From our home base for the week at the Todd House in Eastport we spend hours staring across the Passamaquoddy Bay at the islands of New Brunswick. If the water was remotely warm we might be tempted to swim across, especially at low tide. Several people told us St. Andrews was a lovely day-trip so we made another trip to Canada on another blissfully sunny day.
On the way up the St. Croix River we stopped at an important monument that is deceptively nondescript - Saint Croix Island. It is a tiny island where the French first settled in 1604 with intentions to colonize North America. It turned out to be a poor choice as the winter ice proved isolating and half the men died during their first year. Once the spring warmth melted the ice, they got back in their boats and resettled in Port Royal, Nova Scotia. You can't actually visit the island due to it's fragility so the U.S. and Canada have dueling monuments on opposite shores. We visited both and preferred the U.S. version only because the narrative signposts are accompanied by life-size statues and the walk is through woodlands rather than pastoral. Both had pristinely clean outhouses - yes, we sampled both. (See photos of Saint Croix Island - one taken from Maine and the other taken from N.B.)
St. Andrews is on a peninsula and in addition to the charming coastal village there are various pebbly beaches as well as numerous historic cannons strategically placed. While wandering one cannon site we noticed what looked like a giant rat stranded at sea on a rock formation. It must have wandered over at low tide and was frantically searching for the way back to dry land. I'm still not sure what it was but I imagine it has safely scampered off the rock by now.
Above town a Fairmont Hotel sits loftily awaiting the well-heeled golfing crowd. Seeing only three cars in the parking lot we decided it was safe to wander in and sample the verandah. I've had many a daydream about whiling away an afternoon at the Fairmont at Lake Louise so I hoped this might give a flavor. Um, not even close. We asked our server, who had just arrived for the season, if she'd been to the Fairmont at Lake Louise. She raved about the beauty there for about five minutes and then we all became subdued as we realized how distantly underwhelmed we were with our setting at the Fairmont St. Andrews. Nevertheless, it is a pleasant town reminding me of Provincetown on a much smaller scale.
The drive back to Eastport offered continued opportunities to pull over and sample the beauty of the St. Croix River. Simply serenely satisfying.
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