July 19 - Eastport to St. Andrews, NB

Eastport, Maine, to St. Andrews, New Brunswick


View Eastport to St. Andrews in a larger map

This was a day of unexpected surprises. Is "unexpected surprises" redundant? I don't think so - but that's a discussion for another time and place.

Photos from this day are here.

We left our campsite at Easport and headed for the border crossing at Calais, Maine.

Surprise #1: the folks in Calais pronounce the name of their town "Cal-iss", not "Cal-ay". Hmmm, who knew?

Surprise #2: there are two border crossings between Calais and St. Stephen. Or, to be accurate, the main crossing point between Calais and St. Stephen, and another one between Calais and a tiny suburb named Milltown. Because we took a wrong turn out of the Walmart parking lot in Calais, we missed the main crossing point and found the other one, instead. The Canadian border guard was apparently more used to seeing local folks traveling back and forth to work than folks from Minnesota pulling a small camping trailer. After wishing us a good morning and asking for our passports his first question was "Are you folks lost?" We admitted to the wrong turn at Walmart and he, very graciously, gave us directions to where we wanted to be.

We stopped at the tourist information office in St. Stephen to load up on New Brunswick maps and information. A public library was just across the parking lot from the tourist office. We took our computers there to catch up on e-mail and to download necessary stuff for the new Sony laptop. We followed the library stop with a short stroll around downtown St. Stephen.

Surprise #3: St. Stephen is the home of the Ganong Chocolate factory. While their current factory is located in a new facility on the edge of town, the old factory is a museum. A chocolate museum! The very nominal admission fee includes a walking tour of the factory with displays about its history and the making of fine chocolates and all the chocolate you can eat!! Yes. As you walk through the displays you pass plates and baskets of various and sundry Ganong chocolates set out for your grazing pleasure. The Ganong Chocolate Factory Museum is a dangerous, dangerous place. Beware.

With great effort, we tore ourselves away from the chocolate museum and got back on the road.

Low tide at St. Stephen on the Bay of Fundy

We arrived in St. Andrews in the middle of the afternoon and the skies were threatening rain. Rather than taking a chance of needing to set up the Scamp in rain further down the road, we asked if there was an available spot at the Kiwanis Oceanfront Camping campground. There was, so we stayed. After setting the Scamp, we set out to explore St. Stephen.

Our first stop was Kingsbrae Garden. This gave Fred a much needed opportunity to take a few more flower pictures.

In town, we stopped in many of the shops and galleries. It's too bad that picture-taking in an art gallery is bad form. There were several items that we'd like to have images of since we couldn't afford them. Oh well.

More exploration of the St. Andrews waterfront preceded a fine pizza dinner at restaurant overlooking the harbor. After that, we headed back to the campground where we found...

Surprise #4: the restroom! On our many travels with the Scamp, we have come across a wide variety of restrooms in the parks and campgrounds - from a not usable men's restroom at Mill Creek Campground in Redwoods National Park to spotless restrooms and showers at Searsport Oceanfront Camping. But nothing prepared us for this. The men's restrooms and showers at Kiwanis Oceanfront Camping are tiled in marble. The counter-tops are granite. The showers are granite. The wash basins are glass and stone vessels that sit atop the granite counters. Everything was spotlessly clean. I walked in and just stood there with my jaw dropped. So awestruck, I forgot to take photos!! Nearly forgot what I went in there for, in the first place.

I went to get Nancy to ask her to check out the women's restroom and showers. She did and said "OK, so...what?" "What?", I said, "You're not impressed by all the marble and granite?"

Surprise #5: Turns out, the women's side had tile floors and Formica counter-tops with ordinary sinks and ordinary showers. Clean, to be sure, but not the luxurious appointments the men got. The women did, however, get one more sink than the men. Fair's fair...