is Painted Trillium (Trilium undulatum ). It’s beautiful and I don’t remember ever seeing it before.
We also saw this beautiful Pink Lady’s Slipper orchid.
I may have seen these before, but I don’t remember ever seeing one this big!
Then we came to the overlook. I could hear the water but it took a while to spot the falls way, way down there.
The glen was impressive.
This tree lived a while on the precipice, but no longer.
Way in the distance you could just spot the Bay of Fundy.
We returned to the truck and drove on to another overlook the young man recommended. This is the view at Martin Head Lookout and I can see why he said it is his favorite.
I thought this view at the Big Salmon River Lookout equally dramatic. This is looking west, not east.
We went as far as the Big Salmon River…
where we took another short walk…
across this suspension bridge.
I carried Matey. The bridge made him nervous and then his paws slipped into the cracks.
I stopped on the bridge to take this photo of a fish trap. This is a restored salmon run, so we figured this was set up for counting fish.
They also had this contraption. The large funnel can be lowered into the water. It appears to have vanes that would make it spin in the current. We’re not at all sure what it’s used for, though.
I’m also not at all sure what this is. There were several in a row. They’re pines, but have a bush form, no leader, not even a trunk. My ID programs call it a Jack Pine, but none show this bush form.
Whatever the answer to our mysteries we are very glad we came to this place. It as, as the brochure says, “Truly Spectacular.”
Today we went back to Minister’s Island. This island, just off the coast at St. Andrews, NB, is only accessible during low tide. You drive across the ocean bar that the tide exposes, so the hours it’s open change daily. Today it was open from 8:30 AM until 1:45 PM Atlantic Time. We got there right at 8:30 and followed these vehicles across the misty ocean floor. Turns out they all belonged to workers, as when we checked in we were given tag #1. The tags are numbered and when you leave you turn your tag back in. That way they know everyone has left the island before the tide cuts it off.
There are miles of trails on the island and the first thing Matey and I did was walk a mile loop through the woods.
The morning sun was beginning to penetrate the fog and it turned the woods magical.
This is about as far from desert as you can get. Even the lichens are green and leafy here.
My shoes were soaked from the wet grasses, but walking alone in this beautiful landscape was worth it.
There wasn’t much of a view out to sea yet, though. That’s the rocky bottom you’re seeing as the tide is quite far out.
This whole island was the summer estate of the William Van Horne family from 1890 until the 1940’s. There are still remnants of the carriage roads, walls and gates that crisscrossed the island.
After our walk we found that Bud was no longer in the truck. One of the docents told us he was touring the “cottage”, Covenhoven, so Matey and I waited on the veranda.
It was a pleasant wait.
A nonprofit organization now manages the estate. They hold concerts during the summer as part of their fundraising. The large white tent is most likely where the concerts are held, a pretty nice venue.
When Bud came out I toured the house. I particularly liked the sunny main bedrooms on the second floor.
There is only one small balcony, but the views were spectacular out any window.
We walked out to the bathhouse, which sits right on the water and is surrounded by windows. This visit I noticed the ceiling and light. The lights in the house ran on acetylene that was produced in the gas house behind the main house. I don’t know if this was an original acetylene light, but it looked like it might have been.
After a picnic lunch on the broad front lawn we went back to tour the barn. Matey’s favorite part of the whole island is all the lawns. He’s never seen so much grass for rolling. I love this spectacular barn. We had wanted to tour the creamery, the building in the foreground, but it was empty and shut.
This was a working farm and supplied all the food for the family, their guests and employees. Van Horne and after him, his daughter Addie, took great pride in their Dutch belted cattle. They even have one on the wind vane.
You can see the immense size of the barn in this shot of Matey and I at the side of it.
At the end of our time there we drove back across the bar. I took this picture about an hour before we left. The water is quite a bit lower than when we came on. We left at about 12:45; I think they close well before the tide comes up to be sure everyone leaves and to give time for the employees/volunteers to wrap up their jobs and also get off. These days no one stays overnight.
This is certainly a unique place, and worth a second visit.
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.
We arrived in Maine on Thursday with the tail end of a thunderstorm. We’d followed the storm east and so got treated to several hours of downpours, some almost flooded roads, a few spectacular bolts of lightning and one tree down across three quarters of the road. This trip we opted to stay inland, rather than along the more crowded coast.
We’re staying at Fogg Brook Resort Campground and although some of the sites had new gravel “screenings”…
ours did not. By the time we got positioned so we could reach with the electrical cord, step out the door onto a gravel spot and open the slide without interference from tree branches we had a pretty fine mud hole for a driveway.
When the rain stopped (pretty much as soon as we were done setting up) and Matey and I could walk around we found the place was nicely landscaped.
It had a very nice office/store/clubhouse just past a row of trees.
There was also a pretty decent looking golf course.
Friday was a beautiful day. I took Matey with me and went to visit with our friend Barb where she was selling at the farmers market in Belfast. Matey and I walked a few blocks to the main part of town to the Post Office.
The square looking building in back is the side of the first mayors’s house. It’s now attached, New England style to the house in front.
