The Journey to Dartmouth

At long last, we have internet in our humble abode, so we have the time to blog about the final leg of our trip!


We left our beautiful campground in Maine, BEFORE the pancake breakfast (Darcy's idea) and began our last day of serious driving.  Google advised not following the interstate, and instead following a smaller regional highway to the border, so we foolishly believed that this was a good idea.

Back in Canada!  Hooray for French!

Unfortunately, Maine is not like British Columbia, where you can go for hours between towns.  Maine is the land of infinite town.  Essentially, from where we left the interstate to the border (about 200 km) we were never not in some kind of town.  Sometimes the speed limit was higher, but often it was 40 or 35 mph (55-65 km/h).

Also, we chose that day to revert to our getting lost ways, and we ended up taking a scenic route through a couple of Maine towns, trying to find where we were supposed to be.  Luckily, the towns are nice to look at; unluckily, they are challenging to navigate.

Anyways, we finally made it to the Canadian Border, and had no problems crossing over.  Calais, Maine and St Stephen, New Brunswick are right across the river from each other, with several bridges between them, and it is pretty clear that people who live there wander back and forth all the time.

New Brunswick was nice, and was also the first time we were able to take a good look at the ocean, which some of us may have been pretty excited about:

Look it's the ocean!

More ocean!

STILL the ocean!

The Ocean Part IV: The Gritty Reboot

Oh wait, is this a lake???? NOPE!  The OCEAN!

Also in New Brunswick were plenty of wind farms.  We thought we'd see a bunch of those in the prairies, but all they appear to farm there is corn (and oil).  But, since there is wind all over the maritimes, they've got wind farms every which place.

This is one of many photos of windfarms that Darcy took

Although not a windfarm, this is still some nice countryside

This is NEW BRUNSWICK

Darcy has never been east of Quebec (except for a trip to Europe) and Daniel has only been to the Maritimes once, about ten years ago, but that makes him an expert.  So, when we saw a sign for the "World Famous" magnetic hill, and Daniel said "It's not all that it's cracked up to be," we didn't even bother to stop.

HAHA just kidding.  The magnetic hill is an optical illusion where you put your car in neutral at the "bottom" and suddenly your car starts rolling backwards up the hill.  The trick isn't actually magnets, but rather an optical illusion where it looks like you're at the bottom of a hill, but you're not really there.  While we were there, we talked to some English ladies who were seriously unimpressed that there were no actual magnets.  I suspect they don't know how magnets work, possibly because they are Juggalettes*.

So, rolling backwards up a hill is pretty neat, but I guess New Brunswick (or at least Moncton) must be pretty strapped for cash, because it costs five dollars and takes about thirty seconds.  We both enjoyed it.  Turns out that Daniel's memory of it not being all that great was entirely fabricated, because the last time he was here, he wasn't able to go see it, despite really wanting to, so he invented a fake memory of it being stupid and boring.

Here we are rolling backwards up the hill (see it looks like we're going to roll forwards, but we don't).  The magnetic hill: probably not worth $5

So, after getting lost leaving the magnetic hill (because magnets were playing with our compass....yes let's go with that), we got back on the road and headed into Nova Scotia, our soon to be home Province.

Nova Scotia.  Home Sweet Home, we guess

The roads in Nova Scotia, at least in the north were quite curious:

I guess the road on the right is embarrassed?  Or angry?

We eventually made it to Dartmouth, which afforded us quite the view as we rolled in.  Note that everything in the city is on a hill.  This is not an exaggeration or anything, literally everything in this city is on a slant.  The hill our apartment is on is about twice as steep as any road in Prince George, although there are some similar roads in North Vancouver.

Dartmouth: it's a city.

The nice thing about the hill, though, is that everyone has an excellent view of the ocean, and we are no exception.  It is EXTREMELY awesome to have a view of the harbor directly off our back deck:

Those lights in the centre are on a ferry!

So, that was the last leg of our trip.  We have lots more to talk about, with all the things we've been doing in Dartmouth since we arrived, and what Daniel's been up to at school (spoilers: it involves LEGO).  We'll be updating again soon with pictures of our apartment, the town and Dalhousie (plus more ocean), so stay tuned!

*If you don't know what a Juggalette is, DO NOT GOOGLE IT.  Suffice it to say, it is someone who doesn't know how magnets work.