We left St. Andrews Friday morning after a look around the town and harbor.
It’s a beautiful spot, we’d love to come back here one day. And that inn was superb.
Driving towards the border, we got enticed by the sign that read ‘Canada’s Chocolate Town’ for a town called St. Stephen. So of course we got off the highway to explore.
The town was about as nice as Plattsburgh, and the ‘chocolate town’ turned out to be one building with a chocolate museum and a candy shop. Apparently there’s a Canadian chocolate manufacturer named Ganong that’s been around forever that was originally based in the town. Their speciality is something called ‘chicken bones’, which is spicy cinnamon candy wrapped around a bit of chocolate – and some really, really bad product naming. We bought some to bring home, however doubtfully.
We took a slow drive through inland Maine, and after a stop in Bangor for lunch, made our way over to the coast for the rest of the way. It was a nice drive – at one point, we saw a mama turkey and her turkeylings on the side of the road.
At one point we passed a restaurant with a seriously enormous lobster on the roof. Someone needs to tell the owner that lobsters are not good looking animals and you may not want to put a 50 foot one on your roof.
We stopped in Kennebunk for the night, and had really delicious lobster rolls for dinner.
And today was the long slog home. We did set a new record – six states in one day (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey). But uneventful, and we are now just happy to not be in the car for a while.
As is my tradition, I’m closing with some random thoughts on the trip:
- Canadians seem to be very confused about language. We went from everyone speaking French, to English, to everything being English and Gaelic, to French, to Gaelic , and finally back to English again. I’m pretty sure there were some native languages mixed up in there too.
- Canadian road signs are a trip. We spent hours debating the meaning of some of them, and finally had to resort to the Internet to figure out a couple. The one that really killed us was on a tourist information sign – it was an outstretched hand with some sort of flower pot hovering above it. Seriously, what? After quite a lot of Googling, I finally found out it means some sort of handmade craft. To which I respond, ‘Dear Canada, please fix your road signs so we can actually figure out what they are supposed to mean.’
- On a similar note, the different provinces must have different sign designers. The signs for moose and deer in Quebec were pretty normal, but the moose signs in New Brunswick looked like camels (moose do NOT have that big a hump!), and the ones in Nova Scotia looked like bison with antlers. It does beg the question about why they are different at all. I mean, why bother?
- Moose are awesome.
- On the other hand, as much as we both love Canada, neither of us will never understand the appeal of poutine. Just no.
- My husband has some weird spidey sense about Land Cruisers. I swear he can smell them from miles away.
We had a great time. And yes, we are still married and we still love each other.