We passed this place not far from the center of town. It looks to me like this was once a farmhouse. Behind the house are sheds leading to the barn, all attached. Now it’s all been converted to apartments.
Barb and I had a nice visit. It wasn’t too busy this early in the season. Barb had some spring bouquets of lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley as well as some perennials and dahlia tubers to sell. She always has some small pieces of pottery, but that can’t be the star of the show as this is a farmers market and deliberately kept to local produce.
I helped her pack up and then went to her place for a very quick visit and to pick up two packages we’d had delivered there. Bud got a new grill and I got a screen house.
I didn’t expect to see Barb again as this is planting season and she had many flower seedlings and dahlia tubers to get in the ground. But today (Saturday) she decided to take a break and drive out to see us; we were so glad. I made her (reluctantly) pose before she left. In the background you can see Bud sitting on the trailer steps overseeing his new grill which is on the picnic table. And Matey is standing in the screen house wondering why Barb and I left and when I’ll either come back or unzip the door for him.
So we got an extra visit with Barb, the screen house is a success, the grill is a success and the mud puddles dried up. And as a bonus, the Waggle pet monitor that I ordered as an upgrade because it would work in Canada as well as the U.S. finally started working after three tech calls and many resets. And tomorrow we head to Canada. All did end well.
Three weeks is a long time for us to be in one place. I was ready to move along even though it was hard to leave friends and family. But the time had come and Sunday we drove to Broadalbin in the southern Adirondacks.
It was easier to leave folks behind knowing we were going to finally visit our friends Dick and Sue Manning at the home they built on Sacandaga Lake more than 10 years ago.
Here Bud, Dick and Matey are enjoying their dining area. Everything in the house was designed to be energy efficient as well as practical and lovely. The floors are ash made from the slabs cut from logs to get to the heartwood for making baseball bats. What a beautiful use of what some would consider waste.
There’s plenty of light from skylights that have electronic shades. The window in the interior wall opposite the skylight is positioned to let the winter sun flood the upstairs bedroom behind it.
The living room is both airy and cozy…
with a wood stove and a system that circulates the warm air back down from the top of the house it stays snug in winter, too.
Solar panels provide most of the electricity in the summer and do a pretty good job in the winter, too, though the surrounding trees have grown up enough to keep them in partial shade with the lower winter sun.
I especially loved the enclosed back porch where you could sit among the trees.
Sue and I took Matey to walk the Auger Falls Loop Trail along the North Sacandaga River. We both admired the way the trees manage to grow among the rocks.
These mountains are not like the bare rock contours of the west. Here the years have worn the sharp rocks to soil and the trees grip the old bones of mountain where they still stick through.
We all enjoyed getting out in the woods…
and with the recent rains the falls were a delight to see and hear.
When we got back we joined Dick and Bud down by the lake.
We didn’t stay until sunset, but after a delicious supper I came back down to get a shot of the lowering sun.
The next day they came and spent time with us at our little campground. Not nearly as pretty as their place, but we had a great visit anyway.
And now we’ve moved again and are spending one night here at Sugar Ridge Campground in northern Vermont.
This is beautiful country…
and maybe the nicest commercial campground I’ve ever visited.
We’re visiting family and friends in Western New York for three weeks. The State Parks in the area have campgrounds that consist of an electric pedestal stuck in a field. And in the rainy spring that’s what’s likely to happen to your camper. Even a number of the commercial campgrounds are unpaved. So for three weeks in this season we chose the AA Royal Motel and Campground.
There’s not much for scenery and nowhere to walk Matey, but it has full hookups and paved sites, so we are warm and dry. We laughingly call it the trailer ghetto.
To be fair the place is kept up; our impression was distorted by this burnt-out trailer that apparently caught fire two days before we arrived. No one was hurt, but it’s so disconcerting to see that we keep the shade over our dinette pulled down to block the view.
We have been seeing a lot of people, and I have remembered to take a few photos. This is a picnic with long-time friends. Clockwise starting from Bud, we have Gary Truhn, Sue Horanburg Truhn, Sue Quiett Manning and Dick Manning. It’s so good to get together with them; we try to touch base whenever we’re in town.
And my good friend Erin Hickey and I managed to go on what was once an annual hike to see the spring wildflowers at Gulf Wilderness Park in Lockport. We always went around Mother’s Day.
Unfortunately, twenty years later the early flowers have come and gone, even in late April. This is Hepatica, but not in flower.
We did find a couple of Jack-in-the-Pulpits in bloom, they are a later blooming species.
Erin made sure my plant sale skills didn’t atrophy. I helped pot up some flowers for the plant sale she and a friend are spearheading at the local cat shelter where she volunteers.
Happily we made it here in time for our great great niece Aubrey’s first communion celebration. Here she is listening to the very touching letter her mom, our great niece Jayne, is reading to her for the occasion.
This is Jayne with her parents, our nephew and niece, Rob and Kellie Bebee.
