We woke up to rain and apparently it is going to rain all day, and as I always say “a rainy day on vacation is a better day than a sunny day at work.” We were warned last evening by our friend Julie who we will be staying with this evening. We had asked her about taking her and Jeff out for dinner tonight, and she said it is all taken care of…..and then I see a few posts she put on. Wow – we are having a German meal – a German Ruladen and Apple Bubba cake!! Aren’t we going to be spoiled!! What is a Ruladen? Click here to see and how to make it!
We should have stopped at Quill Hill on the way into Sugarloaf Inn. It is a lookout that they recommended that gives you a 360 view. We didn’t realize it was 45 minutes back so if we do it in the morning it would be an extra 1 1/2 hours of backtracking. Thankfully the rain made the decision for us, as if we went we wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway.
We left Sugarloaf Mountain around 9:45 a.m. The other 8 people staying at the Inn were also from Ontario, but I didn’t catch from where. They were on motorcycles and were heading to the Cabot Trail. I felt bad for them as they headed out with all their rain gear for a wet ride. We rode for many miles on a road that followed a beautiful rocky river. When the river turned (which was a lot) the road turned too.
We went through many small towns as we drove for hours through the countryside to get to the I-95 Highway:
- Kingfield which is where I was originally looking for a place to stay. It was a nice small town with some very old American style homes.
- North Anson – it was a cute small town with a really nice river. If it wasn’t raining we would have got out and walked around a bit and got some pictures of the many rapids coming down through the rock cutouts.
- Madison – had a massive manufacturing plant on the river, TimberHP, which make wood insulation. We had noticed that all the houses in the area are made of wood. Logging is huge here.
- Canaan – another small town, but when you got to the outskirts, they had a field of massive brand new homes, and it kind of looked out of place. It reminded me of Canada, where we build homes 10x larger than we need.
- Skowhegan – nice town on the very large Kennebec River.
Maybe one day we will come back through this area and be able to stop and enjoy a bit of sightseeing in some of these towns, but hopefully on a day when it isn’t raining. I notice that the Americans fly way more flags on their properties than we do in Canada. Also, we came through on a Sunday morning, and I noticed that the church parking lots were full in each small town.
While we were driving in the middle of nowhere, in heavy rain, an Emergency Alert came on the truck radio. Freaked us out a bit as we had never had this before. I googled it and found out that they will use the AM frequency to share emergencies like severe weather, etc.
Our son Philip texted us and said, hey if you are in Bangor Maine you should stop to see Stephen King’s house. “This spooky Victorian mansion in the heart of Bangor’s Whitney Park Historic District was, up until recently, the home of famed horror author Stephen King. Snap a picture in front of the iconic iron gate, adorned with spiders, bats, and even a three-headed dragon. There’s even a frighteningly intricate tree sculpture that sits on the lawn. While you can’t explore the interiors of the house—it’s now a nonprofit and archive of King’s work—there are tours that will take you to spots in Derry that have inspired his most famous work. The beautiful, century-old homes in the quiet neighborhood are worth a quick look, too.”
We crossed back into Canada from Maine to New Brunswick. We had a very nice drive along the St. John River. It was a small road and very bumpy (we felt like we were on an amusement ride – lol). We are on our way to spend the night with Bart’s childhood friend Julie from 53 years ago. Julie and Jeff opened up their door to us for the night and we had a great visit with the two of them, that included dinner and drinks, and some good conversation and laughs. We knew from Julie’s past posts that they had many deer around their place, so we were careful driving there and sure enough we saw 2 sets of deer as we neared their place, and one was a teeny tiny baby deer that was the cutest.
We have driven almost 1,500 km so far and tomorrow we head to Prince Edward Island!
A New Brunswick fact that we learned from Julie – 85% of New Brunswick is forest! That is an area of 6.1 million hectares. The population of New Brunswick is only 695,000.
We will have to come back to spend more time in New Brunswick as there is so much to see and do here. Check out New Brunswick tourism site – always inviting!!
Leave a Reply