Kouchibouguac National park New Brunswick to Shippagan NB ...Several coastal pictures.

 

 

Today we worked our way north from Kouchibouguac, following the New Brunswick east coast as well as we could. Sunny skies today, an uplift to the spirits after all the rain we've seen lately.

 

 

At one point we saw a large excavator working at a wharf, doing something strange:

It was hard to show with a picture, so here's a short video of his work, looks like he was rinsing off the roadway, bucket by bucket:

 

As seems usual, we did hit some construction delays. The longest was for work on a bridge that closed the whole bridge, and everyone had to alternate using 1 lane to bypass the bridge via the ramp roads:

Pace car needed to proceed on this one

Shot in the mirror of the long backup behind us

We camped quite early (about 3pm) at Camping Shippagan, in Shippagan NB of course :)) for the night. 

It's a good campground, mainly seasonal but lots of spots for transits, especially this time of year. We were in the D section, and were the only customers for the night in section D.  In the woods like we were, we were protected from most of the winds. 

The campground has shoreline on tidal waters. A fisherman had something on his line, and brought in a nice fish. Destined for dinner I think.  

Clearly he has a bite

He got it in, and checked for legal length of 22-26 inches. 24 was good.

A nice Striped Bass, common in these waters

 

Along the way today we had stopped at a seafood shop (a Poissonnerie) and got some scallop "pucks". We've never seen these before, and we were a little wary, since they were cheaper per pound than whole scallops.

They are made from scallop pieces that weren't good enough to be sold as whole scallops, so compressed in a tube about scallop diameter. They sure tasted like scallops, and stayed together for cooking.

Yummy!

 

 

Our cozy site for the night

 Rain started up again overnight, cloudy rainy and cool this morning. 15C.

 

Stratford PEI to Kouchibouguac National park New Brunswick

Camped in Kouchibouguac Park

Today was a short travel day under grey skies. No real rain though, and cool all day (13-16C). After crossing the Confederation Bridge from PEI to NB (still $20 flat rate for private vehicles), we turned north as soon as we could and mostly followed the New Brunswick coastline. 

It's an old area in places

At Aboiteau Wharf we stopped for a short hike out on a boardwalk. 

This was about half of the boardwalk length

Looked like small lichens growing on the handrail

Fingers for scale

At one point we found some "scat" deposited on the boardwalk, and wondered what animal might have deposited it. It looked a bit like bear scat, especially with the berry seeds, but too small for a bear:

 

 

The deck boards on the boardwalk were 2x6 planks, each one the full width of the boardwalk. Most planks had 3 nails into each of the 5 supports under the planks. That's 15 galvanized nails for most planks, likely 3 1/2 inches long, multiplied by hundreds (I expect) of planks. That's a LOT of nails!      

 

Breakfast this morning was a piece of last night's leftover pizza (thanks Pat!) for each of us. With noon approaching we thought we should get something with seafood in it, so a couple of lobster rolls at a seafood shack in Shediac filled the bill:

We agreed we'd had better, but they were quite tasty. We split one order of side fries.

Just a few days ago gas and diesel prices took a jump in PEI. Regular gas is now about $2.05 per litre, and diesel is almost $2.60. So we waited to fill up in New Brunswick. Still pricey but less expensive than PEI right now. Here is a NB Esso pump:

When we checked in to Kouchibouguac we noticed that a mushroom expert was giving a talk Sept 17 on identifying park mushrooms. We'd sure need that, but wouldn't likely be eating any of these we found on a short walk. We couldn't identify any of them:

 

 

Cathie took a walk to the nearby harbour area, where a fleet of fishing boats is based:

A couple of cormorants in the channel

A lobster boat (I assume) returning to base with its catch

Canada Geese love the shallow water around a sand spit

Most of the interior sites in the park look like this one we're on for the night, well-gravelled, pretty level, and quite private. We got a site with electric as it's supposed to be down in the single digits C tonight, on the way to freezing:

 

 

 

 

A few rainy days in Stratford PEI

 

A slow-moving rain system has hovered over Atlantic Canada (mostly PEI and Nova Scotia) for a few days, making this a soggy long weekend. Once again we're grateful to not be camped in a tent. 

Always something to do though, especially when based in a nice dry van with access to a  nice dry house very close by. 

PEI mussels for afternoon tea one day

 

A birthday celebration with a special dessert:

Yes, a candle-laden birthday donut for me

The ladies ventured out to a local bookstore on a not-so-nice day:

The Scottish connection kicks in...

The bookstore "Bookmark"

Looks somewhat similar to a Scottish street

Our hosts treated us to a lovely restaurant meal for our 57th anniversary:

Each meal was different and all delicious

 

A couple of better shots of the wildflowers blooming in the roadside ditch at N&P's place:

Today Cathie and Nancy visited the Dunes Studio. We visit their grounds almost every time we're on PEI. <Dunes Studio link>

Always a great place to tour (free) both the grounds and the store:

 

Today even the ducks needed rubber boots

Across from the Dunes Studio is a more modest outlet shop for various PEI crafts and preserves etc, nice locally-made items:

All wooden pieces, called Parquetry I think

  

Back at home, more rounds in the perennial cribbage game. Overall very even matches, with the odd blowout for either side periodically:

The uniquely-PEI cribbage board

 

No doubt the rain has put a damper on a lot of holiday weekend plans. PEI in general has been very wet and windy, but not hit as hard as Cape Breton in nearby Nova Scotia. 

Walmart would be happy, given the number of shoppers we encountered when visiting Walmart on Sunday afternoon. About the most traffic we've ever seen in Charlottetown, all over the downtown area. 

Tomorrow morning we'll be leaving PEI, heading towards home via New Brunswick and Quebec.  Hoping for a bit better weather, it has looked like the NB coast has not been hit so hard with the rain as PEI and Nova Scotia.

 

A late-breaking video from Cathie's sister Donna in Okanagan Falls BC, from Donna's front doorbell camera: