We woke once again to an incredible view out across Fish Creek Pond. I rolled up the canvas side of the tent facing the water, and we lay in bed for a while watching the mist on the lake slowly evaporate as the sun climbed higher and higher.

After breakfast we drove back to the Wild Center, as our tickets from yesterday were good for two days entry. We’d missed most of the outside part of the center the last time we visited, as the weather wasn’t very nice. We arrived once again just in time for a live animal presentation, this time the star was a Blue Jay! The presenter was the same lady that we’d watched talk about otters yesterday, and she tried to get the jay to demonstrate their ‘caching’ behaviour, where they dig holes to hide food to dig up when they’re hungry. Unfortunately the bird was hungry now, and so just gulped down the pieces of cashew she handed to it.

Outside, we walked over to the Wild Walk, which is a boardwalk that climbs up 40 feet in the air, with display boards and signs along the way explaining the things that happen in the forest at each altitude. There were little pipes that you could look down, which drew your attention to holes that woodpeckers had made in nearby trees, and a directional microphone that you could use to listen to the birds fluttering around some hanging feeders.

The Wild Walk was just as well, if not better, presented as the exhibits that we’d seen inside the center yesterday. The boardwalk itself was beautifully constructed, with stylised trees made of steel holding up sections of it, and a huge hollow white pine trunk with a staircase winding around the inside of it. The trunk was fake, but apart from its size I couldn’t tell that it was until I touched it!

At the end of the boardwalk there was a life-size recreation of the largest bald eagle nest ever found (at 2.9m across, 6.1m deep, about 35 years old, and weighing 2,700kg!), and a giant spiders web made of rope netting overhanging the forest floor.

After spending over an hour wandering through the treetops, we hopped back in the car and began our five hour drive westward towards Watkins Glen State Park in the Finger Lakes region of New York. There are 11 long narrow lakes in the Finger Lakes formation, and we’re headed for the southern tip of Seneca Lake. Seneca Lake is one of the deepest in the USA, 188m at its deepest point, as is 61km long. The climate along the lakeshore is very conducive to growing grapes, and there are over 50 wineries lining the edges.

Watkins Glen is famous for both waterfalls and car racing, at the nearby Watkins Glen International race course. It’s now 10pm and we’re sitting around the hot coals of our fire, listening to a unique mix of crickets and other raspy sounding insects, murmurs of conversation from nearby campsites, and racing car engines.

We awoke to find ourselves in a beautiful campsite on the shore of Fish Creek Pond in the Adirondack mountains in New York. There was absolutely no wind, and the view out over the mirror-calm lake was incredible. We ate breakfast down by the shore, and watched some smoke plumes start to appear on the other side of the lake as other campers lit morning fires. The shower block for this campground is closed for the season, so after breakfast we drove around to the other side of the lake and down a long tree-covered road to the nearby Rollins Pond Campground, which had showers available.

Ed had recommended that we check our the Wild Center in the town of Tupper Lake, about 15 minutes away from here, so we headed off there next. We had packed up the tent quite early as there was some rain forecast this morning, and it hit us with a torrential downpour on our way into town. We sat in the parking lot of the Wild Center for 15 minutes, not wanting to get out of the car. We eventually decided to drive to McDonalds for a coffee and to wait for the worst part of the rain to pass.

After refuelling both ourselves and the car we drove back to the Wild Center, and this time we made it inside! We walked in the door just in time to watch a presentation about porcupines. The presenter had one of their resident porcupines Spike out walking around on a table while she talked, and he followed her back and forth as she walked around handing him out treats to nibble on. We learned that porcupine quills are coated in antibiotics, so that if they accidentally stab themselves, they won’t get infected!

The Wild Center is a natural history museum for the Adirondacks and has exhibits on all sort of things from wildlife like trout and chikadees to sphagnum moss bogs and forest mushrooms. We spent a few hours wandering around the center, and saw another presentation featuring an otter. The otters who live here are larger than sea otters, which we’d seen before, and unlike their ocean cousins they live solitary lives. We saw some other amazing things, like a glass case full of beetles which were devouring various dead animals, like an owl and a rat. The carcasses had little signs on stakes next to them recording the date that they’d been put in there, to show how fast dead creatures can be decomposed out in the wild.

We’ve seen a lot of crappy information displays during our trip, but we both agreed that the Wild Center was up with the best. They had lots of hands-on, live demos, and info was presented in a variety of easy to consume formats like diagrams, short facts, and succinct explanations. Our Wild Center ticket gives us entry for two days, so we’re planning to come back again tomorrow to walk on their extensive trail system when it’s not so rainy. We had a slow, late lunch in Tupper Lake, and then headed back to our campsite.

I’m now sitting in the car as a thunderstorm rolls overhead, watching lightning bolts hit somewhere in the forest and listening to the almost immediate crash and boom of the thunder echoing back and forth around the sky overhead. A brief gust of wind got me out of the car to batten down the front of the tent because Katie, who’s lying up there reading, thought it was going to take off! I had started a campfire about 5 minutes before the rain started, so I’ve stocked it high with wood in the hopes that it’ll be able to ride out the storm. I’m writing today’s blog post while checking on it out the window.

As he’d promised yesterday, Ed came around to our campsite with his Mazda and his dog to have a look at our setup. We sat and chatted with him for half an hour or so while we were finishing breakfast, and he showed us the platform that he’d built in the back of his car. This was the maiden voyage of the car camper! Ed had been planning to sleep in it last night, but had opted for a tent instead, so he was going to try again tonight. He’d had trouble finding a mattress that would fit perfectly and was about to give up when he discovered a custom foam mattress maker just down the road from his house! He only built it to be single bed width, as his wife wasn’t too keen on driving out into a forest and sleeping in the car.

We asked Ed for some recommendations of hikes to do in the nearby area, and he told us he was planning to take his dog for a walk shortly and we could join him if we wanted to. Other than a 5-hour drive to the Adirondacks, we didn’t have anything planned for the day, so we agreed! Half an hour later we had our campsite all packed up and followed Ed down the road for 10 minutes to the Sabbaday Falls trailhead. The trail was only half a kilometre, but we walked slowly to give his elderly dog time to sniff all the best trees. Ed told us that he’d visited Nelson in New Zealand a few times several years ago, and really wanted to move there, but the emigration requirements were too strict.

While looking at the incredible formations that the waterfall had carved out of the rock we talked about travel, nature, Americans, and New Zealanders. Ed asked what we thought of their president, and when Katie cagily answered that it was a little like watching a reality TV show he was quick to reassure us that he thought the same. I’m really happy that we met Ed, and he told us that talking to us had made his trip!

