Canadian Maritimes - Heading Home

After getting off the Newfoundland Ferry we decided to take the long way around Cape Breton Nova Scotia in order to see the Fall Colors.

What a change from just a few weeks ago!  The colors were spectacular.  Cape Breton is known for it's fall color and many folks make the trip there just for the show.  The locals call them "Leaf Peepers".  We are proud to say we were part of them.   I'm sure there are other places in the world with similar fall color displays, but this was the first for me.  I only had two regrets about this drive.  One was that it was very overcast.  I imagine with blue, sunny skies  the color is even more incredible.  The other was that we were towing the trailer to save us from backtracking some.  With it, we were not able to safely pull over at some of the more spectacular viewpoints.  None the less, the drive was AWESOME!

Mona got a little nervous at times with my driving since my attention was focus much of the time looking at the trees.  But My God!  Look at that!  Can you blame me. 

We stopped for the night at another free camping spot.  It's the top of breakwater in Pleasant Harbour.  The wind started to blow in the evening and continued to pick up through the night.  Even with the stabilizers down the trailer was really rocking.  It wasn't the nice gentle rocking like my fond memory of our boat at anchor.  Nope, this was more getting whipped one way and then another.  I spent many a sleepless night on the boat with with similar motion, usually with me up on deck, awake, making sure the anchor didn't drag.  At least with our "land yacht" I didn't have to worry about the anchor.  Things got unpleasant enough though that we decided to move and ended up in the whale museum's parking lot from which the above picture was taken.  We didn't have to worry about being disturbed in the morning since the museum, like just about everything else,  was closed for the season.  For us, Pleasant Harbour wasn't too pleasant.

One of the things we liked about the Canadian Maritime Providences was all the brightly colored homes.  And it turns out the locals paint their boats in a similar style.

On the way home from our Canadian Maritimes adventure the weather was great as we crossed into Maine so we opted to spend a few days in Acadia National Park again.  The foliage was changing colors here too although not as spectacularly as Cape Breton Nova Scotia.  

Acadia NP has an extensive system of "Carriage Roads", roads built by the Rich and Famous, before the area was a park, for their horse drawn carriages.  Today the roads are restricted to hiking, bicycling and carriages, although we didn't see any of the latter while we were there.  We really wanted to ride some of the roads since my back precluded that activity the last time we were in the park.  Since the roads are designed for carriages, they are nice and wide with gradual up and down grades.  The trees changing made for an especially enjoyable ride.  

We chose some roads that took us around several of Acadia's lakes.  We came across very few people while riding.  I'm assuming its because we were at the end of the tourist season and riding mid-week.

 

What a difference a few weeks makes.  Bar Harbor wasn't nearly as crowded as the last time.  We even found a place to park the truck.  It was nice to be able to walk around the town and visit stores without being jostled around.  There was only one cruise ship in the harbor instead of the usual three or four which helps explain the relative lack of crowds.  I actually enjoyed our little tour of the town which is pretty unusual for me.

After Acadia NP it was time to push towards home.  After driving for a while we saw that the Norman Rockwell Museum was coming up and thought it would make a good place for a short break.  That short break turned into several hours as the museum was really interesting. Towards the end of his life, Norman Rockwell made some striking civil rights paintings.  Most of us are probably familiar with his painting of the little black girl being escorted to school by US marshals.  It is pretty famous and is clearly done in his folksy style.   But the one that is really emotional is a huge painting he did of the murder of the Mississippi civil rights activists.  It is one of the few painting we were not allowed to take pictures of in the museum.  It is really powerful.  You can Google it.  It's called "Murder in Mississippi" or "Southern Justice".

In one of the galleries the museum has all the paintings he did for the Saturday Evening Post covers.  I got a real kick out of this one.  It reminded me of the times I was in the principal's office as a result of one of my daughters actions.  I'll let you guess which daughter.

Did you know that there is a national park in western North Dakota?  I didn't and I-90 goes right through it.  It's the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  The visitor's center had some interesting displays about the Native Americans who populated the area and the two times TDR lived there.  TDR credited his time there with giving him his love of wilderness and nature.  After going through the visitor's center we left the trailer in the parking lot and drove the 40 mile scenic loop road.  We were the only ones in the visitor's center except for the two park rangers manning the place.  The park's terrain  is quite varied.  There are several prairie dog towns you drive past.

Mona was especially interested in the wild horses that roam the park.  We also saw buffalo and coyotes.  If it wasn't so early in the day I think we would have stayed in the campground.  There were only a couple of other campers which were greatly outnumbered by the buffalo and wild horses roaming the campground.

The park is also at the northern end of The Badlands. 

I think this is an interesting formation.  There are similar formations throughout the park where The Badlands boarder up against the prairie. 

After the park we made a beeline towards home across Montana.  The weather was great with beautiful blue skies.  What a change from a couple of months ago when we came across heading east.  No Smoke!  Montana is a beautiful state and we were glad that we could see things on the way home.

So there you go.... another thing crossed off the old Bucket List.  This was a great trip that met all our expectations and then some.  It wouldn't surprise me if we do it again sometime.

Who knows what adventures await us.  There's the annual trip to Hawaii which will be extra special this year with all of Mona's family also going to help celebrate her aunt's 100th birthday.  And, I'm sure we will head south again this winter.