Raise your hand if you knew that Franklin D. Roosevelt had a summer home on a Canadian Island.  Did I miss that when I changed schools when I was in 3rd grade?  Well, it turns out that just off the coast of the Easternmost city of the US (that would be Lubec, ME – you knew that, right?) is the beautiful Campobello Island and that….”(f)or many years, Franklin D. Roosevelt summered on Campobello Island. As an adult, he shared with his family the same active pursuits he enjoyed on the island as child. Although he visited less frequently after contracting polio, Campobello remained important to FDR. Today Roosevelt Campobello International Park serves as a memorial to FDR and a symbol of cooperation between the U.S. and Canada.“  (thank you, National Park Service).

Since this lovely island was only a couple of hours south of here (and there were three couples to share the fuel expense) we set out to do some ‘sploring on Saturday morning.

We knew we were in for a great day when the view just crossing the bridge was wonderful!


We stopped at the first overlook -

for a view of the harbor….


Wait a minute – what are those big round things in the water?

Turns out those are part of New Brunswick salmon fish farming industry. Inquiring minds want to know. (You did want to know too, didn’t you?)
After a lovely picnic lunch, we continued on to FDR’s summer cottage -



We thoroughly enjoyed the self-guided tour through the modestly furnished “cottage”,



strolled around to the back

and ended our visit with a walk to the beach.


FDR was on an extended vacation at this cottage in 1921 when he contracted polio. In the years to follow he would only return three times, although Eleanor and his children continued to vacation there. Along with the National Park website, here is another site which has much more information about FDR and his connection to Campobello Island.

But FDR’s summer cottage is not the only point of interest on Campobello Island.  We continued up the island

to Head Harbour and the East Quoddy Lighthouse.


We noticed several boats in the harbor, and thinking they might be whale watching boats we hung around for a while to see what we could see. Sure enough, we spotted a school of harbor porpoises and then to our delight a whale surfaced in front of us! We saw him twice as he made his way across the harbor, and never with the camera ready of course, but we were thrilled nonetheless! This fellow popped up long enough for me to take his picture – in fact, he seemed to be waiting for me to take his picture.

The lighthouse is unreachable for most of the day. Since this is located on the Bay of Fundy (remember those huge tidal shifts from the Hopewell Rocks?), it also experiences those extreme high and low tides.

Can you make out the iron stairs on the left side of the island? There’s a matching set of steps where we were standing, and (at your own risk) you can cross the channel at low tide each day. Needless to say, we were just watching the water rushing through the channel – there would be no walking on the ocean floor for us that day!
But all around it was so beautiful


that we were quite content to stay on dry ground and just soak it all in.
It was a great day, but we did have a 2 1/2 hour drive home, so after a stop for some fortification (ice cream), we headed off the island. But I couldn’t resist a photo of the  Mulholland Lighthouse on the southern tip of the island (photo taken while waiting to clear customs), and then one of Lubec, ME waterfront.


We also spotted this interesting dwelling as we were waiting our turn at the border -

Gotta love American ingenuity!

Thanks for coming along on our little history/scenic jaunt back into New Brunswick. I’ll leave you with one last photo that really could have been taken just about anywhere, but was indeed taken in the gardens of FDR’s summer cottage on Campobello Island.

Ah, the perfection of creation!

Hope you had a good weekend, everyone! We sure did!

Because we, the Conrads, and our traveling buddies, the Stoners, are essentially cheap  thrifty, we decided to take just one RV (theirs) and one truck (also theirs) for our week in the Maritimes.  It turned out to be a great plan – the savings on meals and accommodations more than out-weighed the extra expense of driving an 8 MPG vehicle.  And it made for some unusual shots.

Like Gary in the passenger seat.
John did most of the driving -

he seemed pretty relaxed, dontcha think? Ah, the blessing of cruise control!
Rosie and I enjoyed stretching out in the back.


I know, I know, we should have dug out the seat belts from under the sofas, but I have to tell you, we were pretty darn comfortable as we sped down the highway!
Another bonus of traveling with friends is that you have help in composing some of your pictures.