After saying goodbye to Ed, we carried on westward on the Kancamagus highway, stopping many times at various “vista points” to take pictures of the incredible autumnal landscape. Unfortunately, we found that photographs don’t properly convey the magic of the area, so we spent lots of time taking brain photos.

We stopped in the capital of Vermont, Montpelier, for lunch at a little taco shop. Vermont (at least, the parts we’ve seen from the road) is beautiful, and we decided that we could imagine living here. It’s easy to think of America as just the big cities on the coast, but there are so many wonderful, interesting cities in-between. Montpelier itself is full of grand brick buildings and small independent restaurants and coffee shops. It definitely had a foodie vibe, and had similar feel to Portland, Oregon, although on a much smaller scale.

Our next stop was at the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream factory in Waterbury, Vermont. This is the original factory of the famous ice cream brand, and even though they only have a single production line here they still manage to produce 80% of the demand for Vermont! We went on a half-hour tour (for only $4 each!) and stood on a mezzanine floor above the factory and watched hundreds of pints of Cherry Garcia ice cream flying through the packaging machines. At the end of the tour we were each given a scoop of Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream, which was really yum! Both of us were worried that it’d be sickly sweet, but actually it was really well balanced.

A few minutes further along the highway we found The Alchemist brewery in a little town called Stowe. We sampled three different IPAs, including their famous Heady Topper double IPA. BeerAdvocate.com has rated it the fourth-best beer in the world, and local demand for it has forced the brewery to limit customers to two four-packs each. We decided not to buy any, as we already had a few cans of other beer in the cooler, but I’m strongly regretting that decision now that I’m writing this blog post.

To cut a few minutes of travel time (and 30km) off our journey, we decided to catch a vehicle ferry across Lake Champlain, which took us across the state line from Vermont to New York. The ferry only cost $15 and was boarding right as we arrived, which was perfect! We stopped at a store called Hobby Lobby in a town called Plattsburgh just after the ferry for Katie to stock up on yarn and zippers for some bags that she has crocheted.

It was pitch black by the time we reached our campground, Fish Creek Pond, in the Adirondacks. The campground is right on the edge of a lake, but we couldn’t see it while we were setting up our tent. The sites themselves are large and flat, carpeted with orange pine needles, with lots of giant pine trees scattered all over. The trees were so tall that our torches didn’t reach far enough up the trunks to see where the branches started!

The forecasted rain never came, so we ended up sitting in the tent for four hours before eventually falling asleep. Anticipating the storm, we hadn’t bought any firewood for the night, so being in the tent with our little LED lantern was better than sitting outside with the mosquitos. On the positive side, we awoke to a dry tent!

After breakfast and showers at the coin-operated ones just outside the campground, we started driving west. We’re heading to New Hampshire for the night, and the driving time is about four and a half hours. We don’t have anything planned for the day, so decided to check off another of our USA food list items by having lunch at Olive Garden. Katie had been to one before, but I never had, and the restaurant chain comes up enough in popular culture that I wanted to know what it was like. They all seem to be situated along the interstate highways, so I think they’re a bit of an American road-trip institution. The eggplant parmigiana was good, and the unlimited bread sticks were garlicy and yum.

Back on the highway again, we finally hit the rainstorm that we’d been expecting since yesterday. Torrential rain slowed the traffic considerably, and our wipers struggled to maintain a clear patch of windscreen to see out of. It’s much nicer to be driving in weather like this, than to be hiking or sitting in a campground. Another benefit of driving in heavy rain is that it cleans all the dead bugs off the front of the tent!

An hour or so later we stopped at Tuckerman Brewery to try some of their New England style IPAs (our favourite), grab a coaster for our collection, and use their Wi-Fi to upload the last three days of blog posts. There were some long lanes painted on the ground, which seemed to be for playing competition games of ‘corn hole’. The equipment consists of two slanted boards with a hole in them, and two sets of beanbags. Each player takes turns standing at the far end of the lane and throwing their beanbags towards the board (angled towards them) at the other end, trying to get them in the hole.

The seating consisted of a few columns of picnic tables, arranged so that they formed long four long tables. While we were sitting there, we watched a little baby having a lot of fun crawling back and forth down the tunnel created by the gap in the table legs where one joined onto the next. As we were getting ready to leave, a live band was tuning up. It would have been nice to stay, but we also wanted to get to our campsite and cook dinner before it was dark.

We arrived at Jigger Johnson campground in the White Mountains of New Hampshire at about sunset. It’s situated on the famous Kancamagus Highway, which winds through incredible forests and river valleys as it traverses the mountain range. The campground is beautiful; the trees just beginning to turn red, and the ground covered in a carpet of orange pine needles. This campground has several long-term residents who serve as ‘camp hosts’, maintaining the campground and making sure everyone has a good stay. I don’t think they’re official Forest Service employees though, so payment for the site is handled by an ‘Iron Ranger’, a big steel post with a slot cut in it, where you deposit an envelope with the relevant fee. We bought some firewood from one of the camp hosts, and they also changed some notes into quarters for us to use in the showers tomorrow morning.

Once we’d chosen a site, we parked up and walked back to the entrance to deposit our envelope with all our info written on the form on its outside. On our way we met three other campers, who were all surprised that we’d come all the way here from New Zealand! One guy who we walked with for a while told us proudly of the conversion he’d done to his Mazda, building a sleeping platform inside, with a whole range of other camping conveniences like a propane cooker and a little dog bed. He’s going to come by tomorrow to show it off and check out our roof tent!

After going to bed way too early last night, as it was dark and our firewood had run out, I woke up at 6am and lay in bed reading for two hours. Eventually, Katie woke up and decided that we should go to a diner for breakfast. As luck would have it, she’d already read about one down the road in Bar Harbor that was famous for its wild Maine blueberry pancakes. On our way out of the campground we stopped in at the registration office to find out if there was a space available for tonight, which there was! For $30 we reserved site B5, right across the road from the site we’d had on our first night.

At Jordan’s Restaurant we ordered the pancakes which had their own special section on the menu. We overheard a server talking to the table behind us, telling them that the man making the pancakes is the 73-year-old original owner of the restaurant! When the pancakes arrived, we were slightly disappointed that there was only two of them, and they didn’t come with any sides. For the price, we’d thought there would have been more food, especially at a diner. I guess we paid the famous tax. After we finished eating, we debated for 15 minutes whether we should order something more, but settled on another round of coffee in the amazing thick-walled diner coffee mugs.

