Into Canada--Twice!

We woke up to our panoramic view of the bay--another cool and delightful sunny morning. After breakfast we headed the van toward Canada, over the bridge to Campobello Island, to see the vacation home of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin's family had first bought a place on this Canadian island when he was a boy, and then he and Eleanor owned another house there, next door to his mother's place, after they married. FDR was actually on the island when he came down with polio (or whatever virus it was--there's a study out recently claiming it wasn't polio but another paralyzing virus that he had). Apparently he had contracted the virus elsewhere, but it first manifested while he was up here.

The place is now an International Park, jointly maintained by the U.S. and Canadian park services, incorporating several cottages that were part of a tourist compound here from the late 1800s. FDR and Eleanor's "cottage" (36 rooms with servant quarters!) lies on a green slope of lawn overlooking the bay--very serene setting. We made it just in time for "Tea with Eleanor" at 10 am--a program put on by two older local ladies, who serve homemade cookies (yummy!) and a special Canadian tea, and tell stories about Eleanor and her love for this place. They are obviously big fans of hers, and rightly so, as she was an admirable woman. Fun!

"Tea with Eleanor." Our tablemates were from southern Maine, a mother and daughter who come up here to get away from it all.

Inside the cottage. This is an actual boat model carved by Franklin and his son.

After touring the main cottage--very comfortable, not stuffy or fancy at all, and filled with authentic keepsakes and furniture belonging to the Roosevelts--we backtracked across the border into the U.S. and set our GPS for yet another border crossing further north, this time from Calais, Maine into St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada. (When departing the island, the US border guard said we couldn't bring our clementines back into the US, even though we bought them in the US and they sat in our van the whole time. When she saw that I was about to cry, she told me I could peel them and give her just the peelings. So we sat there while I peeled 7 clementines and gave the guard the bag of peelings...)

The other crossing was uneventful. We stopped at a big grocery just over the border and tried to buy a prepaid cellphone to use while we're in Canada, but were told that we would have to have a Canadian address in order to use the prepaid minutes card. Huh? So at this point we don't have phone service at all, but hopefully we'll be able to keep getting and sending emails and surfing the internet. (If you need to contact us, try email for the time being!)

Crossing from Calais, Maine to St. Stephen, New Brunswick.

We're heading for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Lots of empty wilderness here, in both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It looks like their spring is about a month behind ours in Virginia--many of the trees don't have leaves yet, or just little ones. One of the things we hope to see in Halifax is the Titanic graveyard, where some of the bodies were buried of those who perished when the Titanic sank. We must have seen the Titanic movie 7 or 8 times, so we want to pay our respects.

Jack in front of the Nova Scotia welcoming sign (Carol's shadow on the left.)

We pulled in late to a campground near Truro, NS--later than we thought actually, as we failed to realize that we'd crossed into another time zone. Time for bed. Until tomorrow...

Mileage: Ending:125,729