I wanted to get a close up of this flower, but right in the background was a big ol’ factory. Here is Rosie giving me a hand with repositioning its location.

Of course, John wanted to help too!
Although most of the time I was photographing the scenery, occasionally we did see a little action.
We had pulled over to the side of the road so I could get this shot-

Suddenly Gary was out of the truck and walking down the road trying to get my attention.

“Look, it’s a fox. I’ll try to flush him out!”
I knew the chances of my actually pointing my camera in the right spot in that potato field was pretty slim, but I kept pointing and clicking and pointing and clicking. And I was sorta kinda successful on one of them -

Can you spot him? Over there on the right? I’m quite the wildlife photographer, eh?
Speaking of wildlife – while we were at Victoria by the Sea

we took a stroll down the wharf and saw bubble rising out of the water.

I don’t think this crab had anything to do with the bubbles (nor did I really get any more of an answer than it was just some type of chemical reaction on the bottom of the sea floor?) but I thought it was a pretty cool picture.
And while we’re on the subject of Victoria by the Sea – I wonder just what this fellow is doing (or even just what he’s supposed to be?)


Hmmmm….a giant Abraham Lincoln puppet heading to the lighthouse? That will be another unsolved mystery from our time on PEI!
Then there were these guys on this odd boat, floating in the midst of these bouys.

This picture is pretty zoomed in – mussel harvesting, maybe?

Moving on…..
There are two ways to get onto PEI – via the 8 mile Confederation Bridge (from New Brunswick) or the ferry that goes between PEI and Nova Scotia. Both of them are free to get ON the island.

We looked at both options carefully, and finally decided that the 8 mile bridge @ $60.00 to get off the island made more sense that the $115.00 ferry ride.

Remember, we were being cheap  thrifty.

Since tomorrow we are planning on a little jaunt “down state” to visit Campobello Island, where for many years Franklin Roosevelt spent summers, this might just be my last post regarding our wonderful Atlantic Maritime vacation.  Thanks for coming along with my “after the fact” posts.  It’s been grand reliving it with you!   There are (of course) a couple more photos than what I’ve posted here, and I’ve tried to break them down by groups.  Here goes -

PEI-Behind the scenes

PEI – Lighthouses

PEI – Green Gables

Prince Edward Island - most of the above three sets are in this one

Hopewell Rocks - New Brunswick

Reversing Falls – St. John, New Brunswick

New Brunswick - The Falls, the Rocks, our Friends, and miscellaneous other NB shots

Atlantic Maritimes – the whole bunch of them all together!

Better get those passports out again - Campobello Island is back in Canada!

Are you tired of PEI yet? I’m not!
Since we were only there three days, I know we barely scratched the surface of this “gentle island”, but I thought I’d share some random shots taken during our drives around the island.
We did not have the most beautiful weather, but somehow the beauty of the island continued to shine through.


Whether we were driving through the interior

with its patchwork fields

or skimming along the coast

finding colorful villages dotting the shore

we were never disappointed with the beauty that is Prince Edward Island.

We located the largest tree on the island

(not that it was missing, mind you!)
and were delighted to find that the fireweed we fell in love with in Alaska was at home here in PEI too!

There were walks on the beach


and we even managed to get our picture taken at the last lighthouse we visited!

Our evenings were pretty quiet (after all, we were having an Anne of Green Gables movie-a-thon), but Wednesday evening we ventured out to the Brackley Beach Ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee for those of you non-Gaelic types). Our New Brunswick friends had heartily recommend this evening of live entertainment with a very talented fiddler, Cynthia MacLeod and singer/songwriter Jon Matthews (with a couple of other “friends” thrown in a couple of times!).

It was OUTSTANDING!!! The energy up on that stage was incredible!

If you have a minute – here is just a brief part of their performance -

Probably the best $10.00 we’ve spent in a long time!

Uh-oh – I just found some more pictures…….

Stay tuned…..