After breakfast we drove around Park Loop Road, the scenic one-way road that runs around the perimeter of the park, to Sand Beach, one of the only shell-based sandy beaches in Maine. After a quick walk on the beach (which felt very weird in hiking shoes) we set off on the Ocean Trail which runs along the shoreline on this bit of the coast.

We walked for about two hours, stopping for a while at the Thunder Hole where waves get funneled into a rocky hollow which produces a thunderous booming sound. The tide was too far out for us to experience the full effect, so we entertained ourselves watching the busloads of tourists with camcorders crowding around the railings.

For lunch we headed back into Bar Harbor to find some lobster. I’d done some research, and while eating a lobster out of the shell might have been a cool experience, I decided that it probably wasn’t worth the money or the mess. We settled for our third, and most expensive, lobster roll. This one came packed full of meat plucked from two lobsters, and was dressed with light mayo, lemon juice, and Old Bay seasoning. This roll was definitely the best we’ve had so far! There was much more variety in the kinds of meat in it, and you could easily differentiate between claws, body, and tail. Regardless of quality, three lobster rolls are probably enough for a lifetime, and we think we’ll quit while we’re ahead.

We called in for one more sampling of craft brew at the bar we’d visited yesterday, and then headed back to the campground. There’s a rainstorm coming tonight, so we’re going to get settled in before it starts pouring down.

We’re staying in Acadia National Park over a weekend, so even though I booked our spot several months ago I wasn’t able to find a single site that was available for both nights. This meant that we had to check out by 10am, and check back in later in the afternoon. This felt kind of early to us, but as we’d just shifted back from Atlantic Time to Eastern Time (a one-hour difference) it wasn’t a problem at all. We ate breakfast, packed up the tent, and then headed to the small town of Otter Creek where there was a block of coin-operated showers.

About 15 minutes’ drive away we found Jordan Pond, which, despite the name, is a 76 hectare body of water which supplies all the drinking water to the park and nearby towns. We took about two hours to walk the 6km trail around the shoreline, which passed through areas of exposed rock, deep forest, and beautiful boardwalks over fragile bogs. We stopped often to take lots of pictures of both the serene views out over the pond and the occasional bright red tree that had begun its autumnal transition earlier than the rest. I had been feeling a little under the weather this morning, but some exercise and fresh air made a big difference.

For lunch we decided to be real tourists and reserved a table at the Jordan Pond House restaurant, right on the shore. This restaurant is famous for a pastry called a Popover, which is very similar to a Yorkshire pudding, and people have been coming to Jordan Pond House to eat them for over 100 years. We figured since we were here, we should have the full experience, so each had a popover with butter and strawberry jam with our lunch. I haven’t had a Yorkshire pudding before so can’t make a direct comparison between the two, but I thought that the texture was somewhat reminiscent of a croissant with a crispy outside and an airy, slightly doughy inside.

We sat on the lawn to eat, which meant we had to wait half an hour for a table, but it was worth it! Sitting in the sun underneath a clear blue sky reminded us of the good parts of camping, rather than the overcast and almost-freezing weather of the week before.

After lunch we drove up nearby Cadillac Mountain, which is the highest peak in the park. It’s also the first point in the USA to see the sunrise between October 7 and March 6. There is a long winding road that climbs all the way to the peak, where there is a carpark and various lookout areas and interpretive signs. There are lots of hiking trails that start from here and meander down into the valleys on either side, but we just had a short walk around the top instead. The view from up there was amazing, and as one of the signs suggested, made it very clear that we were in the middle of an island.

We had been thinking about going out for a lobster dinner, but after we got back to the campsite we decided that we probably didn’t need two big expensive meals in one day so we’d save it for lunch tomorrow. Maine lobster is a specialty here, so even though it’s maybe an unnecessary luxury, we figured we’d better try it before we move on.

Our original plan was to leave Acadia tomorrow morning, but we’re considering staying another night. The weather forecast for tomorrow night and the next day are looking pretty bad so we figured that it’d be better to use the remaining good weather to explore Acadia some more, rather than doing the 4hrs driving that we’d planned, and save the driving for when it’s raining. This means that we’d only have one night instead of two at our next stop, but Acadia seems like a better place to explore. We asked at the campground registration office if we could book a site for tomorrow night, but they said we’d need to come back the next morning.

It was a relief to finally wake up to a dry tent after the last few days of rain or early-morning dew making us pack it up wet. After our standard morning routine, we drove down to the waterfront just outside the campground to do some drone photography! I had intended to do much more of this during our trip, but it’s hard to find locations that I think are suitable, at the right time, with the right weather. I’m quite conscious of not annoying people with it, so I don’t want to fly from crowded lookout points, or over places where people live. Katie thinks that most people don’t care, and she’s probably right, but I’m worried about perpetuating the stereotype of the annoying and invasive drone pilot.

5 minutes along the coast was the road to Ministers Island. This road is made of sand and gravel, and is part of the sea floor! You’re only able to drive between the mainland and the island for a five-hour period spanning low tide, outside of which the ‘road’ is underwater. The drive across was a bit scary, as we had to avoid sections of soft sand and deep seawater-filled potholes, but we made it!

Ministers Island is home to the estate of Sir William Van Horne, who was president of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in the late 1800’s. He is responsible for building the transcontinental railway that runs across Canada from coast to coast, and expanded CPR into the luxury hotel business from which came the ultra-magnificent Fairmont castles that we’ve seen throughout Canada. In 1891 he began building a summer house on Ministers Island, which eventually grew to include a farm which bred prize-winning Clydesdale horses and rare Dutch Belted cattle.

We explored the massive barn where his horses, cows, and pigs had lived, and marveled at both the design and labour that had gone into building it. The outside is coated entirely in shingles, which had weathered to a shimmering silver. We listened to a short talk about the history of the barn and farm, and learned that farm and garden produce grown here had been shipped to the Van Horne family’s main residence in Montreal by overnight train throughout winter, giving them access to fresh produce year round.

Over the other side of the hill we found the main house, named Covenhoven. We spent almost an hour exploring the 55 rooms, many of which reminded us of scenes from Downton Abbey. Van Horne had been a prolific artist, and many of the walls were hung with his own original art.

The estate had changed hands several times since he had lived there, and eventually there was an auction in 1977 where most of the contents were sold. The Province of New Brunswick stepped in at the last minute to buy the property and has been making efforts to recover many of the artifacts that originally furnished the house and grounds.

