Qubec City

Hotel de Frontenac

View from ferry

Arlys with Laval

Old town streets

Today we visited Quebec City. We camped in Levi, Quebec last night and took the walk- on ferry across the St. Lawrence River into the Old Town Quebec City. It is like going to France. Quebec City was a walled fortress. The whole old town is within these walls and set on a hillside. Lots of cement stairs to climb from one part of the town to another. There are many winding little streets, with old buildings from the 1800’s and lots of little outside cafes with umbrellas. We enjoyed a self walking tour and are plenty played out from all the climbing. Really a lovely day. Tonight we are camped outside of Quebec City on our way to Montreal. Thank goodness the people here at this campground speak English. It has been a little difficult trying to remember our high school French. People are always excited to see our license plates as they seem to have been or know someone from BC. It helps start a lot of conversations with locals wherever we go.

Miramichi and Grand Falls New Brunswick

Miramichi, New Brunswick.  We travelled all the way here to find out Ed couldn’t get a fishing license for several days and all the fishing guides were booked up in advance. So poor Ed didn’t get to go fishing for Atlantic Salmon after all. As it turned out it has been raining really hard for several days so it wouldn’t have been that nice anyways. So we left Miramichi and headed back south to Fredericton and now we are in Grand Falls, NB. The mosquitos are just awful here. Talk about eating you alive. I  hope they get a little less as we travel into Quebec. The falls are very nice. They think they are huge but then I guess they haven't seen Niagara Falls.

PEI

Confederation Bridge

Lucy Maude Montgomery's Home

Arlys on windy ocean on east side of PEI

We are in Prince Edward Island now. We had to cross the Confederation Bridge. It is 13 km long! Good thing it was a nice day as they shut it down when it gets too windy. What a long drive across the Atlantic Ocean. Quite something to see and do. This is where Lucy Maude Mongomery lived and wrote her stories about Anne of Green Gables. There are Anne of Green Gables shops, museums, restaurants, etc. etc. We went into a few of them and it is a good thing to bring in the tourists. The island is very small. It is only 280 km from tip to tip and 56 km wide.  It is very rural with lots of farms and country roads. It is home to many charming fishing ports. In talking to the locals though the winters are extremely harsh. They get a lot of snow and up to 90k winds, so a lot of them leave this area and come west for the winter. Enjoyed seeing the island.

Back in Canada

Bay of Fundy

Lobster Fishing Boats at Peggys Cove

Lighthouse at Peggys Cove

On the rocks of Peggys Cove

Lighthouse at Peggys Cove

Bay of
Fundy -Boats on mud after low tide

We have travelled North from Boston through New Hampshire and Maine back into Canada. We crossed into New Brunswick. We stayed at a Park in NB which is right on the Atlantic Ocean and has the most amazing tides in the world. The tides change every six hours from really high down 18 ft at low tide. It is something to see. We have pictures of rock tops on the water and then a few hours later you can walk on the ocean bottom and the rocks are large formations on the sand. The scenery and terrain has changed. It is now hilly and there are fir and hemlock trees. It also has a lot of farmland. We travelled today to Peggys Cove in Nova Scotia. We are camped right on the rocks beside the famous lighthouse. We arrived here this afternoon and Ed went into the Visitor’s center and asked where is the nearest campground. They said we could stay right here. So here we are with two other units with the whole place to ourselves. We are right on top of the ocean. Good thing no storm is predicted tonight or we would be blown away. We have been very lucky with the weather. They said it has been very foggy and rainy right up until yesterday. Tomorrow is supposed to only be cloudy but we will be leaving anyway as Ed has a place in mind he wants to go fishing and I want to see some of PEI. We are moving quite quickly right now as we want to get to Ottawa for July 1^st celebrations. Must go now as we are off for a Lobster dinner at the Lighthouse restaurant. Yum!

Boston, Ma

Tower where Paul Revere had them light the lamps for his famous ride.

Boston Harbour

Historic downtown Boston

Paul Revere's house

USS Constitution

Today we took the ferry from Salem to Boston. It was a lovely 1 hr ride across the bay and into the harbour downtown. We then took a city tour trolley and got off at many stops along the way.  In particular we enjoyed touring Paul Revere’s house and the US Constitution Museum. The whole area is seeped in British/American history of their battles. Boston is a quaint city and very easy to get around in. Of course we had Boston Clam Chowder and Lobster for lunch. Yummy! The city is right on the waterfront and there are lobster traps everywhere. The people here of course are still celebrating their win over the Canucks so we didn’t bother to mention where we were from. A lovely city and we really enjoyed our time here in New England. Of note : Lots of Woodchucks here. We see them as roadkill and also running around in the bushes of our campground.

Salem Massachusetts

We travelled through Hartford, Connecticut to Salem, Massachusetts. We are staying right on the harbour and have a wonderful view of sail ships and have our own beach. We are on Winter Island and the name of the beach is Waikiki. Today we walked into town (about 1 ½ miles) and visited this historic site. We had not originally planned to come here but ran into some people who recommended it. So glad we came. This is the place where they had the Salem Witch Trials back in the 1700’s. The town is full of the history of pirates and the so called witches. It is quite sad really to find out it was just a bunch of  Puritan girls playing that started all the hysteria. In total 19 innocent people were put to death. Also a lot of pirates came here and buried their booty. They have found some as late as 1985. We should stay here and dig! We also happened to be here on a weekend when they were doing re-enactments of the war. There were a lot of people dressed up in English uniforms with muskets and they put on quite a show. A ferry leaves right from town and crosses over into Boston so that is where we are off to next.

