More adventures in PEI

In addition to our beach adventures in PEI, we also visited the Anne of Green Gables house, which is definitely a total tourist trap, but fun to see for those of us raised on Anne of Green Gables books, movies, and TV shows (Road to Avonlea, anyone?)  We didn't stay very long. Just long enough to check out the house:

Drink some Raspberry Cordial

And turn dad into our personal rickshaw driver

I also got to fulfill my life long dream of visiting the Cows factory on PEI.

And of course, PEI is all about the seafood. Particularly the mussels and the lobster. When we arrived back to the house where we were staying, our hosts had finished cooking up a giant pile of lobsters that were fresh caught that day.

Having never seen an entire lobster up close and personal before, I had to inspect them closer.

And closer...

And I concluded that they are ugly, creepy little bottom-dwellers. I do have a policy, however, that I will sample the local cuisine while traveling, so I had my first ever taste of lobster. The process of extracting the meat was long and laborious, but not as frustrating as my previous experience with crab. And the meat was good, mostly because it was saturated in garlic butter, but I don't see what all the fuss is about and why these freaky things are considered a delicacy. In fact, the Islanders we were staying with told us that when they were in school, lobster was the cuisine of the poor people on the Island. All the poor kids would be teased for bringing lobster sandwiches to school. I guess it is their rarity in other parts of the world that makes them so expensive everywhere else.

Cold and rainy

My blog updates have been much slower than I anticipated they would be this summer. have been writing a lot for work lately, so when I am not working, I am not so motivated to continue writing for fun. I have lots of pictures to post, though, so I will try to do that more regularly.

This is another picture of the day we went to the beach, IN JUNE, and it was freezing cold and raining. Somehow it doesn't look as miserable of the one of me by myself.

It also features my characteristic wink that I am seemingly unable to stop doing when there is even the slightest hint of brightness.....

Beaches, beeches

Okay, here we go. I have made a pledge to post at least once a week all summer. The theory is that if I get into the habit of posting regularly, it will become an actual habit.

Yesterday was the first day of summer, and although summer temperatures haven't quite come to New Brunswick yet, I figured I could try to conjure up some summer with a post about beaches. Because nothing says summer like "laying out" on a beach.  (The quotations are because laying out is grammatically incorrect, but it just sounds so much better than "lying out".)

So, my parents were just in town and we got to do some touring around the maritimes. And if there is anything the maritimes has in abundance, it is beaches! We went to beaches in both Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick.

Our first beach stop was in on the north shore of PEI, in the PEI National Park (map) or close to it. It was a cold and windy day, and right when we got to the beach, it started to rain. Definitely not beach weather. For some reason, I thought it was hilarious that it was JUNE and still so damn cold. I tried to take pictures of myself all bundled up, freezing to death on the beach IN JUNE to share with my American friends. Unfortunately, I am the world's worst self-portrait taker. I attribute this to my freakishly short, T-Rex-like arms. And the pictures weren't really capturing the freezing-ness of the situation.

Then my dad suggested that he just take the damn picture with his iPhone, which actually worked out quite well. You can definitely see how cold and dreary it was on the beach.

The beach itself was quite pretty, and I can imagine it would be delightful on a sunny day.

Two days later, however, we went to a different beach in New Brunswick, specifically Parlee Beach (map) in Shediac, and it was a glorious day!

Parlee Beach (previously coined the most un-fun beach) is on the Northumberland Strait, which boasts the "warmest waters north of the Carolinas" so Dad decided this was the place for him to have his first swim in the Atlantic Ocean.

Apparently, the brochures lied, and it was almost as cold as the Polar Bear Swim in the Pacific Ocean, so the "swim" was very brief due to the numbness of his feet.

I still have not swum in the Atlantic Ocean, but since I live here and could technically do it any time I want, I felt that there was no need for me to go in on this particular day. As I have been informed by a fellow Sackvillian, summer doesn't really come until the end of July. Maybe then it will be warm enough to actually justify going in the water.