We made the treacherous drive back over the sandbar to the mainland and headed straight for the border crossing to cross into Maine, USA. In our minds crossing the border feels like a big deal, even when in reality it is fairly uneventful. The stern border patrol agents, big guns, and no-nonsense signage don’t ease the nerves either. We couldn’t drive straight through, as we needed to get a special I-94 visa-waiver form stapled into our passports which costs US $6 each. This took about 15 minutes and required a copy of our fingerprints, but otherwise went without a hitch.

On the way to our next campsite, Acadia National Park, we stopped in a small town called Ellsworth for a few slices of pizza and some groceries. Katie had seen a glowing review of a small pizza restaurant here on the Bon Appétit YouTube channel, so we went there for a delicious lunch. From here we carried on to Blackwoods Campground, stopping one last time to buy some firewood from a side of the road honesty-box.

After we had checked in to the campground and found our spot, we drove back out onto the main road and down to Bar Harbor. This is a bustling little tourist-trap town, full of cafes and restaurants selling local seafood of all varieties. We walked down the main street, and after calling in at a boutique ice-cream store walked down to the shore. The view out into Frenchman Bay and the Mt Desert Narrows was breath-taking, and only slightly ruined by an enormous cruise ship anchored offshore. We sampled some hazy Maine IPAs at a rooftop craft beer bar, and then spent the rest of the evening relaxing by our campfire.

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.

The alarm went off at 4:45am to get us up in time to catch the 6:30am dawn at Peggy’s Cove, just over an hour drive away. We packed up the dew-drenched tent using light from our headlamps and drove down to the “comfort station” for a quick shower before getting on the road. We didn’t have time for breakfast or to make a brew, so we swept through a Tim Horton’s drive-through and grabbed a double-double (double cream, double sugar) and a small black coffee.

The road to Peggy’s Cove was nerve wracking, as for several kms through a windy forested section the road had no markings, and we kept getting blinded by huge Ford F250s and Dodge Rams with their high-beams on. Once we passed the final turn-off the road quietened down and eventually opened up into a tundra-like landscape. We drove through the little sleeping town of Peggy’s Cove and parked in the main carpark (the town is of course a major tourist destination) just before sunrise.

The car told us that it was 1 degree C outside, so we got all bundled up with jackets and toques and headed out to climb the rocks along the shoreline. At the beginning of the path from the carpark we saw a sign warning us about black ice on the rocks and of the danger of unexpected waves. I was disappointed that they didn’t call them ‘sneaker waves’ like they did in Iceland.

Peggy’s Cove is a rural fishing village that was founded in 1811. It consists of a small number of wooden buildings, perched precariously on the 415-million-year-old granite that had been scraped bare of vegetation by a glacier 20,000 years ago. While the community still engages in commercial fishing (mainly lobster), tourism has been the principle industry since the Second World War. There has been a preservation area in force since 1962 covering 8.1 square kilometres around Peggy’s Cove, which prohibits new development in and around the village, and heavily restricts modifications to existing buildings.

We walked around taking photos of everything we could think of, from all different angles, and revisiting spots as the sun climbed higher and higher in the sky. Katie has a fast 50mm lens on her camera so could easily take handheld shots, but I was using a wider-angle lens which was much slower and therefore needed a tripod. I took advantage of having the tripod out to take some bracketed exposures, which is where the camera takes three photos of different exposures in quick succession, and you combine them later on in Adobe Lightroom. This lets you recover more detail from the dark parts of the image, while retaining the beautiful colours in the sky. If you push the settings too far though, it results in tacky looking “HDR” images (I'm still working on this).

After running out of things to take pictures of, we climbed back into the car and headed for a diner in Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia. Once the food and coffee had kicked in and we’d woken up again, we headed down to the waterfront where we walked along a beautiful boardwalk for an hour. We stopped to look at some displays set out by the Halifax Maritime Museum, which told some stories about the Halifax Explosion.

The Halifax Explosion was an accidental detonation of a French cargo ship (the SS Mont-Blanc) which was laden with high-explosive munitions, after a Norwegian vessel (the SS Imo) collided with it in the upper harbour. The resulting explosion demolished entire neighbourhoods and killed at least 2000 people. The blast was the largest man-made explosion at the time and is still the third largest conventional (non-nuclear) explosion.

Back in the car again, we drove on to another quaint seaside village called Mahone Bay. Mahone Bay was very manicured with lots of brightly coloured retail buildings and nice houses, and a few churches with very tall steeples. Most of the shops were art, gift, and antique stores scattered in amongst the craft breweries, cafes, and restaurants to fuel the tourist crowds. We stopped in at Saltbox Brewery and tried two unremarkable beers, and sat on their patio for half an hour to make use of their Wi-Fi and look through the photos we’d taken earlier in the day.

Our final town today was Lunenburg, a port town and home to the schooner Bluenose II. This schooner, built in 1963 as a replica of Bluenose, a fishing schooner also built in Lunenburg in 1921, is a sail training ship owned by the province of Nova Scotia. It is the provincial symbol of Nova Scotia, and not only appears in the centre of all their vehicle number plates, but also features on the Canadian 10c coin. I had been aboard when the ship visited Toronto as part of a North American tall ship tour, but Katie hadn’t come with me so I was happy to climb down the gangplank again with her. We marveled at the incredible polish that everything had, and at the mast and spars made of single Douglas fir trunks.

We ate lunch at a deli overlooking the harbour and had our second ever lobster roll. This one seemed much higher quality than the tourist-trap version we’d tried in St John, New Brunswick, and instead of being stuffed with shredded meat this one had discernible pieces of lobster claw in it. Lobster meat doesn’t seem to have a very strong flavour, so it relies on what the sandwich is dressed with to make it delicious. The first roll we tried had butter and lemon juice as dressing, but this one had a tarragon mayo and romaine lettuce to provide some nice contrasting crunchy texture.

We’re now at a water-front campsite in a small place called Risser’s Beach, sitting around a warm campfire and listening to the waves crash onto the shore 10 metres away.

The loop of Broad Cove campground that we stayed in last night was all but empty. Most campers at this time of year are in campervans, caravans, or huge busses, and were all staying in the fully-serviced section (where each campsite has power, water, and sewerage hook-ups).

We had gone for a walk through that part of the campground yesterday, and ventured into a closed section where they had only just begun the cleanup from Hurricane Dorian. It was amazing seeing huge trees toppled over, pulling up large chunks of earth with them.

After breakfast we drove down the road to the trailhead of the Middle Head track, which took us out to the head of a narrow peninsula that jutted out from the town of Ingonish into the North Atlantic Ocean. It took us about 2 hours to walk the 4km loop, passing through sections of deep forest and exposed clifftops. On our way back we took a not-100%-official part of the track, which took us along the northern side through what felt like a tree boneyard. I’m sure this part of the track would have been fine under normal conditions, but it was quite treacherous clambering over the post-hurricane debris.

