After leaving Ottawa we headed south toward Kingston, at the other end of the Rideau canal. Our route took us there along the Thousand Islands Parkway. Seeing all these houses on islands brought up the discussion on whether it would be nice to live there. Houses built on islands, and with garages for boats instead of cars, while the cars themselves were kept on the river bank. Not always practical, but a beautiful place to live.

At Kingston we spent the night at a campground near the Kingston Mills locks, the end of the Rideau canal. This inspired a future holiday, following the canal (or are similar one in Sweden), by boat. Let’s see if we can arrange that some time in the next 5 years.

The next day we travelled slowly along the shores of Lake Ontario, toward Cobourg. There I met up with Georges, and the owner of the little music store Georges Guitars and Music to pick up a Gretsch Broadkaster bass, a rare item in Europe. Georges is a very kind man, who’s shop focuses on instruments and amps rather than trying look cool. Contrary to the big chains, he responded to my e-mails in search for this bass and put a nice price on it as well. As a small bonus, I got to take along the cardboard box of a quartet of other cases to built ‘flight protection’ for mine.

With the bass on board, and the next day took us to our friends Annemarie and Patrick and their two daughters, who moved to Canada’s Port Perry two years ago. We spent the night there, so there was plenty of time to catch up, and to learn about life in Canada. Port Perry is about an hour from Toronto, close to Lake Scugog, and on the edge of a green belt that is protected by Parcs Canada – which literally borders on our friends back garden. We couldn’t help feeling a bit envious when we saw their house and the ‘rich with children’ dead end court they live on. My wife was out voted three to one on moving to Canada, but I guess the children and I won’t easily move there without her…. Who knows, maybe one day.

Upon leaving them, it was time to return the motor home and spend two nights in Toronto itself, in a down town hotel on Yonge Street. Down town Toronto is great for food, and shopping and some nice sights. Best of the latter is the view from the CN tower, and which we did not get. On the first day, which it was too cloudy to be worth the money (30 CAD per person), on the second we had too little time before having to go to the air port. Something for a possible future visit maybe. We did enjoy seeing the old and new city halls next to each other though, when as well as Chinatown and the Lawrence market.
A bit of extra fun was our short meeting with waiter Jim at the Yonge Street Grille, who immediately spotted we were Dutch and started telling us about his Dutch grand parents, who moved to Canada quite a few years ago. His mix of Dutch and English was fun to hear, and his love for the Dutch soccer team a bit of a surprise (we had a good discussion about Louis van Gaal, who is the new team coach, which we had learned only that same morning). His kind of openness was what we encountered a lot in Canada (even in francophone Quebec), a pleasant contrast to the quite closed up or reserved Dutch culture.

Alas, here the holiday and the story end for now. I’ll probably come back to some of this later, when all impressions have settled into a complete view, but the urge to leave The Netherlands after a vacation was never as large as a now….. Canada left a second lasting impression, after our first taste 10 years ago.

After our trip through Quebec, we landed in Ottawa, or actually, on the municipal campground of Kanata, a small suburb of Ottawa, that is also the origin of Canada’s name. After the reasonably cool weather of the past few days, we ended up with 28 degrees celcius here, in an area where it hadn’t rained for 35 days. That doesn’t seem very long, but the trees around our motor home were acting as if it was fall, dropping dry brown leaves all around us. But, since the Dutch know all about water, we brought rain… or at least a few showers. Not enough to releave the camp fire ban of the campground, but enough to make our second day in the Ottawa area more comfortable as far as temperature and humidity are concerned.

That day was spent taking the bus to down town Ottawa, bringing us to the parliament buildings – a bit of a weird view, these 19th century buildings between sky scrapers and large office buildings of a rather young city. It does provide for great pictures though, when looking from the Quebec side of the river.

The parliament, seen from the Museum of Civilisations.

