The sound of the waves turned out to be more “crash” than “soothe”, and I woke up several times during the night. Adding to the experience was the haunting noise of a whistle buoy somewhere out in the bay. When the alarm finally went off at 7am I found it very difficult to get up, even though for once it wasn’t very cold outside.

The reason for the 7am wakeup was that we had to catch a ferry from Digby, Nova Scotia, to St John, New Brunswick at 11am. The check-in time for the ferry was 10am, and it was a two-hour drive from Risser’s Beach, giving us one hour to have breakfast, shower, and pack up our campsite. We were still a little slow from the long day yesterday so our schedule slipped a bit, and even though we skipped the showers (the campground facilities were very grungy) we still left 10 minutes late. We made a quick stop for petrol and coffee on the way and still got to the ferry before they closed the gates!

Several factors lead to us catching this particular ferry; Hurricane Dorian, and construction on the Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, to Bar Harbour, Main, ferry terminal. We had originally wanted to catch the ferry direct to Bar Harbour tomorrow, but that service has been on hold for the past few months as construction work on the terminal in Bar Harbour took longer than expected. Our next option was to catch a ferry to St John, which is only an hour away from the USA border. The reason we’re catching the ferry today instead of tomorrow is that Hurricane Dorian destroyed Kejimkujik National Park, in the middle of Nova Scotia, where we’d planned to spend tonight.

The ferry ride took almost three hours which was only about half an hour faster than driving, but sitting on the ferry was much more relaxing. Having already visited St John we didn’t stop once we got off the ferry, but continued on to where our campground for tonight is at a small town near the USA border called St Andrews. We have a few hours to drive tomorrow to get to Acadia National Park, so we picked this campground as a good halfway point.

We ate lunch in town at a restaurant that sat right on the edge of the bay, and watched the tide slowly recede. We then checked in to the campground and spent most of the afternoon fielding questions and comments about our rooftop tent.

This campground is full of huge RVs, many of which seem to have set down roots and sprouted decking, lights, and satellite dishes. This is a Kiwanis campground, which I think is similar to KOA, and many people either come to live here for 3 or 4 months at a time, or pay to leave their RV here so that they can come for weekends without having to tow it around. It’s amazing how huge some of these are! I’m sure they’d have floor areas similar to our condo in Toronto.