Here’s the table of oldsters. Clockwise from the left: my sister Judy, my sister Joan, my brother Jim, my mom Marni, my sister-in-law Goody, Bud and me. Jim and Goody are Rob’s parents. Aubrey is one of my mom’s three great great grandchildren.
Jim and I even ventured out for a hayride, though Jim said it did his bad back no good.
We took advantage of Jim and Goody’s visit to have an early birthday lunch for Mom on Tuesday. At almost 105 Mom says it’s risky to anticipate, even by six days. We hope she’s kidding.
Our visit is a bit more than half over, and so far it has certainly been worth the less than stellar campsite.
We’re now in West Virginia at Tomlinson Run State Park. The site we wanted to go in showed an error in the power when we hooked up. Error 2: Open Ground. Not safe. So we chose another site; no power there at all. So we ended up here. The power, though only 30 Amp, is good. The site is a pull-through, so you’d think it would be easy to pull in and set up. Not so much. See how the land slopes sharply down?
At the front of the trailer that slope reached the driveway.
Look at the difference in the blocks under our stabilizers. One side has just one plastic block, the other a plastic block and a six inch block of wood.
And believe me, we were as far over on the flat part as we would fit.
Between filling with water, changing sites and trying to get positioned so we could get unhitched and level it took us two and a half hours to get set up, a record.
But in the end it is a lovely spot.
And I certainly enjoy the view over the dinette.
To be fair they don’t have a lot of flat ground to work with.
Today we played disc golf. It wasn’t the best course layout we’ve played.
But it, too, was lovely. (Those light colored “posts” are actually tubes with tree saplings growing in them.)
There were some interesting baskets…
amid interesting surroundings.
And best of all there were trilliums blooming.
When we got back from disc golf we found we had a new neighbor. And he has a large dog that barked at us. And I found two ticks on Matey’s head.
Still, this is our first stay in West Virginia so we get to add a new state to our map…
so unless someone moves into that site I guess the pluses outweigh the minuses.
After a day of hanging out in the park (and playing a bit of disc golf) we decided to do some more driving.
My cousin, Rich, told us about some Indian Mounds near Chillicothe, where he lives (sporadically). (My cousin Rich has three condos, one in Chillicothe, one in Fort Lauderdale and one in Seattle. In addition he has a daughter in London whom he visits frequently. Our paths never seem to cross. He flew to Western New York for the eclipse while we were in Hot Springs. Then he came to Chillicothe, but went back to Seattle before we got here.)
We decided to check out the mounds anyway. There are actually lots of mounds in this part of Ohio, most of which you would never notice because they have been plowed over and built upon. But five of the sites are being preserved as the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park. This is also a World Heritage Site. The visitors center is at the Mound City Group. There are 22 mounds (a 23rd was totally excavated before the area was protected and its location is unknown) enclosed in three miles of low earthwork walls.
Many artifacts were found here. Unfortunately for us the museum in the visitor center was being remodeled so no objects were on display. We did get to watch an interesting video introduction.
Mound seven was the largest mound. It was carefully built using layers of clay and sand. There were graves under some of the mounds, some with cremated remains. These mounds were all built from 500 BCE to 500 CE (Current Era).
Me being me, I was just as impressed with the huge sycamore tree.
We took the time to walk the nature trail…
where, quite appropriately, Ohio buckeye was growing.
We were meeting Rich’s partner, Ken, for lunch and we had a bit of time so got in nine holes of disc golf at a nearby park.
This is a rather wind blown Ken (we ate lunch outdoors because we had Matey). He posed for me in front of the plaque in Bennet Hall showing the Deans of Ohio University Chillicothe. Cousin Rich is the fourth from the left (retired 2011). Ken also took us on a brief tour of Chillicothe, which was the first state capital of Ohio and is a very picturesque town. You’ll have to take my word for that as I was busy listening and looking and never took any pictures. Anyway we had a great time and I was glad to finally meet Ken.
On the way back to the campground we stopped at another of the Hopewell sites, the Seip Earthworks.
One remarkable thing about these sites is that even though they are miles apart some contain the same elements. The Seip Earthworks has a square, a large circle and a small circle, as do four other sites. And in each one the square encompasses 27 acres.
It’s hard to discern the shapes from the ground, but here you can make out the small circle in the distance.
These are the fifth mounds we’ve visited. I reviewed them all to try to fit them together in my mind:
Poverty Point State and World Heritage Site, Northeastern Louisiana, on the Mississippi River Floodplain. 1700-1100 BCE!!
Hopewell Culture National Park and World Heritage Site, Chillicothe, Ohio, along the Scioto River. 500 BCE – 500 CE
Kolomoki Mounds State Park, southwestern Georgia, about 15 miles from the Chattahoochee River. 350 – 750 CE
Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site, western Kentucky, along the Mississippi River. 1100 – 1350 CE
Emerald Mound, National Historic Landmark, just north of Natchez, Mississippi, along the Mississippi River. 1200 – 1750 CE The Emerald Mound was still being used at the time of European contact.
They don’t fit together well. I need a history of pre-Colombian North America written for a lay person. Any recommendations?
On the Roam Again 