That side of the river was also the place where we spent most of the day in Ottawa, simply because that is where the Civilizations museum is located – a museum dedicated to the history and identity of Canada – and the civilizations that participate in this.
The thing we visited there was the First Nations exhibit, which displays a lot of what the native Americans, popularly known as Indians, and nowadays more formally addressed as aboriginals, did and still do. We admired totem poles that were as much as 200  years old, but also clothing that was created using traditional techniques less than 50 years ago. A museum employee explained to us how the aboriginals of the West coast created planks out of trees, while leaving the unneeded part of the tree intact and alive. The latter bit makes you wonder about how ruthless and careless the ‘civilized’ Europeans were (or are?)…
Also easily overlooked is that the aborginals were of different tribes, or people, each with their own habits and with their own quarrels – like the resit of the world. The Iroqui are different from the Ashinee, and the Inuit of the north. That’s something you don’t see immediately when going along the displayes, unless you let the sign shown below work it’s way into your mind for a few minutes. It certainly makes you look at the rest of the exhibition with a different eye….

Read this, before going through the exhibition, for a different view on ‘First nations’

Totem poles of over 15 meters, nothing special apparently. See the bear cub in it’s den halfway?

After the first nations exhibition, we spent an hour at the IMAX theater, at a stunning moving about polar bears in the (melting) arctic. The filming was great, the message (CO2 causes the polar ice to melt) was delivered with a bit too much drama – the price you pay for having Meryl Streep delivering the narrative. Nevetheless, losing the permanent ice would mean losing the polar bear, which is a majestic animal to watch.

From the movie, back to the civilization museum, this time to the Tete-a-tete with many Canadian explorers, inventors, authors, and politicians on display, and then on to the 18th century village, which gave a nice impression on how similar and/or different life in Canada was from life in Europe. I had a good time, but forgot to take pictures, which was a bit of a shame.

After a short visit to the children’s museum, the day was mostly over and we hit down town Ottawa for diner. This time, we found a place that redefines pub food: where else can you find a pub that serves lobster linguini, trout in an asiago and chili crust, stuffed porc chops and salmon with soba noodles instead of shepherd’s pie and fish and chips? The food was good, and plenty, so the children took with them their first ever ‘doggy bag’.

To and from the campground, we made use of the Ottawa bus service, which is a very streamlined service, with buslanes throughout the down town area and bus stations every 1-2 kilometers. I’ve seen worse…
Walking to and from the bus stations, also gave us the opportunity to see some street art, as shown below and a the top of this post.

Bottom line, I liked Ottawa a lot better than Quebec, probably because it is less similar to European cities – and thus more ‘refreshing’.

A wolf under your feet on the stairs…

Who’s the man behind the maple leaf?

Ottawa can really turn you upside down…

P.S. we also saw the Ottawa end of the Rideau channel, but I’ll save that for the next post, after we visited the other end of the channel, at Kingston.

After all the fun with wildlife, it was time to move on to the city life again- in the city of Quebec. The only city in Northern America with an actual castle (Chateau Frontenac), Quebec is actually almost a French city – although people are more open and easy to make contact with than in France. The city itself was not the most exiting, but we had a good time there nevertheless  – walking and shopping in the city center on a Sunday afternoon. The whole month of July and August, the city sports the Festival d’Ete – which consists of many free and paid performances throughout the city. We happened to run into the ‘Cirque Loco’ – a juggling and acrobatism duo who put on a nice show in the middle of a shopping area. Good for a laugh, a bit of awe and some nice photographs.

Juggling on very high heels

Salto of death, Cirque Loco

A few times, I noted Canadian houses look like Playmobil... but river's edge Quebec wins.

After Quebec, we  moved on to the national parc of Mauricie, for two nights in a forest inhabited by bears and other animals. The first message we got upon arrival was that a black bear was spotted about a kilometer from our camping site, so we should take extra care to not leave any food items outside during the night. Of course, as it goes, we never saw the bear. 😉

But we did see squirrels!

A day at the park was well spent, walking through the forest, and kayaking on Lac Edouard. Apart from squirrels, crows and some falcons we didn’t see much animals, but the weather was good and we enjoyed it.
After kayaking, we tried Quebec’s ‘national dish’ – poutine. A combination of french fries, gravy and cheese – for me it’s an ‘order once and never again thing’. Our evening barbecue, with pepper steak, grilled vegetables went down much better.

If this could be our back garden...

Guys with stony faces... and bodies.

Kayaking on Lake Edouard...

...and against the wind - makes even poutine taste good.

But still, we saw whales and squirrels but no bears. An early morning ride on the day we left the national park didn’t change that – no bears for us this year. We’re leaving bear country, toward Ottawa, Cobourg, Port Perry and Toronto.