Night in Newark

On my recent trip back from The Netherlands, a storm in Moncton led to my spending the night in Newark, New Jersey. For those who don't know, Newark is one of the poorer and crime-ravaged cities in the U.S. I was a little nervous about leaving the airport to go to a hotel, but fortunately I found a couple of friendly strangers to accompany me. We booked ourselves into a major chain hotel, so I thought that it would be no different than any other of these chain hotels in any other city. WRONG!

First, there was a football game going on in the hotel bar, which meant the lobby was overflowing with rowdy football fans. Dead center of the lobby was a homeless looking fellow who was just standing there alternating between mumbling to himself and shouting to anyone who might be listening. My room was on the 8th floor, though, so I figured it would be away from all the craziness and at least be quiet (ha!). My second sign of the classiness of the hotel was the elevators. The doors, both inside and out, looked like they had been kicked repeatedly. Awesome. Then I got to my room and saw the broken door handle.

I walked into my room, put my bags in the shower while I checked for bed bugs. (Compulsive beg bug checking behavior is not irrational if the threat is real!)

I noticed a pile of flyers that had been shoved under the door, which let me know that a) The room hadn't been cleaned in a while, and b) They let random people wander the halls of the hotel. Awesome.

There was also a pile of crayons on the floor leading me to wonder if the room had EVER been cleaned. The decor was not much better with chipped and dented furniture and a ripped up boxspring. I have stayed in random motels on the side of the highway that were better maintained than this place.

Fortunately, there were no signs of bed bugs. I still left my bags in the shower just to be sure.

My room just happened to be right next to the elevators. I think that the hotel had no insulation because not only could I hear every groan of the creaky old elevators going up and down, I could also hear every footstep in the hall, including the children that were running up and down shrieking and laughing. The final level of awesomeness was the positioning of my room in the corner of a sort of U shaped part of the building. This allowed for the winds to whip very loudly and scarily past my window. Also, the windows weren't sealed very well because I could feel the wind coming through them. All in all it was shaping up to be a long, loud, scary night. Fortunately, I was still on Amsterdam time, and after distracting myself with some phone calls, I was able to fall asleep fairly quickly and slept soundly the whole night!

Bay of Fundy, Take 2

New Brunswick is just so pretty. While Brad was visiting, we had the opportunity to go back to the Alma area and stay in an adorable cabin overlooking the Bay of Fundy.

Isn't it cute, y'all?

Jane, who owns Cleveland Place B&B also owns this gazebo/cabin, and let us take it over for the night.
 This is the view from the cabin. The first bit of water is actually a marsh, but beyond that is the Bay.

The first thing we did upon arriving was walk down to the beach. The tide was out (but on it's way back in as we quickly discovered) and we were able to walk out quite far. The boys loved it - and so did Nova. She ran around like a crazed animal chasing the waves and gulping down massive amounts of sea water before puking it all back up again.

That night, we hunkered down in the cabin and played some games. I played scrabble for the first time ever! I have always wanted to play, but the opportunity had never come up. I wasn't very good at it.

And D took to long too place his words.

Brad totally won. Then, as a reward, we let him sleep in the loft, which was octagonal shaped like the cabin.

On our way back to Sackville the next day, we stopped at the Hopewell Rocks, one of the best places to see the tides change. During low tide, you can walk on the ocean floor. We were there at high tide, so we just got to look at the water. It was still pretty cool. At low tide, you can walk under the18 ft high archway formed by the biggest rock...

 It was a delightfully sunny day, and we walked around the park checking out all the viewpoints.

 See, people, you should totally come visit me! It is lovely here in New Brunswick.

Terry Fox Run

This past Sunday (September 19th), I ran in the 30th annual Terry Fox run for cancer. I ran 8 miles  across Confederation Bridge, from Prince Edward Island back to New Brunswick. I set my fund raising goal at $500 and thanks to the generous donations of friends and family, I was able to beat my goal and raise $560. Thank you to everyone who donated!

I was running in honour of my grandparents, Jim and Lillian Hamilton, both of whom died of cancer. They are missed.

Read more about my run on my running blog here and here.

Impromptu road trip!