Our next stop was Big Spruce brewery in Baddeck, where we had wanted to stop on our way up to the Cabot Trail but hadn’t because we ran out of time. We bought some fish tacos from their on-site food truck and sampled four different craft beers. I was quite tense all through lunch, as the room we were eating in was also occupied by a large family of huge wasps (maybe hornets?). They didn’t bother us though, and we eventually escaped with our lives and a few extra cans of juicy IPA.

From Big Spruce, we drove on (with a quick coffee stop) for about three and a half hours until we arrived at our stop for the night, Porter’s Lake Provincial Park. We stopped in at the firewood shed on our way in, and a very nice campground warden packed up a bundle for us for only $5, which is the best value campground firewood we’ve found so far. To our surprise, he then offered to lead us up to the firewood compound where we could load up on some kindling. When we got there, he started loading more armfuls of big logs into our car! We got out our IKEA bag to load a few bits of kindling into, and he told us to fill that all the way up too! Having thanked him profusely, we carried on to our campsite and built a roaring fire with the most beautifully dry wood we’d ever seen.

The last few days have been rainy and gross which has totally ruined our plans for enjoying the Cabot Trail, a world famous road that winds its way around Cape Breton Island, the northernmost point of Nova Scotia.

Two days ago, we packed up early from the KOA and made the hour long drive to the southeast tip of Prince Edward Island where we caught the 9am ferry from Wood Islands to Caribou, Nova Scotia. The ferry took a little over an hour and gave us some nice views looking back at PEI.

Our first stop in Nova Scotia was the Steinhardt Distillery, where we sampled some amazing rhubarb gin, and coffee & maple vodka. This distillery was very much somebody’s hobby, which had been fed enough money to start producing commercially. We had a brief tour around their operation, which was all enclosed in one shed. We learned that they also produced beer, which was currently fermenting in some strange egg-shaped plastic tanks scattered around the floor. We bought a small bottle of their classic dry gin, which came in an artisanal blue bottle with a very wide mouth, which feels like you’re pouring a potion whenever you mix a drink.

Further along the route we came to the Alexander Graham Bell historic site, which was across the bay from the mansion he lived in for many years (which still exists, and is still owned by his descendants!). We learned a lot about his life, and his work with deaf people including the visual alphabet which his father had invented. There was also a huge hall that detailed his aeroplane inventions, including a replica of the Silver Dart, which had been built and flown for the 100^thanniversary of its historic flight here on the frozen bay here in Nova Scotia.

I had only known Alexander Graham Bell (Alec to his friends) from his invention of the telephone, so it was really interesting learning about all the other things his amazing mind had come up with, from an early metal detector which he used to try and find a bullet in US President James A. Garfield, to huge tetrahedral kites capable of carrying a persons weight up into the sky!

We carried on from here to our campsite at Chéticamp Campground, just inside Cape Breton Highlands National Park. We built a fire and cooked some dinner, but not long after we’d finished eating it started pouring with rain. While the rain brought some relief from the incessant biting of some little black flies, it didn’t make sitting around a campfire very enjoyable.

It was still raining in the morning, so we packed up the soaking wet tent and drove back out of the park to the town of Chéticamp where we found coffee and breakfast at Robin’s Donuts. This was an interesting experience, as even though they’re a separate company they seem to be imitating Tim Horton’s in every way possible, even down to their ripoff Tim Bits, called Robin Eggs. While we were in town, we did some grocery shopping and replenished our ice and petrol.

Back at the campground we slowly wiled away the damp and dreary afternoon sitting in the warm visitors centre and reading our books. Like how we felt in Jacques Cartier National Park, we were frustrated by being in this beautiful place without being able to properly experience it. While we could have gone for a hike through the misty rain, we were really there for the views which were totally obscured by cloud. We drove back in to Chéticamp for an early dinner at a quaint cottage restaurant, where we had some amazing tomato soup (which was exactly what we needed after being out in the rain) and local fish & chips.

This morning we headed out of Chéticamp and along the coastal Cabot Trail road, which people come from all over the world to experience. Unfortunately for us, for most of our drive the scenery was obscured by rain and fog. We stopped several times to look at what could have been amazing views back along the coastline, but we had to fill in lots of blank spaces with our imagination. We had planned some nice-looking hikes along this route but skipped all of them because there was nothing to see except damp trees.

Near the northernmost tip of Nova Scotia, we stopped in a town called Pleasant Bay to have a look at a Whale Interpretive Centre. There are lots of whale-spotting tours that depart from here during the peak season, but none of them were running any more. In the Centre, we learned about the differences between toothed and baleen whales, and even got to hold some baleen plates! I had no idea that they were big and solid, kind of like fins with hairs all down one edge, because they just look soft and floppy in pictures.

We drove on from there and stopped a few times on the east coast, as the cloud had lifted somewhat. The scenery here was striking, with thick forest giving way to shorelines of red and white boulders. It was still raining though, so we didn’t hang around outside the car for too long. We eventually ended up at our campground for the night, Broad Cove. It had finally stopped raining, and we’re sitting around a campfire toasting marshmallows and writing blog posts.

This morning was our oyster lesson and cooking masterclass at The Table Culinary Studio, here on Prince Edward Island. We got up at an unnaturally early hour (after sunrise, though) and drove across the island to New London, where the cooking school is located. We parked up in front of a beautiful old church, which we later learned had only stopped being a church 5 years ago!

Inside we were introduced to Chef Derrick the owner, Chef Taylore who would be teaching us how to cook oysters, and Christine who would organise and run our morning. Only two others had booked a spot on the course; a couple about our age from Toronto. We spent a few minutes socialising and looking around the building. They had converted the old bell tower into a cookbook library, and added a beautiful spiral wooden staircase to climb up, creating a little nook overlooking the rest of the church.

Soon enough, we were gathered up and headed across the road to meet George, a local oyster farmer who grows Green Gables oysters. We stood in his driveway for about an hour while he gave us a rundown of the life cycle of the oyster.

Once per year, oysters release sperm and eggs into the water, which become fertilised and look for nice clean locations to settle onto. In the wild this would include other oyster shells, rocks, and even sometimes seaweed. In George’s aquaculture operation though, he wants to collect as many of these fertilised oyster eggs as possible. To do this, he has a contraption made of three 40cm long lengths of corrugated piping, roped together in the same way you’d make a rope ladder. This and hundreds like it are dipped in cement to provide a good surface for the larvae to cling to, and once cured they’re all sunk in the bay where the oysters are spawning. Once sufficiently covered, they’re brought back to his house and the concrete is broken off by smacking them with baseball bats, and the rubble is run through a big rotary tumbler to try and separate the little oysters from the concrete.

