Tuesday 27th June – some TLC for the RV

Our main quest today – Harvey needs an oil change.  But first we stopped at an RV centre to talk about the broken/missing parts we need to replace on the RV.  They estimate that a new roof dome, ladder, hub cap and light fitting will set us back a couple of hundred bucks at least. Ouch!  The RV centre we stopped in would’ve had to order them in, so we decided to hope Campers Inn have some spares and will go easy on charging us if they’re selling the RV for us!

It took two failed attempts – one at a Chevy garage and one where the guy looked at the size of the RV and didn’t have a ramp that could fit it – but third time lucky we got an oil change squeezed into our day whilst we waited.  And a cheap one at that, for only $34 – oil and filters.  It’s the last one we’ll need to worry about and we have all the receipts to show how well we’ve been looking after him during our travels.

At least we’d been heading in the right direction all morning.  Oil change done, it was 1pm but we were only two hours from a PA site we had called and booked for this evening’s cheap accommodation. 

We were staying near the town of Calais (still sounding a bit French round here!) and hit east coastal route 1.  Across an expanse of water, we were able to view Canada once more. We had made really good time, so when we saw brown signs appearing for a site of National Historical significance we thought we’d take a peek. 

The Saint Croix Island historical site commemorates one of the earliest known European settlements in North America, north of Florida. In 1604 over 100 French soldiers and gentlemen sailed here to try and establish a colony.  From the hard lessons learned here, other colonies grew and established an enduring French presence on the continent.  The island itself is inaccessible but there is an extremely brief interpretive trail on the nearest headland providing information about the people and the challenges they went through during their first year here. In fact, disease wiped out half of their population and so their leader, Pierre Dugua, ordered the remaining men to relocate to a mainland site with a fresh water supply and build strong shelters to endure the harsh winters.  This time the colony, Port Royal, succeeded. 

The island with the white hut on is Saint Croix Island

The best thing about this extra stopping point?  It was only 3 minutes’ drive from our campsite! Keenes Lake Family campground was looking lovely in the sunshine.

I was nearly tempted into the water but sitting in the sunshine whilst Simon made dinner won over! Shortly after we arrived the field we were in started filling up.  This instigated conversations with our neighbours to help people squeeze into the remaining gaps and get access to hook-ups.  As a result, this led to one of the most sociable evenings with complete strangers we’ve had this entire trip!  The elderly gentlemen who set up behind us, Paul, was on his own having spent 6 months separated from his wife in Canada whilst he has been in Florida.  By choice I might add.  Anyway, we invited him to sit with us and even provided him with some of Simon’s top-notch lasagne.  We got a fire going and ended up hosting another two retired couples who added their wood to the pile to keep us and the chatter going past 10pm.

Sunday 25th to Monday 26th June – Back into the USA for the last time and State number 46?!

An 11am check-out helped us reach the US border by 1230pm to leave Canada behind us for the last time in what will probably be a very long time.  Sad times.   

We were confident on approaching the border guard, however, our fancy stapled-in visas were not recognised by the computer system and so we were invited inside the building…. Again! Being invited into a border control building is NEVER a good thing! It was Déjà vu at the USA border… we were waiting for at least half an hour, hungry again as we’d hoped to cruise through the process and find somewhere pretty to stop for lunch once in the State of Maine (No. 46!).  A relatively new border officer, on her own admission, then asked about items we may have on-board as part of our interrogation.  This led to her escorting us back to the RV and me having all my citrus fruits, including tomatoes and peppers, confiscated by US immigration! I reckon she had a box to tick in her training manual labelled ‘gain access to a suspicious vehicle and confiscate contraband from within’.  Job done then, missy!

We were too hungry to be picky about the location of our lunch stop but following that it did become more scenic again. 

