Shediac, NB 8/31/07

Well, here we are at the "Lobster Capital of the World" or so they say here in Shediac. We certainly have seen a lot of seafood restaurants in this town. In fact, we ate at one tonight and had wonderful fish and chips and clam chowder. We will have lobster tomorrow.
Our drive from Edmunston to here today was safe and uneventful, although we passed several interesting landmarks. I wish we had enough time to stop at every one of them but simply could not. We passed the longest covered bridge in the country and we went through a town that claims to be the french fry capital of the world. This RV park is really nice and is right on the Shediac Bay. We are five minutes from Parlee Beach on the Atlantic Ocean. We drove over to it and took a few pictures there but most of the pics I took are right here at the campground. Click here to view them.
Tomorrow we will drive to the Bay of Fundy to watch the 40 high tides and hopefully walk on the ocean floor during low tide. Of course, I will take more pics.

Edmunston, New Brunswick

Finally we are back in "English speaking" territory! Although we enjoyed our brief visit to Quebec, we are glad to be back where we do not need an interpreter (for us, a dictionary) to understand the road signs! We are on our way to Shediac, NB where we will stay for the weekend. But here we are close to the US and will probably cross the border today to gas up my car and get a few supplies at American prices. Canadian prices are atrocious! It started raining here last night around bedtime and rained off & on all night. And it is still raining! Sure am glad we aren't here to do any sight-seeing! But I am hoping that this is not how the weather will be through the weekend! In other words, I hope this is not the same "front" that did such devastation to the midwest in terms of flooding! We can't pull in any TV stations here at the RV park and the satellite system won't work because of all the surrounding trees. But thank heavens for the internet! I checked the weather at Shediac and it is supposed to be nice until Monday.
When we stopped at the NB welcome center, we were informed that Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are putting on a concert in Moncton (a city not too far from Shediac). So just for the heck of it, we inquired about tickets. We were told that the admission is $165.00 PER PERSON! Needless to say, that is one concert we will not be going to!
I took a few pictures of the RV park where we are staying until Friday. It is lovely and peaceful here. The name of the river where the park is located is the Iroquois....really clear and gently flowing. There are lots of little stones on the bank and I tried skipping stones on the water like I used to do when I was a kid. But I have lost my knack....totally! So click here to see stuff!

Old Quebec Town 8/27/07

Once again, we walked our feet off today…. took a ferry (as passengers…left car in parking lot) across the St Lawrence River to Old Quebec City. There are so many interesting looking buildings there. So many statues and wonderful steeples. And we ate at a side walk café where we paid 6.00 for a hot dog & French fries. I can’t believe how expensive stuff is here. We paid 3.45 plus taxes for one small glass of beer! But it was a good day. Tomorrow we are driving back into the city to see the changing of the guard at the Parliament Building and an observation tower which boasts a breath-taking view of Quebec City and the surrounding area. We shall see.
We do not have wireless internet at our campsite unless we want to pay 10.00 per day! Ridiculous! But they do offer free internet using their DSL from a very nice desk area in their rec room. So that’s how it is. We will be leaving here on Wednesday and hopefully the next place will have wi-fi. We will be in New Brunswick. We’re told that wi-fi in Quebec is not all that common. I did buy a French-English dictionary just so that we could at least interpret the signs. Everything and I do mean everything is in French. I had to quess what the cashier was saying to me at the grocery store because she spoke absolutely no English! But groceries are the same in French as in English! JI am posting some pics taken today of Old Quebec City. I wish I could post more than I did because it is so interesting. But it takes so long to upload them to my web page.
So click here to see the new ones we took today.

Cardinal, Ontario

We arrived at the Cardinal KOA on Thursday after spending most of the day at the Toronto Zoo. I did not post any pictures taken at the zoo because mostly what we saw were your ordinary zoo stuff. But it certainly is an impressive place. Definitely the biggest zoo I have ever seen. Nickie had a great time taking "professional looking" pics using the telephoto lens. But by the time we had seen about 3/4ths of the place, we were ready to get out of there. It got pretty hot and we estimate that we walked at least 3 miles. So we left around 3:00 and arrived in Cardinal by 7:00. This is a very nice campground with lots of shade. The only drawback is that there are no sewer hookups. So it looks like we will have to break camp later today and go to the dump station to empty our tanks. We plan to stay here at least one more day.
Yesterday we drove back over to the US side of the St Lawrence waterway so that we could take a recommended boat tour of the Thousand Islands in the St Lawrence. These islands have been purchased by the very rich who build summer homes (mansions!) on them. We saw some pretty ritzy looking places. Then there is Boldt Castle. This is a place that was built by George Boldt for his wife in the early 1900's but was never completed because she died and he stopped all construction never to resume. Sometime in the 70's it was purchased by the state and is still in the process of completing it. The place is huge, but, as Nickie says, does not hold a candle to The Biltmore House. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our trip. Today we will drive to Ottawa....about 59 miles from here and take in a famous street mall. More pics have been posted about our boat tour so click here to view them.