The small oysters are then put into cages made of rigid plastic netting (sourced from France, apparently), and sunk into the bay. Every few months the rigs holding these cages are flipped over, so that the floats attached to one side hold the cages out of the water. Oysters can survive up to a week out of water, provided the temperature isn’t too high, but most other organisms like mussels and barnacles can’t. This process keeps the oysters nice and clean without having to use any chemicals or time-consuming labour.

Once a year or so the oyster cages are brought back to George’s place where they’re run through the tumbler again. Even though this looks like a traumatic experience, it doesn’t damage the oysters very much. Instead, it encourages them to build thick, hard shells, and to develop a deep cup shape which is very sought after in the North American market. It also further helps to keep them clean, by polishing off anything that might be living on the outside. This continues for 3 to 4 years until the oysters are large enough to harvest. I had no idea they took that long to grow!

We then drove a few minutes down the hill to the shore where we found one of George’s leases, which is a section of water that he leases from the government. The lease gives him sole right to farm oysters in the water column and on the seabed, and is marked out by some bright yellow buoys. He pointed out some other leases across the other side of the river which had no visible oyster line floats, and told us that those leases only gave the leaseholder rights to the sea floor.

There’s two main ways to farm oysters; the small seed oysters can be spread over the ocean floor within a defined area, or they can be distributed in cages and floated in the water column. Growing the oysters on the sea floor is a cheaper method as no oyster lines, cages, and floats are required, but it entails a lot more manual labour to dredge the mollusks up.

The storm had hit this side of the island harder than anywhere else on PEI, and there was carnage everywhere. The beach was littered with bits of tree, huge amounts of seaweed, and floats from nearby aquatic farms. George said that his oyster lines hadn’t been too damaged by the storm, but they had been pushed around a lot and were no longer in neat straight lines stretching across his piece of water.

He waded out into the water and hooked a floating cage that was near the shore. This looked out of place and I thought it had come loose during the storm, but he told us that he kept it here for demonstration purposes. In it there were four cages of oysters, each at different stages of maturity. He pulled each one out in turn and showed us the growth of the oysters, as well as the evidence of other creatures that had started to grow in and around the cages. Clacking two of the oysters together with a sound like two marbles hitting each other, he showed us how solid and durable they were and what a healthy oyster should sound like.

The floating rig itself was made of thick wire grill, kind of like a dog kennel or temporary fencing, bent into a flat box shape. On one side of this two floats were attached, such that if the rig is one way up the floats hold the box underwater, and when flipped the floats act like pontoons to hold it up in the air. The box perfectly fits four of the oyster cages, which slot in like pizza boxes. Each of these rigs are connected with a short piece of rope to a larger line that is strung across the bay, to create an “oyster line”. All the individual parts are made of basic and simple materials but constructed in a way that made the whole process work very easily and perfectly. There didn’t seem to be any sacrifices made in functionality by using this design; you didn’t need purpose built oyster farming equipment from an expensive supplier (other than the plastic that the cages were made out of, and that was just because George found this French supplier to make more durable netting than anyone else).

Once the oysters are ready to harvest, they’re removed from the cages and put in baskets, which are then sunk just off the shore where they sit for 21 days. Birds like to roost on the floats when they’re sitting out at sea, which results in everything becoming covered in bird poop. By letting the oysters sit underwater for the last three weeks, they have time to flush any impurities and pollution out of their systems. This waiting period is enforced by the Canadian and American food safety organisations. George uses this opportunity to bathe his oysters in the water coming from some artesian springs that exit just off the coast, which gives his oysters distinct flavour characteristics (he compared it to terroir with wine).

These organisations also enforce mandatory seven day waiting periods after heavy rain, because of the runoff from farms and other land-based pollution sources which could contaminate the water. The recent hurricane had triggered this stand-down, so George couldn’t let us try any of the oysters fresh from the sea. He told us that pretty much all PEI oyster farmers are very careful about following these guidelines, as the reputation of the “PEI Oyster” is at stake if someone gets sick from eating one, regardless of which farm it came from.

Back at The Table George showed us how to shuck an oyster, which he made look very simple, but is definitely an art form. There are global competitions for the world’s fastest shuckers! To start, you lay the oyster cup-down on a towel in front of you, with the hinge facing your dominant hand. With your non-dominant hand, you fold the towel over the top of the oyster and grip it strongly. In your other hand you take a thin chisel-shaped knife and push into the hinge with lots of force, and wiggle it just as you would if you were trying to pry it open with a flat-head screwdriver.

As the hinge begins to give way, the top of the shell starts to move, and you can reduce the force that you’re pushing with. Finally, the end of the shell lifts a bit, and you can get your thumb into the gap to hold it open. You give your knife a wipe to get any crushed shell or other grit off it, and then slide it into the gap you’ve created, all the way along the inside of the shell until it cuts the muscle that holds the shell closed. Then the top of the shell just pops off!

Now you have your open oyster, but the meat inside is still joined onto the shell underneath. The next step is to spin the shell around 180 degrees, and then use your knife to scrape under the meat to release the other side of the shell-closing muscle. All throughout this process you have to be careful to not introduce any dirt from outside into the meat, and not spill any of the liquor (the watery liquid inside the shell). Once that’s taken care of, you carefully plate the oyster and it’s ready to eat!

Our first tasting was with a variety of mignonettes (vinegar-based sauces) which George had prepared earlier. Several of them were fresh, with herbs he’d picked last night, and two others had been marinating for several weeks. We spooned little bits of the sauce into the oysters we’d shucked earlier and gulped them down! Oysters have quite a delicate flavour, so you have to be careful not to overpower them with condiments, especially ones like these with very strong flavours. We each ate four or five each.

Our second taste was with two sauces that we made as a team under the direction of Chef Taylore; an onion and bacon jam, and a white wine and black garlic cream sauce. This time, the oysters were removed from their shells and seared on a hotplate. Katie spooned some of the cream sauce into the empty shells, and once the meat was ready it was popped back in and a little dollop of jam put on top. This was probably my favourite combination of flavours, of everything we tried today.

