Life in The Slow Lane: Philadelphia

I will get around to writing about our travels through New England and Canada but since I’m here at Kelly’s house in Pennsylvania I will start out with this day. Turns out the Media Farmer’s Market is not in business this summer so I ended up going to the Giant supermarket for vegatables for the Moussaka with Onion Nut Sauce. The recipe said that it would take 2 ½ hours so I thought that I had time to make it before the Silver Sneakers Yoga class at the Y. It took me 4 hours so I missed the class. It’s taking me a while to get to my point. Kelly and Jason have this fancy device that you can talk to and it just does what you want. Like I say, “Computer, play NPR.” It says, “All right, WHYY out of Philadelphia.” I say, “Computer, Play louder.” And it turns up the volume. So, when I decided to just do my own yoga routine, I said, “Computer, play yoga music.” It said, “OK, maybe you would like John Prine radio.” Perfect.

The Moussaka is out of the oven, I’ve done some yoga, WeeChee, Jason’s little dog went wee and now it’s time to think about where we’ve been and what we’ve done. I wrote down all our stops in my last post. Here, I will describe some of the highlights of that trip.

Philadelphia - Memorial Day

We drove the camper into Philadelphia on the Friday before Memorial Day and parked at Campus Park and Ride in downtown Philadelphia. This really is just a parking lot but they have RV sites backing up to an old warehouse from which you can hook up to water and electricity. It was the closest and most convenient place in relation to Kelly’s new house in Media, PA. She and Jason had just moved in 2 weeks before we arrived. We did not see the Liberty Bell or any of the other things for which Philadelphia is famous. We hung out with the two of them at their house, went out to dinner once and met Jason’s parents at a family dinner hosted in the new house. For the life of me, I can’t recall any touristy thing that we did while we were here for 4 days.

Connecticut

We have almost completed one of my goals which was to visit with all of the friends we’ve made over the years that moved to far flung places. I have to say that some of the most enjoyable times we’ve had have been when we spend time with our old friends. Tom and Mary Vandermeid lived in Springfield back in the 80’s and shared leadership roles in the Parent Teacher Club at Hazel Dell School and helped coach softball for a couple of years. Tom is a minister for the Covenant Church and Mary is a teacher until she retired last year. They moved to West Hartford Connecticut sometime in the 80’s and that is where they live today. They have 3 children close in age to ours. So, on our way north we gave them a call and Tom invited us to park the camper in the parking lot at Covenant Congregational Church. He even provided electricity. We enjoyed a bike ride on one of the beautiful bike trails in the area and spent a day going to visit Gillette Castle which is a unique and somewhat strange place built by actor William Gillette who was famous for portraying Sherlock Holmes back at the turn of the last century. We also took a tour of Mark Twain’s house in Hartford.

RI-MA-NH

While we were stopped in Rhode Island, we took a trip up to Providence to see the State Capitol. We took a long car trip the next day to see Plymouth Rock and then drive around Cape Cod. Plymouth Rock is surrounded by sand bags to keep the ocean back. I’m guessing that the ocean is a little higher than it was when the pilgrims landed in 1620. Two plaques erected not far from each other juxtapose two themes in American history. One commemorates the burial ground for the passengers of the Mayflower. “….History records no nobler venture for faith and freedom than that of this pilgrim band. In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and cold, they laid the foundations of a state wherein every man through countless ages should have liberty to worship God in his own way. May their example inspire thee to do thy part in perpetuating and spreading the lofty ideals of our republic throughout the world.”

The other, erected much more recently, marks The National Day of Mourning. “Since 1970, Native Americans have gathered at noon on Coles Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers. To them, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands and the relentless assault on their culture….”

Is our challenge maybe, to hold these two truths or realities together in our heart? This is our history and it’s all true. One does not negate the other just as in the South the reality of the horror of slavery does not negate the reality of the civil war and the destruction of a way of life. Is the story of the United States about growing up enough to be able to handle it all? It’s not one or the other. It’s both/and.

