Crossing the Saint Lawrence went well. It only took about 1 hour. The sea was choppy, but the old boat took it in stride.
When you line up and, in my case, get measured up the fellow
gives you a slip, that once you board you queue up by the purser and pay for
passage then. The passage was only $88.00 Canadian and $65.00 amerikan. Not a
bad deal.
The boat looked a little nicer on the inside, than the outside, and I thought I would try out my French on the bartender and order a Soda Club. She produced a can from the cooler, pored it in a glass with ice, and it only cost $4.00.
I thought I would sit in the bar and read, cuz I have been
falling behind in that department, so I did for a while, well till I finished
my drink, and was tired of sitting on the rock-hard seat.
The ferry has a forward seating area, that was mostly full, so I ventured outside to explore around. Starboard side had sun, hardly any wind, and all of the deck seating was taken. Port side had high winds and plenty of deck seating. Steep stairs lead to a upper deck. Upper deck wasn’t too busy but was windy. I settled on a lower deck chair facing back to where we were and was enjoying the sunshine and ride. I might have fell asleep but was thinking.
I was thinking of the official ferry terminal and how there
was no Canadian flag, flying. The restaurant up the hill had a Canadian and
amerikan flag on the roof, but very unusual not to see the Canadian maple leaf
flying on an official building. Odd.
Then I got to thinking how every other Canadian Provence
including Northwest Territories has signs in English and French, and how Quebec
you removed all the English signs.
In Le Havre France I knew I drove our hired car up the wrong
way on a one-way street cuz the sign said “ONE WAY” with a arrow going the opposite
way we were going…Another dead give away was my traveling compadre was screaming
WRONG WAY!
Quebec you have over done it. sure, on a map you are in
North America, a Canadian Provence, and you sure like those national highway
dollars, so keep your roads safe, join every other province in your country and
put back the road signs in English. Lafayette would agree with me.
When in Canada and even in Quebec they have Tim Hortons, and
you have to stop every once in a while. The donuts for a sugar pick me up are
pretty good. I settled on the Boston Cream being my favorite.
The coffee is ok. I think Love’s truck stops have better
coffee than Tim’s, but it washes down the donut ok, and I learned another French
word at my last Tim Hortons stop in Quebec. I learned that the Boston Cream
donut in French is Cream Boston.
It is time to leave Canada, and head back to the us. I decided
I would go to Edmundson New Brunswick, for my reentry. My first reason for
going to Edmundson was way back in school, all the maps I had ever looked at
all showed the us as a island nation just floating there. I thought that Maine
was just a big peninsula.
And I wanted to make sure that indeed Maine was in fact
surrounded to the north by New Brunswick. I also wanted to make sure that if somehow,
I was in France, and not Canada, then I wanted to head to Italy, right away,
find a nice level spot in Tuscany, and hang out for the duration. I’m sure once
I made the locals lamb once or twice, they would protect me from immigration.
Now I was leaning towards being in Europe because last night
when I was charting my course, my first navigational officer Google kept saying
that you can’t go the way I selected, and there was no alternative.
Okay I have garlic, and oregano on board, all I need is
olive oil and lamb. As I crested the foggy hill, I spotted a giant artistic billboard that said Welcome To
New Brunswick. It was in English. I knew I could find my way out of here, and I
will have to find another way to Italy.
I motored into Edmundson And filled up at Petro Canada
paying the most I have paid for petrol at a whopping $1.90 per liter. That’s about
$7.03 a gallon. That’s the most I have
paid for fuel ever.
Edmundson is a good size town and I needed supply’s so I found
the supermarket and picked up a couple of needed items.
Then I googled directions to some tiny town across the
border and set off.
What I found after making several wrong turns was that the
reason navigation didn’t want to go this way was that the bridge across the
river separating Canada from the us, was
closed for construction.
I found a pull out where I could see the bridge, and sure
enough there were a lot of people on it sanding drilling paving grinding doing
just about anything you could think of to a bridge except let traffic across
it.
Shucks. No other options other than swimming, I got back on
the highway thinking that since the signs are now in English, I could find a
border crossing , and sure, enough at the very exit I pulled off on there was a
border crossing just 1 minute away.
Just a short drive across a narrow bridge, and I was at the us customs. Two young men inspected my passport and ran me in the computer. They asked important questions like are those postage stamps in my passport. I answered yes and added that hardly any countries give stamps anymore so I find a post office buy a stamp and stick it in there, . I should have written the date too.
The next step on the border crossing was to drive through a
semi size portable X Ray machine that the other two customs agents had been
waiting at while the two boys looked at the postage stamps in my passport.
They stopped me after the total van with a name X ray. I
thought maybe they wanted to wand my hip. But no, they wanted to look in my refrigerator,
as I had told them I had a slice of cantaloupe.
I opened the door, turned on the lights, and opened the
refrigerator. They looked at my measly slice of melon, and then one of them
opened the vegetable door where the last
of my Spokane apples were. Everything was okay in the refrigerator, and then
the one agent opened the washroom door. She
sounded startled when she said oh a bathroom, and quickly shut the door. I know
she expected to find a Canadian hiding in there sneaking across the border to utilize
our health care.
The most surprising thing was, they didn’t want my chicken
eggs like the lady back in Montana...
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