The final meal, which was going to be a proper sit-down lunch, was a fried oyster po’ boy. We began by double-crusting 32 oysters with egg and a mixture of masa flour, cornmeal, and some herbs and spices. We then deep-fried these in two batches in a pot of canola oil, with each batch only taking a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, we heated up some halved ciabatta buns on the hotplate, to give them a nice crispy inside. The final step was to sear some lemons by cutting them in half and patting the cut surface dry, pressing them into a bowl of salt, and then putting them cut-side down in a ripping-hot pan. Once we could see the lemons starting to brown, we turned the heat down and left them to heat all the way through.

Chef Taylore had made some coleslaw while we were out learning about oysters using her own special recipe. She told us that letting it rest for at least half an hour after you make it makes the eating experience a lot better, because once it comes up to room temperature it won’t cool down all the hot ingredients that go into the po’ boy, and also it allows the flavours in the sauce to develop better. We spooned generous helpings of some remoulade sauce she’d just made onto both halves of our bread, added eight fried oysters each, and then topped with a large heap of coleslaw. Yum!

The four of us sat around the dining table and messily ate our sandwiches, while drinking some beers and answering the questions we get asked all the time about the comparisons between Toronto, Canada, and New Zealand. We also had a bowl of barbecue chips made by a local PEI producer, which is a traditional side to a po’ boy.

When we’d finished eating and said our goodbyes, we staggered out to the car and sat for a while in a borderline food coma. While we were out on this side of the island, we decided that we should visit the Cavendish coastline, and stop in to see the Anne of Green Gables house. Even though we really just wanted to lie down, we drove on to Cavendish National Park.

The Anne of Green Gables house is the original house that inspired Lucy Maud Montgomery to write her classic children’s novel way back in 1908. It has been preserved in a National Park and refitted with furnishings that match the description of the house from the book. Neither Katie nor I have read the book, so we didn’t really know what to expect (or have enough background to properly appreciate it), but we enjoyed looking through the house and learning about L.M. Montgomery in the nearby interpretive centre.

Our final sightseeing tour for the day was along a coastal road, where we stopped several times to look at the incredible erosion that the storm had caused. The island is made primarily of red iron-rich sandstone, which looks incredible when contrasted with the deep green of the grass and trees, but doesn’t stand up well to the wind and sea. The island is eroding reasonably rapidly at the rate of about one metre per year, but the hurricane caused two metres of erosion in a single weekend! Along with the damage to the shoreline, we saw lots of snapped and fallen trees. George had told us he saw a drone photograph of Cavendish, and they had lost almost 80% of their trees.

We are staying on Prince Edward Island for three nights which gives us two full days to explore, so today we decided to check out the Western region of the island. After breakfast we drove for almost two hours until we reached North Cape, which is the northwestern-most point.

At North Cape is a lighthouse, and the Wind Energy Institute of Canada (WEICan). Because this exposed bluff has 300 degrees of exposure to the sea, it is a great place to test wind turbine technology. There are currently 16 turbines permanently installed at the site, which generate 7.5% of PEI's energy. WEICan conducts renewable energy research and development for the Canadian government, and provides their testing services to many commercial turbine manufacturers. Because of the extreme conditions that North Cape experiences (salt spray, high winds, and bitter cold), it's a great place to prove the design and engineering of new technology.

We walked through an interpretive centre, which had been built in the early 2000's but not ever updated. It had lots of really interesting information, but presented it in a totally overwhelming way with walls of small text all over the place.

We didn't hang around up here for too long, and after taking a couple of pictures of the lighthouse we drove back down south to the Canadian Potato Museum. We had hoped to try some fresh cut french fries for lunch, but upon arrival we discovered that today was their kitchen's last day and they didn't have any fries at all!

In the Potato Museum we learned that most of the farming on PEI is potato farming, and the tiny island produces 25% of Canada's potatoes! The museum had lots of information on everything potato related, like proper soil management and crop rotation techniques, an encyclopedia of every different potato type registered in Canada, models showing all the different diseases that could befall a potato, and a garage full of vintage potato farming equipment.

After wandering around the museum for an hour or so, we drove to a seaside city called Summerside, the second largest on the island after Charlottetown. We found a restaurant on a wharf for lunch, and finally had a chance to try some fresh local french fries! Today was also the last day of the season for this restaurant, so their menu was also a bit limited. We ordered a local fish burger and a plate of loaded fries, and ended up with far too much food.

Having enjoyed the coffee from the Octopuses’ Garden café yesterday morning, we headed back again for another brew. This was our last night in Fundy, and with the sun finally out and our next stop only being 3 hours drive away we decided that we should explore the local scenery. We drove up into the park to a 2km hike called Caribou Plains.

There are no longer any caribou living here, it is now a thick forest of evergreen conifers, some leafy hardwoods, and an expansive peat bog. Peat bogs are primarily made of a plant called sphagnum moss, which is exceptionally good at trapping water in its tiny leaves, like a sponge. As it grows, lower layers die but decompose very slowly due to the water saturation. The moss keeps growing and expanding, collecting more water from nearby pools by capillary action, and by retaining rain water.

This soggy, expanding mass drowns trees and traps animals who venture out onto the bog. Tannins from the dead moss acidify the water (and stain it a dark brown colour), which creates an anaerobic environment. The result of this is that organic matter is preserved exceptionally well, and many important discoveries such as Tollund Man who was dated back to the 4^th century BC.

While walking through the forest we saw lots of evidence of storm damage from Hurricane Dorian. Several huge trees right next to the path had snapped and splintered spectacularly, some fallen all the way down and others supported at 45 degrees by their neighbours. We’d also seen lost of destroyed trees in and around our campground, but the park service had done a good job of cutting these down to the stump and dragging the trunks clear of the roads and walkways.

We drove from here on towards our next three-night stay at Prince Edward Island. To get to the Island, we had to drive across a 13km long bridge called Confederation Bridge. This crazy two-lane bridge was opened in 1997, and cost about $1.3 billion over 4 years to build. It’s also a toll road, but tolls are only collected on vehicles leaving the island.

We had tried to stop at a Cape Jourimain, where the bridge departs New Brunswick, as it looked like it would be a great place to get some photos of the bridge. It seems like someone had already thought of this though, and when we approached the carpark a lady stepped out of a little house and told us it’d be $5 to come and see the view. She tried to justify it with access to an interpretive centre with info about the local ecosystem, but all we really wanted was a picture, so we chose to drive on. Unfortunately on top of a bridge is probably the worse possible place to try and photograph one, so we don’t have anything spectacular to share. Driving over the bridge was a cool experience though, it's a weird feeling to be driving over the sea, several kilometres out from land.