Finally! A visit to the Falls

What awesome splendor we viewed today! The power and beauty of these falls is absolutely breath-taking! It is hard to describe with words. We took lots of pictures but I could not upload them all. So click here to see a few of them.
Tonight, we went back to see the falls because they are lit up at night by a series of huge spot lights that change colors about every 10 minutes. But there was so much wind and mist that the lights could not properly penetrate and so the light show on the Canadian falls was not very good. But the lights shining on the American falls was really pretty. However, since we could not park near them, we could only drive by really slowly to look at them. We did a lot of walking today and now we are ready to crash. Tomorrow, we will drive back to the American side because Harry wants to take a look at the area where he lived some 50 years ago. And then we will probably go to Goat Island to see where he and his friends used to go fishing. So that's all for tonight.

Niagara Falls, Ontario 8/21/07

Well, folks, we lost a couple of days due to motor home problems. Our Southwind started making some bad sounds and it turned out that the power steering pump needed to be replaced. So we stayed in New York state till Monday morning at which time we set out trying to find a place that could repair/replace the pump. We finally found a garage with a big enough bay that was willing to do the work, but they could not find the parts. Further investigation showed that this part is no longer manufactured and we could wait for one week because one was finally located in Connecticut! Well, we were near a Camping World RV sales center and we decided we were through fighting all the little problems we kept having. So we traded the Southwind for a 2003 Hurricane with two slides. What a difference these slides make! The dining and living area is widened by approximately 3 feet and the bedroom is also widened by about 2 feet. We also have a bigger bathroom and the engine is so much quieter than our old one. We are really happy with this new one, even though we had to go into debt to buy it. Nevertheless, we are happy with the overall deal. So now here we are in Niagara Falls but have not yet started doing any sightseeing because we are so dog tired from the "move". We spent almost all day yesterday at Camping World waiting on the paperwork, prep work and other stuff. They said they normally don't deliver an RV on the same day it is purchased but they pushed things through so we could get back on the road again. But the deal wasn't completed until about 6:00 PM and then it took us about 2 hours to move all our stuff. I am so glad that we have Nickie with us. She was a tremendous help and is really quite a good organizer. I think she moved more stuff than I did.
Now that we have gotten our strength back, we are going to drive down to the falls and take some pictures. Look for these on my photo album tomorrow but click here to see a couple of pictures of our new motor home.

Sunday 8/19/07 Westfield, NY

We have had a safe trip so far, although not without some minor problems. Our first one was that we ran low on power steering fluid so that was an easy one. We simply added more fluid. We spent our first night in Wytheville, Va and it was HOT HOT there. But the facilites were nice and the showers/restrooms were clean. Our next stop was Morgantown, WVa and this was a campground in the middle of a state forest, Cooper's Rock state forest. Lots of shade and nice level sites. But no TV and no WiFi. But it was so nice and cool! The temp got down to 57 during the night and it was such a welcome relief. We were supposed to arrive in Niagara Falls, Ont. today but we started to hear some weird noises that Harry felt were related to our power brake system. So we decided to stop before entering Canada so that we could get them looked at. We are currently at a beautiful KOA campground and the manager owns a truck that has the same engine as our motor home. He listened to our "noise" and diagnosed it as the power steering pump. He gave us the name of a local mechanic who he feels sure can take care of us tomorrow sometime. So our plan is to relax tonight and call him early tomorrow and hopefully we can be on our way later in the day. We are only about 80 miles from our Niagara Falls destination. But here we are on the shore of Lake Erie and, of course, we took some pics. I added a few to my photo album. But Nickie took some awesome shots with her camera using our telephoto lens. She is in "hog heaven" and is really adding a lot of pleasure to our trip. So click here to view my photo album. By the way, it is still nice & cool! 62 degrees!
I will post more news after we tour Niagara Falls.

We're Getting Ready to Leave!

I am starting this blog prior to our departure so that you can make sure that you are able to access it. We are planning to depart early on the morning of August 15th. I am so excited! I have spent the past week mapping our route and setting up things to see and places to stay. Our first stop will be in Niagara Falls, Ontario where we will spend about four days. We will explore the wonders of the falls as well as visit Toronto. So the next time you hear from me will be from there.