More progress at Bayfield

This week we returned to Bayfield (Bayfield Mews) a couple of times. Thursday we met with the builder and electrician to confirm switch locations etc. The block was showing progress Thursday:

The fronts. Our unit was the only bare plywood today.

From the back. The yellow loader is right at our patio location.

A wider view of the middle common areas and pond fountain.

Today (Saturday) showed much roofing progress. Our unit is fully roofed now. They expect to be done roofing the block Monday, weather permitting:

 

In the near left is a bocce ball court

Today we also toured the new market building at Conn. Here's a couple of pics from the inside. Very new and shiny:

The Furry Gnome (see blog post) did a much more complete photo tour of the new market recently. 

It looks like we'll be primarily settling into our daughter's home in Waterloo until our Bayfield place is ready to go.

Progress at Bayfield

We were over to Bayfield today (Bayfield Mews), picking up mail and checking progress. We'll be back there on Thursday for a meeting with the builder and the electrician. 

Here's a few pictures from today:

Partially shingled block. Our unit is next, would have been today if not for the rain.

Recently finished units across the street show what ours will look like too

 

Looking out the back through the living room

View out the back to the pond and fountain, over the patio area

 

Out the back window, a peeper (Cathie)

The front. Garage door at the left behind the truck. Front door and spare room window.

 

Our patio area from the back, will be partially concreted

 

Living room window from the back

We're moochdocking at our Cambridge daughter's place tonight, moving back to Waterloo for tomorrow night and through the long weekend.

And we're at Heather's in Waterloo (zoom-zoom!)

Sunday morning we set out in good time, expecting to explore our way on roads new to us, to the De La Republique Provincial Park near Edmunston NB.

However, the route was shorter (or maybe quicker) than we had thought, "go-home" had kicked in and we got to Edmunston in early afternoon, so we decided to get through Quebec on Sunday.

Here's our route for Sunday:

 

No pictures at all Sunday, just 998 km of driving. We got to the Denny's truck stop in Lancaster Ont at 8pm, ready to sack out after a bite to eat. Traffic slowdowns near Quebec City and then Montreal slowed us by a good 1/2 hour. 2023 Note: The Denny's at the Flying J  truck stop has closed permanently.

This was the first time we have parked at the truck stop. The trucks were surprisingly quiet overnight, as they are on the other side of the store/restaurant from the boondocking overnighters. However, there are train tracks nearby, complete with whistle crossings, and we heard those! A pretty good night's sleep anyway though after a tiring day.

Monday morning we were off bright and early to breakfast at Denny's, a 1-minute walk, then on to the 401 westbound. All was smooth except heavy traffic in Toronto. Major slowdowns continued on west of the city, until we could see the cleanup from a minor accident. All the lanes in both directions were clogged up, not sure why the eastbound lanes were, except for traffic volume.

Lots of these kinds of views both days, this was the 401 near Milton:

We left the 401 at Guelph and backroaded from there to North Waterloo, where Heather and family live. Another beautiful day, and we're so thankful to have made it through the drive ok. 

I won't rant about Quebec, except to say that once again, we hope to not drive that way again.

Map of today's drive:

 

A beautiful day at St Andrews New Brunswick

Today we left the van parked and just walked the town, and walked  the shore several different times (over 10 km in all). This kind of day is why we've stayed at this park a number of times over the years. It's not the park per se, it's location, location, location. Gorgeous weather again, the humidity blew away early today.

Today I'll mostly just offer some pictures of this beautiful area around the Kiwanis Oceanfront Campground:

We almost didn't see this family along the town multi-use trail:

 The boat in the middle of this pic just looks like a toy somehow. It's a real boat, likely 20 ft long or more:

 Cathie modeling her new sweater, ready for winter now:

 A comical-looking attempt at a panorama shot. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, these RVs are actually all lined up pretty straight. I think it's due to the wide angle lens on the cell phone:

Tomorrow we'll be heading mostly north through New Brunswick. We're feeling go-home mode kicking in, even though there's no home for us to get back to yet in Ontario.

From Fundy Park to St Andrews NB

Today was another fairly short drive, from Fundy Park to Oceanfront Campground in St Andrews NB.

When we pulled out of the Fundy Headquarters campground this morning and headed up 114, we had some surprises. The road has undergone some major changes since we were over it last, but that was quite a few years ago:

The view back to Fundy from a new-to-us lookout

 

A beautiful little freshwater lake, still in Fundy Park

Scenic seating, with goose-resistant fencing

Not an illusion, it really was that crooked!

Some really tall Fireweed

 
On the way to St Andrews we had to stop in to Blacks Harbour for a visit to a specialty yarn shop (ok, Cathie wanted to stop so I had to stop). She enjoyed a tour of Cricket Cove:

Once we were all checked in at our Oceanfront Campground spot, we immediately headed out to nearby Kingsbrae Garden. It was still plenty early enough to have a garden tour this afternoon before the likely-busier weekend. Here are just a few images; follow the above link for lots more information:

On the way in from the parking lot

Some tall lilies

Sections of formal gardens

LOTS of variety

Some whimsical garden art

Later as we were sitting out behind the van in our campsite, we had a visitor to the nearby bushes. This doe was quite comfortable being this close. It was amazing how easily she could disappear temporarily in the brush:

We noticed a lot of Class B van conversions in the Oceanfront campground (like ours but commercially converted). It turns out there is a Pleasureway van rally here this weekend, with a huge variety of Pleasureway vans attending. This is the factory we toured last year in Saskatchewan on our trip out west. 

A small sampling:

We've been getting waves from people we're pretty sure we don't know, just the van community camaraderie.

As the name implies, this campground fronts on a lot of salt water. On a walk around this evening, we saw these flotillas of gulls resting:

Tomorrow we'll be bringing the binoculars. For some reason it's not as easy as it used to be to see bird details. :-))

Camped in Fundy National Park New Brunswick

It was a fairly short travel day today, leaving PEI and getting to Fundy Park. It wasn't much fun getting through Moncton NB, as we think our GPS took us on a "short cut" through parts of Moncton we've never seen before. We got through eventually though. Really glad we were driving a little van today.

Some of the coastal drive from Moncton to Fundy was quite pretty:

The brownish-looking area below the sky is the Petitcodiac River when the tide is out. There were some amazing mud-lined gullies we couldn't get pictures of, common coastal features with the huge Fundy tide swings.

Hwy 114 was a much better surface than the last time we drove it a number of years ago. It still doesn't have the water views you might expect though, and very few places to pull off and admire the views you do see.

Once we arrived at Fundy via the town of Alma, we were able to easily get a site for the night in the Headquarters campground, our first choice. This campground is hiking distance into Alma, a nice town for a browse.

On our hike down to Alma:

Pretty plantings near Fundy Park entrance

Interesting old roots

Mist rolling into Alma from the water

Fishing boats in Alma harbour

Never seen this before - return shells to the beach!

Hard to see, but full of shells handed in

 

Once we had seen what we wanted of Alma, it was time to hike back up to the campground. We had come down by road, but there are steps provided that shorten the return distance:

Looking back down part of the steps. That's the road down there.

Looking up at the rest of the steps.

Lots of stops on the way back up the steps, but we made it. Then it was shower time before supper. Tomorrow we will continue on to St Andrews NB, where we'll be camped for a couple of nights.