Now Entering...Canada!

Friday, June 15, 2018- This is day eight of our trip, and another travel day. We had to leave our wonderful room/apartment at the Cromwell Harbor Motel in Bar Harbor. It was a great place to stay for the past two nights, but now we are on our way to Canada! According to Google, this was a 7+ hours of driving day. Google doesn’t factor in stops or road conditions (like your car would shake apart if you drove the speed limit), so we took a bit longer to arrive here (just over 10 hours). We had a stop before the border to get some gas and some Canadian money; we had a scenic picnic not too far off the main highway; we had one more stop for gas and Dairy Queen; and we drove on some pretty rough roads.

That last sentence needs some fleshing out. The last time we came to PEI, I talked R.J. into taking a scenic route to the bridge that leads to PEI. We were in New Brunswick, and this road turned out to be virtually unmaintained: no shoulder, decaying edges, and lots of potholes. However, it did have a great view of the sea and the land across the sea: Prince Edward Island! This time, in Nova Scotia, the Google recommended route was far inland. I just couldn’t see a good reason to miss out on the shore views we would get by taking an alternate route. As R.J. would say, “Trust the Google.” The good people of Nova Scotia were obviously working on this road, as it had section after section that had been ripped up and temporarily mended, ready for pavement to be reapplied. All of those sections were marked, but not all were created equal. Some tried to take the car apart, while others merely shook the passengers a bit. Either way, there was no way to make good time on this road. We did, however, have the occasional fabulous sea view, which was way more satisfying for the passenger (me) than the driver (R.J.). Sigh. I struck again.

We have some fun stories about the place we stayed as well. It was a bit of a risk, I knew, but I booked it anyway. It was well-reviewed and I booked through Booking.com, so I felt mostly comfortable. We arrived and went to the place marked office, on the front porch of an older home. No one was there. We rang the bell as directed on the door, and still no one came. We called the number directed on the door to call, if no one was in the office. The very nice lady on the other end said, “Dearie, that’s not where you check in! But I’ll be right there. It’s OK.” We never did find another place that looked anything like an office, but that is probably another story. This place is a lot of rented rooms in a house, so I expected there to be some quirks. We went to our assigned room, and there was no fridge or microwave, as had been described in our booking. That was quickly remedied, as the hostess just gave us another room that had them. The room was clean and comfortable. This is an old house, so there were some other hiccups, but overall it was not bad. And the best part of all is that we are less than 10 minutes from the PEI ferry. Yay!!!!

Tomorrow: Prince Edward Island!