Desktop art, to take home 🙂

Getting to Trois Pistoles in Quebec was a matter of driving down the Canada Highway Nr 2 for the better part of a day. The last part, after leaving the motorway reminded us of Wallon in Belgium: all signs in French (of course, the no problem), terrible roads (less pleasant) and half completed road works (some worse than the actual roads)… But, all of that was fixed by the sunset view over the Lawrence River, where an5d the notion that we just had our second night of rain in two weeks, while back home it had been pouring for days.

From Trois Pistoles, our we took the ferry to Les Ecoumins and then booked two nights at the Domain des Dunes campground in Tadoussac. This was supposed to be our whale watching break, and and it was a successful one. On an evening excursion, and a two hour trip in a Zodiac, and we saw countless whales – I’ll look up the names later – including some harbour dolphins and humpback whales. Two came really close, and I was lucky to be filming at the right time.
Tadoussac itself is not the most exiting village, and but it was worth the stay just being able to see these whales.

For all my recent posts I have used WordPress for Android. A nice app with one small flaw: if you edit a post that contains pictures, before publishing it, the picture links are removed when you publish later. I just repaired my last post before this one, reinserting all the pictures that got lost in this manner.

Today, July 17th, is the fourth in a row in coastal nature areas. We started on Deer Island, after crossing the Canadian border again at Lubec. We were lucky to find the ferry point the or so it seemed – it was a bit smaller than we expected. Still, we got onto the ferry from Campbell Island to Deer Island. There we drove straight onto the campground, about a hundred meters from Old Sow, one of the largest tidal whirlpools in the world.

Ferry to Deer Island. Hmmmm...

Old Sow, not at it's best

A sailing boat passing by at Old Sow

Old Sow was not as spectacular as we had expected, it appears you have to be there at exactly the right moment, and really high tide coming in to be really spectacular. Still, it is a nice view, and a good place to see seals playing in the waves.

After spending the night at the Deer Island campground we moved on, but not before we took a tour around the Island. The best thing we saw was the fishing harbour of Leonardville, and where the water was so clear we could see fish and shell fish about 6 meters below the surface – and some jelly fish as well. This harbour is used mainly for lobster fishing, pity we were there early in the morning, too early for a lobster lunch.

Lobster traps at Leonardville

The boats taking the traps in and out of the harbour

The ferry from Deer Island to Black’s Harbour was our next move. This is a free, government operated ferry, which was a good thing for us. We Because neither the commercial ferry that got us to the island, nor the campground accepted credit cards, we were out of cash. This got a bit worrying on our way to Saint Martins, and because none of the smaller places we crossed had an ATM and we had no guarantee that the campgrounds in Saint Martins would take credit cards. In the end, the we found an ATM in Sai t Martins itself, which decided to go ‘out-of-order’ after providing us with the much desired cash. The cash was not really necessary for the campground we had in mind, because this turned out to be full. Reason was the yearly Old Town festival. So, we move further east, to towards the Fundy Trail, and where a campground called Tobi’s Hideaway might be able to take us. This turned out to be no problem: the site is so new that it’s not even finished yet and mainly has customers at the end of July and in August. The result was that we had the entire campground to ourselves for one night. So, we had a camp fire, and made friends with a giant rabbit that refused to appear in photographs.

Hiding around the corner from the entrance of Tobi's

The next morning we went to see the Fundy Trail, a Unesco project that creates a nature park along the coast from Saint Martins to Fundy National Park. This is to open to the public, and preserve  at the same time, in the last piece of undeveloped coast in North America. Being right at the entrance, and Tobi’s will surely benefit when the trail is completed.
At the trail, we visited the the Big Salmon River, where the Atlantic salmon come to breed annually. I was quite happy to sit down and cool my feet in the river, between the baby salmon. My ankles were hurting, because the midges had feasted on them the night before. After cooling of in the river, the itch was gone. Who needs chemicals?
Besides enjoying the river, we spent time walking along the beautiful coast, before leaving the trail and moving on to Fundy National Park itself.