Bah Hahbah and Acadia National Park

We spent 2 nights in Calais, Maine, taking a day to drive around and check out the border crossings and get a preview of Canada. We had some time so we drove over to St. Andrews and drove across to Minister’s Island while the tide was down. We hiked around the island and enjoyed a beautiful afternoon. The next day, we brought the camper into Canada and headed for St. John where we celebrated my birthday with another lobster dinner in a fancy restaurant. Twice as expensive and half as good as lobster from the pound.

Bah Hahbah and Acadia National Park

Mount Desert Island on the coast of Maine is the home of Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. We spent a few days at the Bar Harbor Campground just down the road from Bar Harbor. We enjoyed hiking around the park and drove up Cadillac Mountain to see the views. One day we went down to one of the lobster pounds (C-Ray) along the roadside near the campground and were served a box with a couple pounds of mussels, a fresh whole lobster, an ear of corn and boiled potatoes with melted butter. We brought our own bottle of white wine and sat at a picnic table provided by the host. This was the best lobster that we had in our travels. I found a turquoise hoody to replace the one that I lost last year. I needed it to keep warm. We spent 2 nights in Calais, Maine, taking a day to drive around and check out the border crossings and get a preview of Canada. We had some time so we drove over to St. Andrews and drove across to Minister’s Island while the tide was down. We hiked around the island and enjoyed a beautiful afternoon. The next day, we brought the camper into Canada and headed for St. John where we celebrated my birthday with another lobster dinner in a fancy restaurant. Twice as expensive and half as good as lobster from the pound.

Fundy National Park and Alma

We camped for 3 nights in Fundy National Park and got to know the amazing Fundy Bay tides. Here the ocean rises and falls 40 feet a couple of times each day. When we first drove into Alma, boats were sitting on the bottom of the ocean with piers sitting high above them. The beach was at least a half a mile out from the rocky shore. The next morning, the boats were floating next to the piers and the ocean was pounding on the rocks. I read somewhere that the amount of water flowing into and out of Fundy Bay each day is more water volume than all the rivers in the world. It must be true. We left the park and drove up to Moncton along the Peticodiac River, also known as the Chocolate River because of it’s color.

The waterfalls at Fund

In search of a moose at Fundy National Park

Moncton: The friendliest city of them all

We drove into Moncton figuring that we would find a tourist information center to find a place to stay for one night. We crossed the river and I directed Don to take a right turn which took us into the city. A sign warned us of a 12 ½’ clearance so we took a quick left turn and had no idea where we were headed. The first opportunity to pull off the road happened to be a parking lot next to Bowen Hardwood & Stairs (www.bowenhardwood.ca/). When we explained to the two men working there our problem, the went to their computer and began looking up places for camping near Moncton. They provided us with a map of Moncton and gave us directions to Casino New Brunswick where we found a nice level place to park for the night. The battery on Don’s watch went out and we really became aware that our phones were useless in Canada except for taking pictures. The clock didn’t update to Atlantic time. We stopped in at Magnetic Hill Home Hardware Building where a nice young man spent about 15 minutes helping Don remove his old watch battery and replace it with a new one. We went into the Casino hotel and the concierge there let us use the phone to call a campground in Shediak, NB to reserve a campsite. At Costco, the worker at the phone kiosk explained what our cell phone options were while we were in Canada. We decided to settle for having cameras and when we had Wi-Fi available we would communicate with people back in the States. And we used real paper maps. We were set to continue our journey.

Parlee Beach

Parlee Beach and Shediac “The Lobster Capital”

Shediac

About 100 miles from ice cold Fundy Bay on the other side of Nova Scotia the Gulf of St. Lawrence has much more reasonable tides and is warm enough for swimming in June. There we found Parlee Beach which stretches for kilometers and has shallow warm water for wading and swimming. We stayed for a couple of days in Shediac and took one day to cross the Confederation Bridge, the world’s longest bridge that crosses from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island. There we visited the House at Green Gables and walked along the ocean. We stopped at the capital in Charlottetown on our way back where the idea of creating the Canadian confederacy first took place. We were there for Canada Day, July 1 when the country celebrated their 150^th anniversary. Every town we visited was planning a big celebration for the day.