Prince Edward Island is home to the highest concentration of lighthouses in any Canadian province or state in North America. In fact, there are a total of 63 lighthouses and rangelight buildings dotted along its 1,100 miles of coastline. We did not find them all. In fact we didn’t even come close, but we did have a good time tracking down as many as we could as we toured around the island. Some were open to the public, some were privately owned, and some were just plain too hard to get close to! Ready?

North Rustico Lighthouse -near that disappointing lobster roll lunch.

Point Prim Lighthouse – the oldest on the island (in service since 1845) and one of the few round brick (though it is now covered with wooden shingles) construction lighthouses in Canada.

Woods Island Lighthouse – built in 1876 and located on the southern most point of PEI.

Cape Bear Lighthouse – Built in 1881, it was the first to receive the Titanic’s distress signal as it sank off of Newfoundland.

Panmure Head Lighthouse – built in 1853, it was PEI’s first wooden lighthouse.

When we spotted this one we decided it was just a lighthouse wannabe since it was on a lovely estate (with a big NO TRESPASSING sign), but as I was doing some research it turns out that it IS an old lighthouse – the Georgetown Range Front and has been converted into an apartment.

This one is the the Georgetown Range Rear – on private property and I think it’s been decommissioned.

Can’t remember where this one was found, so I can’t locate the name. Sorry.

Haven’t a clue where we found this one – and we obviously couldn’t get too close!  I’m pretty sure, though, that there is water on the other side of the lighthouse!

Ah, now this one I know! It’s at Victoria by the Sea, and was beautifully kept (as was the entire seaport, actually!)

This is the Blockhouse Point Lighthouse – that’s Charlottetown across the inlet.

And finally, this is the Covehead Harbour Lighthouse on Brackley Beach. Our last lighthouse of our days in PEI, and it was a spectacular evening!

Thanks for coming along on this little lighthouse tour!  If you’d like to know more about the many lighthouses on Prince Edward Island, I found this great little website – Lighthousefriends.com- that was very helpful to me!  Check it out!

Still sorting through pictures, so stop back tomorrow for more of The Gentle Island – PEI!

It’s hard not to think of Anne of Green Gables when you think of Prince Edward Island.  And PEI has done its best to capitalize on this precious commodity! There’s Avonlea - a Disney like experience where you can interact with your favorite “Anne” characters and be charmed by vignettes throughout the village.  If we had had some grand-girls with us, I know we would have taken that in. There are entire theatre productions – Anne of Green Gables – the Musical or Anne and Gilbert – the Musical to fill your evenings.  If we’d had a couple more nights in town, we might have gone to one of those shows. But we chose to go the “purest” route (also, I must confess, the easiest on the budget route), with a visit to the actual Green Gables house, where cousins of L.M. Montgomery lived and was in truth the inspiration for the location of the original story.

The house and surrounding area are part of the Provincial Parks System and are beautifully maintained. We got to walk through the Haunted Woods, -

wander around the grounds


and through the house

and be charmed by any number of little girls with straw hats and long red braids.


We resisted the urge to purchase our OWN straw hats with braids, but thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as we imagined Anne and Marilla and Matthew here in this place. Of course, it helped that we had watched the entire PBS “Anne of Green Gables” the night before and were more than ready to imagine the White Way of Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters! (And it’s very possible that Rosie and I were doing a little bit more imagining than John and Gary!)
After Green Gables we went in search of Rosie’s Birthday Treat – a Lobster Roll lunch. I can’t say we found the best lobster roll on the island, but the waiter did direct us to a free beach and we always love things with the word “free” attached. (Not too much of that “free” stuff on PEI!).
While Rosie and I took a walk down the beach

the guys checked out a crumbling jetty.


I mean REALLY crumbling!
It was a full day and we ended with a stop for some Cows Ice Cream, because, really, isn’t every day excursion better with a dish of ice cream in it?

Plus it made up for that somewhat disappointing lobster roll at lunch!

We made it back to the campground with plenty of time for a home cooked dinner and our viewing of  Anne of Avonlea – the Sequel. The guys were so pleased! Well, about the dinner part anyway.