|
|
|
It's been two years since we had a vacation and three years since we had a vacation that was memorable in a positive sense. This was to be a little less than two weeks without going into the office, reading email or responding to phone calls. I checked in with Jennet from time to time at the office (she was reading my email) but the intent was to ignore all but dire emergencies. We visited two Canadian provinces, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, and a half dozen US states on the east coast. We spent time on seven islands, P. E. I. is itself an island, Deer Island and Campobello in New Brunswick, Mt. Desert (where Acadia National Park is located) in Maine, and Aquidneck (Newport), Conanicut (Jamestown) and Block Island (New Shoreham) in Rhode Island. And we rode on three ferries and traversed a number of long bridges over salt water. There was tension from time to time given that we never knew from one day to the next what we'd be doing and the weather was not always cooperative. We had to take our chances on lodging and several times we had to change plans due to there being no suitable place to stay (e.g., we had wanted to stay at the Home Port Inn in Lubec Maine but ended up driving three more hours to Northeast Harbor on Mt. Desert Island before we could find a place we wanted to spend the night). On the whole, however, we had lovely weather, great swimming, hiking and biking, very comfortable lodging, and delicious food (at least when we took the time to seek it out).
We left Little Compton yesterday morning around 11:00am and drove to Bangor, Maine. We first stopped at a hotel that looked interesting in the travel brochure, but found out that the "country" view was the Bangor land fill, and so we ended up spending the night in a Marriot hotel and set out again in the morning for New Brunswick, Canada. We arrived in St. Andrews by the Sea around 2:00pm Atlantic time and spent the afternoon walking around and taking pictures.
|
|
|
|
|
|
We drove from St Andrews by the Sea in New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island yesterday. We were exhausted from the long drive by the time we were on the island and looking for a place to stay. The town of Summerside wasn't nearly as nice as we had been led to expect. A bed and breakfast in Bayside turned out to be disappointing. Pretty much giving up on staying in the country, we started driving to the island's largest town, Charlotteville, got a little second wind about midway there and tried an information booth at an odd little town we encountered. The girl at the information booth suggested a place in Stanley Bridge which turned out to be just fine. We spent the next morning swimming and hiking in P.E.I National Park near Cavendish and then started looking for a place to stay, possibly for a couple of nights. We lucked out on a old family-run inn near Brackley Beach (the brochure claims it to be the oldest family-operated inn in Canada) Shaw's Hotel (est. 1860). Our room is rather small but comfortable; the dinner and dining room were wonderful. We read for an hour after dinner sitting in the large, comfortable living room on the first floor. Tomorrow we move into one of the little cottages overlooking the bay.
|
We had a nice walk on the beach after breakfast. Our cottage wasn't quite ready by the time we had to check out of the room and so we drove around the area trying to get a photo to do justice to the fields of yellow grain against the blue sky. The cottage was ready for us to move in by the time we returned at noon; it was nice to have a little room and privacy. In the afternoon we took a short canoe trip. There were canoes and kayaks available for the hotel guests located only a few hundred feet from our cabin. The afternoon was overcast and windy but it was fun paddling around the cove and it never did rain. Dinner was as good as Thursday night's meal.
|
It rained Friday night and was overcast today until about 3pm but that didn't stop us from taking a long walk and a swim in the morning. We walked on the beach as far in the Southeastern direction as we could before running into signs protecting piping plovers as an endangered species. At the signs, we took to the water and swam and waded around most of the point that was protected for the plovers. After a nap and some reading, we returned to the beach for another walk and swim, this time heading Northwest along the beach. With the sun out it was an altogether different experience from the earlier walk, but both were enjoyable. Dinner, with a very good local merlot, was delicious. Now I'm typing this entry on the front porch of our little cabin watching the last light of the day (it's 8:45pm atlantic time). Tomorrow we have to make a decision whether to stay here another day or set off again.
Here is a sequence of photos taken along the path through the woods to the beach near Shaws Hotel.
|
A few more pictures of the beach on our last day on Prince Edward Island.
|
Some shots taken while on the way from Prince Edward Island to Acadia National Park and the town of Northeast Harbor on Mt. Desert Island. The first two photos were taken on the ferry from St. George to Deer Island. The third photo on the ferry from Deer Island to Campobello Island which loaded from a gravel embankment and unloaded onto a boat ramp. The last photo was taken in Lubec, Maine looking North.
We had hoped to spend the night at the Home Port Inn in Lubec. We spent a night there three years ago and the food was memorable. Unfortunately, they had no rooms for the night. We drove on to Machias; they had just had their big wild blueberry festival the previous two days. The salmon in blueberry sauce that we had at a local diner was not a hit with me and the prospects for spending the night in Machias spurred us to call ahead to Northeast Harbor on Mt. Desert Island. After several calls to places we had stayed in before, we reserved a room at the Grey Rock Inn, actually the same room that we'd stayed in three years before when we desperate for a place to stay. The room was very pleasant and the breakfast on the stone porch overlooking Northeast Harbor was delicious.
 |
It was rainy when we woke up in Northeast Harbor on Monday morning. Rather than hang around and spend the day indoors, we drove back to Providence and were back in Little Compton in time for dinner that evening. Tuesday and Wednesday were pleasant enough and we read, biked and swam. I fiddled around setting up a wireless base station so that I could use my laptop anywhere in the house or outside on the decks. Wednesday afternoon we sat on the couch and surfed the web trying to figure out what to do next. Jo wanted to visit Cuttyhunk Island, the furthest from the mainland (Cape Cod) of the Elizabeth Islands. We can see the Cuttyhunk Light from our bedroom and we'd always talked of visiting the island. Unfortunately, the only inn on the island was booked up, and so we decided to go to Block Island. We couldn't find anything for Wednesday night on Block Island but finally managed to get a room for Thursday night that sounded reasonably nice and was outside of the busy area of New Shoreham right next to the ferry landing. We loaded the bicycles on the car, packed some clothes, and went to bed expecting to catch an early ferry.
We arrived on Block Island around noon. The 9:30am ferry that we were counting on was cancelled due to engine problems, and so we ended up on the 10:30am boat. It was a bright and pleasant crossing on the Carrol Jean out of Point Judith, Rhode Island. We dumped our bags at the front desk of the Spring House Hotel (check-in wasn't until 3:00pm) and started off toward the north end of the island on our bikes. Three hours and a swim at Crescent Beach later we returned to claim our room. Dinner at the Manisses Hotel was good but not quite as good we remembered. We stopped later for ice cream in town and a drink at the Spring House Hotel bar. We were exhausted from the swimming and biking and in bed by 10pm. A lounge entertainer on solo piano in the style of Billy Joel was playing at the bar downstairs (it was "Martini night") and kept us up until after midnight when it started raining. The next morning dawned bright and sunny however, and we were out and biking around the south end of the island, Mohegan Bluffs and Rodman's Hollow, by 7:00am. We got back to the Spring House Hotel in time for a continental breakfast at 8:00am. Jo had picked up a copy of Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead" at one of the local bookstores the previous evening and we read our books, napped and took short walks until it was time for the 11:45am ferry back to Point Judith.
|
Looking back toward Block Island as we return on the ferry to Point Judith.
 |