Baby salmon

Fundy Trail coast line

Waterfall at Fundy trail

The Fundy National Park is not all natural, and but rather an attempt to restore nature after the damages done by extensive lumbering in the 19th century. This is most visible at Wolfe Point, at the mouth of Wolfe River, where a restored covered bridge, a piece of a dam and poles remaining from a lumber harbour can still be seen. The dam used to block the river completely, until it was broken down in 1980 as part of the nature recovery project. The dam helped the lumber industry to collect lumber sent down stream, but (together with dumped saw dust), it also destroyed a large part of the fish population, which was already reported by local fishermen in the 1880s.

Remnants of Wolfe Point dam, built once by lumberers

Covered bridge at Wolfe Point. According to a Canadian these bridges are meant for kissing...

Poles reminding of Wolfe Point lumber harbour

Water snails, new life at Wolfe Point

Small waterfall near Wolfe Point

At the exit of Fundy National National Park, the small fishing village Alma is located. With a general store and a fish market right at the park exit, entry it’s a good place to go for park visitors. We On our way past, we enjoyed a breakfast with fluffy pancakes, scrambled eggs and sausages, and and lobster lunch omelet at the local coffee shop. After that we visited the harbour and fish market, buying fresh haddock and coquilles ‘for the road’. The haddock ended up on the barbecue the same evening, the coquilles entered the RV freezer for a few days.
That barbecue took place in Moncton, our last stop before a full day of driving to Trois Pistoles in Quebec, where we will take the ferry across the Lawrence River.

Lobster boats at Alma - quite a bit bigger than those at Leonardville

On July 10th, we arrived in North Conway, and for a two night pitch at Saco River, next door to the Settlers Green outlet village. So, and we spent one morning shopping for shoes and clothes, and in the afternoon we took care of our laundry while the children played at the river and the playground. Not the best out exiting day, but a relaxed one.
On our way to North Conway, and just before entering New Hampshire, before we saw lot of fire trucks by the road, and their crews in full operation., and or so it seemed. As I write this, we we just found out that they had put out a forest fire, and shortly before we came by.

After New Hampshire, before we took the shortest, and not very scenic road to Bangor, and where we are staying for the night. Here we fill up the fuel and propane tanks, and get groceries so that we’re all set for Deer Island, and where we will spend our next night – amidst lobster ponds and the ocean.

That’s one night away now – let’s hope all the horror stories Stephen King made up about the area around Bangor were really just phantasy.

After leaving Burlington on the 10th of July, our next stop was Waterbury, for a visit to the Ben & Jerry’s factory. A small tour of this amazingly small facility (2 production lines, and one flavor per production day) showed us where this world famous ice cream comes from. I could appreciate the three fold mission of the company, as outlined on the wall. The pictures below show it in full, I’ll get back to this after my vacation – the triplet product mission,economical mission and social mission is inspiring and presented in a far more juicy way than large multinationals present theirs. In that respect, it’s been a perfect choice by B&J to sell the company to Unilever, but to include full brand independence in the deal. Without that, the brand, it’s image and the great product would’ve been dead by now.

The tour ended with the taste of the flavor of the day, which is typically not for sale. Today, it was Strawberry Bliss, with strawberries and white chocolate. Not bad, but it doesn’t beat chocolote chip cookie dough for me. I got fooled by a 10 year old boy during the tour, when I thought we came from furthest away – beating Tennessee by miles. The boy was from a small town in Vermont, but proudly told us he was born in Nepal. According to the guide, he had won us all a free ice cream 🙂

A nice example of the humor of Ben and Jerry is the flavor grave yard, where past well known flavors are buried. Some famous and infamous tastes can be found there – including weird experiments like Sweet Patato Pie…..

With a freezer load of ice cream(or rather, two pots) we steered the RV further east, to North Conway in New Hampshire. A scenic route, along Kancamagus Highway and (thanks to the awful Route 66) also a dirt road. At Kancamagus Pass, just below the 2855m top, I took some pictures. The White Mountain Forest is something we can only dream of in The Netherlands. Tomorrow it’s shopping time, in the VAT-less state of New Hampshire, before we head toward Maine and then, finally, back into Canada.

After saying goodbye to Alvin the Squirrel and his chipmunk friends at Old Forge, we took of for Lake Placid. First we had to stop for 180 liters of unleaded though. Waiting in line to pay for those, all preoccupations about the American people seemed to get confirmed. A man was drinking orange juice from a one liter carton, and while his wife was buying a slice of four cheese pizza at 9AM….