New York City

Brooklyn Bridge

Times Square

Freedom Tower (under construction)

Arlys eating of hot dog from NYC vendor

New York City skyline

Statue of Liberty

Ed and Arlys at Liberty State Park

(where the immigrants went when they were finally released from Ellis Island)

After a rainy night we took a tour into New York City today. Thank goodness we decided to take a tour. We would never have been able to manueveur the freeways into the city. We are camped 46 miles from the city and had an excellent driver. The city is huge! You hear about Texas being so big well New York City is that and  more. There are of course all the tall buildings, but also so many people and so much traffic. It is a very clean city though as they hire the homeless to clean up the streets. They are all dressed in coveralls and do a great job. If a hotel or a place of business needs extra help they just go outside and approach one of these workers and offer them a job at a higher rate of pay. It works really well for the workers and for the employers. Good idea I think. Some of the places we visited are: The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Ground Zero, the Theatre District, Times Square, St. Paul's cathedral and much more. We were gone for about 12 hours. Ellis Island was very interesting to see and imagine all the people that passed through to get into the US back in time. The people certainly had to go through  lot and you have to feel sorry for the poor immigrants and how they were treated. Also Ground Zero is very emotional. They are putting up a new building called Freedom Tower in place of the twin towers. It is about 1/3 complete and will be very impressive. It will be a great monument in the memory of those that were lost. An interesting fact is that in a very large area all of the buildings were damaged in some way. Many had to be torn down and rebuilt or had at least all the windows broken, except the three churches, which were really close to the towers. They didn't even have a single thing broken on the buildings. Makes you wonder.They have pressure washed or sand blasted most everything in the area to clean it up. But after 10 years some have not been cleaned and are still blackened with soot. It makes one imagine how black the city must have been if after ten years and all the rain, snow, etc some soot still remains. Times Square was very busy. It is too bad we didn't have time to go to a show but it is so difficult for us to get back there we will have to pass this time. Also we had thunderstorms all day and it is predicted to continue. Luckily we were inside whenever the rains came today. All in all a place to visit. I would like to come back some day and stay just in the city in a hotel and take in some shows, etc.

Atlantic City, New Jersey

We travelled northeast through Maryland, Delaware and into New Jersey. Some of the states are so small you just barely get into them and you are through. It is surprising how you can be in a big city like Washington and then go just a little way and it is so peaceful and you are in the country. It has been raining most of the day but that is a relief after so much heat. We camped in a campground just outside Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Crossing Potamic River - Bridge is 5 miles long

Beach off Boardwalk

Arlys on strip

Atlantic City Boardwalk

Next day - we went into Atlantic City with no problems and found a parking lot where we could leave the motorhome right at the end of the boardwalk. (Yeah) The boardwalk is a fun place. There is the beach on one side of the street full of sun worshippers and then the boardwalk (and it is actually made of boards the whole length 5 miles x 50 ft+ wide!) and then there are many casinos and little shops and restaurants. There are also many carnival attractions and women wanting to tell your fortune. We just walked the strip and went into a few places and looked around. Then we went into Caesar's Casino and then gave us $25 each free slot play. So we fooled around with that and walked out with $40. So that paid for a nice lunch and the parking fee for the motorhome. It was a fun day. I would compare it to the west coast Las Vegas but more family oriented. When we left it was getting dark so we travelled to a state park campground. There was no one there but you could go in and pay in the morning. We got nicely set up and went to bed but the darn whipperwhills drove us crazy. At midnight Ed said that is enough so we got up and left in the dark trying to find our way out. Finally made it to a small highway and drove until Ed found a place off the road and we just pulled in and stayed there until 6:30 am. Then we thought we should move as we really didn't know where we were. Such is the life of camping! Today we thought we were so smart as we found a short cut and it would save us paying on a toll highway. Some shortcut - we crawled along through so many little towns. But I must say it was definately the scenic route. We have finally arrived at our campground 46 miles north of New York City. It was the closest campground to the city. So tomorrow we have booked a tour into the city as there is no way we can drive with our unit and park it there. Good night - early to bed tonight after last night's adventure.

Washington DC

Capital Buildings

White House

George Washington

Ed at the White House

Fountain in square in front of Art Garden 

Washington Monument

Arlys in front of National Museum of Natural History

We made it to Washington DC. The city is very large and we were lucky enough to find a campground that has a bus that takes you to the subway station. We took the subway into the capital and it turned out to be very easy to do. Traffic here is horrible. There are 800,000 federal employees that go downtown to work every day. Glad I don’t have to do that every day. The downtown is full of very large and beautiful buildings. Each department has about a one block building and it is very spread out. We only saw a portion of it but enjoyed it very much. We walked the mall and saw the Whitehouse. You can’t get very close to it. It has a wrought iron fence around the perimeter. But you can look through. We saw the vegetable garden that Michelle Obama planted with her girls. But no Michelle today. We also walked through the Smithsonian Institutes. We only had time to visit a few of the museums. We chose the National Museum of Natural History. That is the one that Ben Stiller was in the movie The Night of the Museum. Also visited the National Museum of American History. Also went into the Visitors Centre at the Whitehouse and it had some beautiful paintings in it. We took lots of pictures including the US Capital Building and the Washington Monument. Lots and lots of tourists here. I don’t know if that is going to be the trend as school is out here now or not. Previous to this it has been fairly quiet. Maybe it is just because we are in the capital of the US. Please see some of the many pictures we have of Washington. Hope you enjoy them.