ST. ANDREWS, New Brunswick, Canada

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.

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.

NEW BRUNSWICK, Canada

A hearty welcome from Red Hat Ladies on the heels of receiving a long-stem rose to the tune “Rock Around the Clock” upon our descent from the gangplank at the port of Saint John is sure to have the desired effect – unforgettable (with a twinge of regrettable).

Our first stop was the Reversing Rapids of the Saint John River. It’s this strange phenomena where the tide from the Atlantic pushes its way up through the Bay of Fundy causing the river to flow upstream as the tide comes in and to reverse direction, forming rapids, as the tide flows out. (Check out the photos of Benedicta pointing at the river … they’re taken at the same spot at an interval of three hours. See what I’m sayin’?)


Moose are big in NB. Well, moose are big wherever they are (1000 lbs. big), but here they’ve adopted them as their brewery mascot and there’s an abundance of moose paraphernalia to fit every whim. Our tour guide wet our desire to see a real one and expected us to be satisfied by the sight a beaver house (sans beaver). (Pardon my French but NB is the only bi-lingual province in Canada.)




Tides in the Bay of Fundy rise and fall up to 46 feet twice a day. In a matter of hours lobster boats go from freely floating to sand-trapped, which makes the Farmer’s Almanac a hot item in these parts.

I want you to be blown away by my amazing photographs, but here’s the truth: In the midst of those Reversing Rapids, a colossal Paper Mill (think newsprint for the Boston Globe, New York Times and Miami Herald). And on shore behind the St. Martins Caves, a spacious parking lot with a roadside Chowder Shack big enough to host several busloads (with scrumptious lobster-scallop-haddock chowder). St. Martins Harbor lured us in with a bit of charm, but we had to be careful which direction we faced when breathing as the lobster bait was positively putrid.



We’re heading out to sea now and I'm keeping my eye out for whales. Hope they’re not hiding out with the moose.