Last night, I noticed on Facebook that a fair maid was in need of some electrical work. She lives almost 2 hours from Sackville right beside the Fundy National Park (Aside: I was recently informed that while everyone else says Fundy as it is spelled, Newbies say "Funday.") Now Sackville is also on the Bay of Fundy, but not the good part. There are no beaches in Sackville and the views, while pleasant, are not breathtaking. For those who don't know, the Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world, which is what draws people from all over the world to see it. I have been dying to go visit Jane and to explore Fundy park, so I offered D's electrical services for this morning. Shameless plug for D's company here: http://www.onsiteelectrical.ca/

First of all, the drive from Sackville to Alma is the official Scenic Fundy Drive that basically involves all the way up and all the way back down an arm of the Bay of Fundy. Although it is totally inefficient, the views of the water and the hills and the trees and the mud made up for it. We arrived at the fabulous Cleveland Place B & B shortly after 10 am, with Nova in tow. D was able to remedy the electrical issues in about 15 minutes while I chatted with Jane, and then me, D, and Nova were off to explore. I didn't think to bring my camera when leaving the house, and it wasn't until about half way through the trip that it dawned on us to take pictures with our cell phones, so most of what we saw is undocumented.

We began with an easy little jaunt just off the highway that was a loop through moose and beaver territory. We saw a couple of beavers, but alas, no moose. We really wanted to see a waterfall, but we didn't want to work too hard for it, so we found one that was not too much of a hike off the road. It was very cool to see, and I wish I had a picture of it to share, but unfortunately the picture is only in my head. I guess people will just have to visit me so that I can show them in person.

Next we drove to the end of a road that took us to Point Wolfe. This is where I realized that I could, in fact, take pictures. We stopped just outside of a covered bridge to snap this shot, which was only just the beginning of the awesomeness.

We drove down the road until it ended, parked and then walked through one of the trails where we were delighted with this view.

On the way into Alma, the bay looked to be at a fairly high tide. Here it must have been on its way out. (I am mostly guessing because I have no idea.) We could see people down on the beach on the right, and decided that it was time to dip our toes in the water. So we headed down.

Almost there:

Beach!

Nova had her first ocean experience. I don't think she could tell the difference as she still gulped down the water like crazy and then barfed it back up just like he does when we take her to the lake.

And just so I could say I did it, I stuck my feet in that freezing cold water!

I loved being at the beach, but definitely did not love having to climb all the way back up...

On the way home we took the extra-scenic route down Hwy 915, where we detoured to Cape Enrage, which definitely lived up to the hype in the tourist brochures. It was an amazing view and we could even see blue water beyond all the brown, which made it seem like the real ocean. It was also damn windy, and damn cold, so we did not stay very long.

Thanks to Jane for all the destination recommendations!

Relaxing on the island

I know this blog is supposed to be about my adventures on the east coast, but my visits to the west coast were so delightful that I have to share about the west coast again. Specifically visiting my aunt on Vancouver Island. I got to see so many people I love while I was home, which was amazing but being on the island is always my favorite part of visiting. Especially when Sharon comes along.

First of all there is the view from the ferry. I was so overwhelmed by how beautiful it was even though I have taken this ferry ride many, many times. I guess usually it is in the winter when I go over or it is raining or something because I don't remember being this awed on past voyages. I kept thinking that I could use these pictures to lure my American friends to Vancouver for a visit. (Is it working yet?)

Then there is the view from my aunt's house:

In addition to the awesome views, we also get wildlife. Squirrels, raccoons, and deer. Now normally I am afraid of deer, thanks to my former labmate who managed to help me view these docile creatures as evil killing machines. Sharon is also afraid of deer, so we tried to do therapeutic exposures (from afar) during our trip.

We watched one attempt to eat a tomato. (You can't really hear it, but someone calls the deer a dumbass during the filming . You can hear me comment on it, though.)


Deer eating a tomato from LDH on Vimeo.


Then the next day we watched some fawns frolic and eat leaves. You can't hear it in the video, but the leaves are quite crunchy, so sharon started refering to them as deer chips. Crunch, crunch crunch. Nom, nom, nom.


Deer eating leaves from LDH on Vimeo.


Now I am back on the east coast, and my posts about east coast weirdness will resume. I just thought I would share my fabulous vacation and hope that it was successful in luring my non-Vancouver friends to Vancouver.