CAMPOBELLO ISLAND, New Brunswick, Canada

Our trip to Campobello Island began at the Riverside Inn in East Machias where we're staying on the upper floor of the Carriage House with a deck overlooking the river. After chilled conversation over blueberry pancakes, where we determined our hosts were still silently embroiled in the domestic spat we encountered upon arrival, we walked it off along the delightful rails to trails riverside path.

Just before the bridge to Canada's Campobello Island in Lubec, we took the four mile drive to the West Quoddy Lighthouse - Easternmost point in the U.S. On this pre-season, stunningly beautiful day we encountered only one man with a dog and one woman with her father during our hour walking the trail and gaping at the gorgeous water views. Right after crossing the bridge to Campobello Island we drove to the far end of the Island to take in the East Quoddy Lighthouse. It's only possible to walk over to the Lighthouse at low tide as the Bay of Fundy hosts huge tidal rises and can leave those with poor tide-timing stranded for up to eight hours. When we arrived the lighthouse was on a private island surrounded by cobalt blue water. We had no intent of returning until we met up with a regular who showed us photos of seals and whales lolling just off the shore where we were standing and assured us that low tide was coming in a couple hours. 

We passed the time at Herring Cove Beach where for the first half-hour we had the entire beach to ourselves. The glistening stones in oranges, browns and blues sparkled in the midday sun as the tide retreated. As we walked along the beach a couple from Denver who own a house on Campobello Island arrived for an afternoon stroll. We began to chat and within minutes Susan and Mida invited us to come see their house. It's a darling two-bedroom with a deck overlooking Friar's Bay. And it's for sale. Yikes!  It's just what we're looking for though we hadn't planned to buy in Canada. We excused ourselves in time to get back to East Quoddy during low tide. What a dramatic change! A fifteen foot drop in the water level allowed us to walk right over to the East Quoddy Lighthouse. 

That little adventure - and it's inherent brush with danger - ramped up our appetite so after stopping for a bit to traipse the grounds of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt's summer cottage, we made our way back to Lubec where we had spotted Uncle Kippy's restaurant. As we crossed the  U.S. Border, and correctly answered a plethora of random questions, the border agent asked if I had another form of identification, proving that my passport photo is so bad I'm hardly recognizable. This second rush of adrenaline within an hour fanned our hunger even more. Uncle Kippy's didn't quite hit the spot so we topped off the evening with a pecan praline from Monica's, a darling Peruvian woman who makes amazing chocolates in her kitchen and sells them in her living room. We're loving the down home charm here ... and hope that our hosts will have patched things up before we go down in the morning for another helping of blueberry pancakes.