Well, after the torrential downpours of yesterday that went on through most of the night, we woke up to overcast skies but the rain was done! The roads were drying up and, while still quite cool, at least we didn’t have to worry about being swamped again.
We headed into Bar Harbour and spent the morning there. We lucked out and found parking right down by the Pier. We wandered through the downtown area and discovered that this is also a port for cruise ships. Alas, personally I think this ruins a place because everything is geared towards tourists and the downtown becomes a flood of cheap tourist crap - T-shirts, fake First Nations doo-dads, cheap regional stuff like tea towels and coffee mugs sold at exorbitant prices. And crazy expensive restaurants. It made Bar Harbour a little disappointing for me. That said, it’s a very beautiful area and what I appreciated the most was the harbour itself and the spectacular old homes, some which are ENORMOUS.
Like most of Quebec and the rest of Maine that we saw, this area is chockablock full of quaint little (and not so little!) houses and buildings made of brick and stone or sided with shiplap. In Maine, quite a few places are white with black shutters and window casings - this seems quite typical. The other thing that I noticed is that we started to see quite a few farm homes that are attached directly to big barns. This is also “a thing” down here and they were quite numerous. I imagine, in the dead of winter, it would be nice to go to the barn to feed animals without having to go outside. They, like the Canadian Maritimes, get their fair share of winter storms and a lot of snow.
We had lunch in “Ba Haba” and I had my first “lahbsta” and “clam chowdah” on our trip. It was fabulous. With full stomaches, we pulled out of there and made our way towards New Brunswick. We took the #1 North which is the Coastal Route but in actuality, there is very little coast to be seen from this road so it wasn’t a particularly scenic ride. Some of the roads themselves are unbelievably rough and I felt bad for Lynn who is pulling our little travel trailer. We made our way along the windy coast and came into New Brunswick just north of Calais, into St. Stephen. There is a huge Gagnong chocolate factory there but it was just as well that it was closed when we came through.
We pushed on, along a fairly new divided highway which was in excellent shape and fast riding, and made good time into St. John. As we left St. Stephen, the fog started to settle in and DAMN it got COLD! It dropped down to 10 degrees and we were all like little Frosty the Snowmen by the time we got in. St. John was completely socked in with cold, damp fog and I swear, it felt like a cold November night. Apparently, St. John is one of the foggiest cities in the world - they get something like 80 days a year of socked in fog!
We warmed up in a Tim Horton’s and found a great deal at the Hampton Inn near Uptown St John. We decided we’d stay for 2 nights so we could have a full day in St John. Yvan made a great suggestion that instead of riding all the way up and around to Nova Scotia, we’ll take the ferry from St John to Digby which will save us 2 days of riding in areas we’ve already seen on our last trip across Canada.
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