We called in for a beer at Upstreet Craft Brewing in Charlottetown, before heading on to our KOA campground. KOA (Kampgrounds of America) is a franchised network of campgrounds all across North America, which are all very family friendly and offer similar amenities like a store, laundry, pool, playground, and Wi-Fi coverage throughout the campground. We stayed at several different KOAs during our previous road trip across the continent, so we knew what to expect. They aren’t as nice and peaceful as National Park campgrounds, often they are large grassy fields with sparse tree cover, but they’re always friendly and easy to book online. As I mentioned in a previous post, we booked this campground last minute as our original booking at Cavendish Campground in Prince Edward Island National Park was cancelled due to storm damage.

It was forecast to rain all day today, so when I woke up and it wasn't yet raining, we hurriedly got up and packed the tent up before it got wet. Even though the tent is quite well waterproofed it’s still really unpleasant trying to fold it up when it’s covered in water, because then you become covered in water too. We ate a quick breakfast of muesli and yogurt sitting on the back of the car, and then drove into the nearby town of Alma for some coffee.

While we were sitting in the café it began to bucket down outside. We ended up staying in the café for a couple of hours because it looked too yuck outside. While we were there I polished and published our last two blog posts, and Katie researched closures on Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia due to hurricane Dorian. Some of the places we have booked are still temporarily closed but are tentatively scheduled to open again before we get there. We booked a couple of nights at a KOA campground on PEI in Charlottetown, which is further inland than the National Park that we had wanted to stay at and so maybe was less exposed to the storm. At least the KOA is open!

On our way into town we had stopped at the National Park registration office, because we’d arrived when they were closed last night. Being that one of Fundy’s major tourist attractions is its incredible tide, the local high and low tide times were posted on a huge board behind the desk. The ranger there gave us some recommendations of walks that we could do around the park, and some that had dense canopy cover so might be less unpleasant in the rain. Sitting in the café and watching the torrential downpour, we decided that it would still be pretty gross.

Instead of going for a hike, we hopped back in the car and drove an hour and a half along the coast to St John. St John is the second largest city in New Brunswick after Moncton (it had been the largest until 2016; its population is in decline), and the third largest port in Canada.

Our first stop in town was the St John City Market, which we thought was going to be a local produce market full of fruit, vegetables, and seafood but turned out to be a miniature version of any other tourist market. Slightly disappointed, we didn’t spend too long there, and left to wander down to the waterfront where Katie had found a restaurant selling the iconic lobster roll.

The restaurant we found was right across the road from the cruise ship terminal, and so of course was heavily decked out in every clichéd nautical, fishing, or lobster themed prop you could imagine. It had good reviews though! We arrived a few minutes before they opened, so wandered around some nearby roads for a few minutes.

The lobster roll is pretty basic; a grilled soft white hotdog bun split in half and stuffed with lobster meat, and dressed with celery, butter, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. It was also, of course, served with a large side of fries. Perhaps it had been overhyped, or we had an incorrect perception of what it was going to be, but the lobster roll didn’t live up to either of our expectations. Lobster meat is expensive, so we both agreed that there’s better meals that you could buy for $20. Nevertheless, we’re open to trying a few more as we travel to other places, just to make sure we’re getting the full picture!

After this late lunch, we drove another few minutes further into St John where we found the Moosehead Brewery. Moosehead is an independent brewery whose beer is pretty huge all through Canada, as well as some places in the USA that they export to. We had just sat down at the bar to begin tasting some beers when the bartender told us that a tour had just started which we could catch if we ran up the parking lot to where it was starting! As we arrived at the doors to the building where the tour started, some office workers were just leaving and asked if we were there for the tour. Perfect timing, as the tour had already left and everything was locked up, so she showed us down through a rabbit warren of office corridors and back staircases to where the tour group of three other people had just started learning about Moosehead’s history.

Moosehead started back in 1867 in Halifax where it was based until 1917 when the Halifax Explosion (as of today the third largest conventional explosive detonation in history) destroyed the brewery and killed many of their staff. They then re-established themselves on the current site here in St John, which is still their only brewery.

The tour started with a tasting of their main beer production lines, including their pale ale which they assured us hasn’t changed since it was first introduced in 1931. We also tried a lager, a radler, and a small batch hand crafted beer which was meant to be hoppy, but we found it to be less so than the pale ale.

From here we moved on into a huge room where their old copper mash tun and boiler where still installed in their original setting. These absolutely enormous vessels, along with the tiled floor and walls and the brass valve control wheels made the whole place feel like a mix of Willy Wonka, a hospital, and a science fiction spaceship control facility. This equipment wasn’t in use anymore, as the caustic solution they were required to clean everything with was too harsh on the copper and so it needed too much maintenance. Instead of removing and replacing it, however, they had just doubled the size of the room and installed stainless-steel versions right next to them. I guess this is a testament to how much money they make, that they can leave an area of this size unused.

Next stop on the tour was the cold room where the enormous tanks of brewed beer were stored. Each tank held over 200,000 litres of beer, and we were standing in front of tank number 16. The ends of the tanks protruded through walls on either side of the gantry we were standing on (each one longer than a train carriage, we were told), and there were many more floors above and below us visible through the gaps in the gratings. Our tour guide opened a valve on the side of one of the nearest tanks, and we filled glasses with fresh unpasteurized lager. It was quite nice!

The last point was in the canning and bottling facility. We watched the machinery that took brand new cans, missing their tops, from a pallet and organised them onto a single-file conveyor belt. Our guide plucked one of these cans from where they passed near the walkway and handed it around. They’re so fragile when they don’t yet have a lid, or any pressure inside them! From here, the cans rushed off to a huge spinning machine in a far corner which purged the air from the can before filling them with beer and crimping the top on.

The full and sealed cans then went off to a pasteurizer, where they were sprayed with hot water for several minutes to kill anything living inside the can. The beer is totally safe to drink without undergoing this process, but without doing it the brewery wouldn’t be able to guarantee the shelf life. We ended the tour back in the tasting room where we had initially arrived. We paid $20 each for the tour, which is maybe a little expensive for just a tour, but with the amount of free beer we were offered it was definitely good value. Unfortunately, we had another hour and a half of driving back to Fundy, so we didn’t take full advantage of the unlimited samples.

We arrived back at the campground just as it started to pour with rain again. We’d stopped at a supermarket on the way to get things to make dinner but didn’t really like the idea of getting soaking wet while we cooked some curry. I did some searching on Google maps and found that while most of the shops in Alma were closed by this time, the café that we’d had coffee at this morning was still open! We were one of the only diners, and had some yummy pasta puttanesca.