Then road to Lake Placid was a other great trip through forests, lakes and marshes, with a occasional village or lookout point. The nicest place was a dam between two small lakes which we had to cross. I missed the entry to the viewpoint half way, loosing the opportunity for some great pictures. Pity.

In Lake Placid itself, we checked out Main Street and started a quest for a New York Yankees base ball cap. This turned out to be a bit foolish in an ice hockey minded town. We’ll try again later in another place.
As I write this, we are parked for the night at Wilmington Notch, a state campground next to White Face Mountain – the former Olympic skiing sites. We wanted to create a camp fire, and but the reception was closed so we couldn’t buy fire wood. I sent Yannick out to find some branches, and and instead he came back with a packet of fire wood. An American camper, and who had bought to much wood gave it to him when he saw him searching. So, and we ended up with a barbecue as well as a fire for the marshmallows.

On the ninth, we left Lake Placid, taking a scenic route toward Lake Champlain, which serves as a water reserve for New York City, and separates New York state from Vermont. En route we saw quite a few houses in the category ‘I-live-in-the-woods-and-in-winter-I’m-isolated’, places where you’d be happy to live and enjoy nature. The ferry port at Port Kent fit in perfectly: a booth, a small shop and a ferry pier, and no houses to be seen.
There I had a nice chat with a Canadian, and who was visiting Lake Placid, taking and taking a day trip to Burlinngton. We talked about Toronto, Canada Canada and The Netherlands – to find out that once again I found a North American who didn’t know there is something beyond Amsterdam. A nice person nevertheless.
The ferry to Burlington was small and old (but not bad at all) , and gave us the opportunity to take a few pictures of the coast, before entering Vermont.

After getting a spot at the Burlington camp ground, at the lake shore, we went for a walk to the city center. Unlike what we expected in an American city, we found a pedestrian only shopping area. There, I all kinds of colored bear statues lined the street, which resulted in a photo series that will not be published here.
Also, the we saw a student playing guitar and singing barely recognisable 60s songs. Our two judges below were unanimous: finish school and get a job, this is not your thing.

Finally, I went for a late evening run, and partially in the dark. It turned into an involuntary interval, due to dark paths and low hanging branches. I now understand why we saw a lot of people running in early evening – the nice running paths are not very well lit at night. Details of the run are available here.

Today is Friday July 6th. I have decided to include dates in my posts from now on, and since the Internet connection at the campground is not the best, and and we may get worse ones later. The dates of of posts by may deviate if I have to postpone the uploading.

Either way, today we picked up our RV, at Cruise Canada. It turned out to be a fairly new one, but so we got on the road smoothly. First stop: Walmart, for some groceries and pay-as-you-go card for one of our way cell phones. Unlike in Europe, and here you have to activate such cards by calling customer support or visiting the providers sites. Thanks to Mr. Anand of Walmart, I am now listed in the Rogers directory for Ontario. Emergency calls and campground reservations without roaming charges is not that difficult to achieve. The only issue is that I live at Cruise Canada premises according to the directory.

Groceries done, we’re of to Niagara Falls, and for our first overnight stay. As the picture shows, our driver Bobo Bear and co-pilot Nijntje got us there and hooked us up nicely.

I had a good laugh at the tree behind the camper in the afternoon. A squirrel on the ground was trying to climb it, and and another one was pulling it back with it’s ‘arms’ around it’s waist. Almost like two children…. Too bad I didn’t have the camera ready.

Once hooked up, and we went to the falls, for a view from the top, one from below, or and one from behind. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves on that account.

O esmall thing caught up me today: we took the bus from the campground to the falls, for and at the one of the bus stops did we see time
tables. Every passenger who got on had to check with the driver on the route a destination. The drivers answered all questions and almost memorized who had to get off where. A service level of the drivers their European, and certainly their Dutch colleagues can use as an example. At the same time, and the bus company might have done a better job at providing time tables at bus stops as a service. It led to nice conversations with the drivers though.

Tomorrow we will cross the Rainbow Bridge, into the USA. I have no idea where we’ll end up tomorrow night, but our general direction is East, toward New Hampshire. We may find d ourselves in Syracuse, and but it could also be a place like Hickory Grove…