View from our lunch-stop

Our first roadside viewpoint for weeks

Having read that Maine is one of THE best places to see mooses/meeces, we went back to being ever-vigilant for a glimpse of the large-nosed clod-hoppers.  We arrival at Palmyra golf and RV resort, a lovely cheap PA stop, about 5pm.  The elderly guy in the office who struggled desperately to understand us with our accents, assured us that there was a female moose with a calf on the surrounding land.  Maybe this was our time to see a moose…?

Yay, there's a pool!

We were back in the US to make the most of our last few weeks.  But first, the mountain of laundry that had accumulated over the last few weeks had to be tackled.  There was also a massive thunder storm but when the skies cleared it created the perfect backdrop for a beautiful sunset.

What a beautiful golf course..... if only we were any good at golf!

We’d checked in here for two nights so Monday was a down-day.  More laundry, a swim for me and making the most of some awesome Wi-Fi for chatting to family and blogging.  It was also a useful window to plan our route and camping for the next week until we meet with Tash and family for 4^th July celebrations.  I’m looking forward to visiting more amazing places whilst also being somewhat in denial about how rapidly time is passing and how soon our RV lifestyle will be over….

We ventured out for an evening walk to find moose…. but still no trace!

Saturday 24th June – Quebec City (including epic public transport fail)

Planning to have a late night we didn’t feel the need to rush in the morning, heading out to catch a bus and then a ferry over to Quebec City at 2pm.

The view across to Quebec City from Levis

Chateau Frontenac... it's hard to take a bad pic of this incredible building

 

What a stunning old town.  The best way to see the sites appeared to be random wandering and getting lost.  We’re good at that. And did I make Simon walk to the top of the citadel?  Of course I did!  We did lots of walking, viewing as much of the old city as possible.  When it was time to stop for drinks we’d timed it to perfection as the heavens opened just after we’d nabbed one of the last tables in our chosen bar.

View of the city from the top of the citadel

City Hall

Thankfully, the weather improved so we finished exploring the city.  The hardest part was making the decision where to eat.  We eventually plumped for an Italian place which had lovely views through flower-edged windows out on to the character-full streets below.  We thought of this as a belated anniversary meal so took our time over our meals and a bottle of wine.

It's all about the up-lighting.... our restaurant looking very inviting

We’d wanted to stay until dark as Simon had read about how pretty the city looks from the ferry when lit up at night. Our plan was also to join the festivities…. But it turned out there was nothing on tonight as advised by our neighbours – the party & celebration was solely last night, we had missed the boat.  To avoid missing another one, we thought we’d call it a night early by getting the 10pm ferry back over to Levis. 

We arrived back at Levis to find a lengthy bus queue… phew, at least the buses were still running!  We jumped on the third double-decker bus that came along after waiting only about 15 minutes…. However, when we reached a supermarket car park after only about 10 minutes and every single other person got off the bus we started to feel confused.  And the bus didn’t appear to be going anywhere.  So, we walked to the front to converse with the driver – made extremely difficult by the fact that he spoke absolutely no English whatsoever.  I managed to understand enough of the conversation to translate that the bus route past our RV site had stopped completely for the night and there was no other method of getting back there other than taxi…. Or a 10km walk!  There wasn’t a single taxi around at our location but the driver explained he was returning to the ferry terminal so would drop us there, where we had seen available taxis earlier but chosen the cheaper bus option….  We had paid $4 to do a round trip and end up back where we started!  Luckily, there was still one lonely taxi waiting at the rank by the ferry port so we grabbed the driver and explained where we needed to go.  $32 later at 1130pm we arrived back at the RV!  This public transport fail reminded both of us of an incident we had in Paris about 9 years ago when we caught a train back from the city centre to the nearest station to our hotel.  It was reasonably late but pre-midnight and when we walked out of the station the streets were completely deserted! On that occasion we ended up walking around, failed to find a taxi and had to resort to going into a Police Station where an Officer called and woke up our hotel owner to come and pick his abandoned customers up!!  It was so embarrassing….. so, this Quebec City incident was mild in comparison.  The moral of these tales….. don’t underestimate how early French people call it a night on the weekend!  They do not live a 24-hour lifestyle!!