MONDAY 05 September
(There are no photos for this post.)
We both slept in this morning and finally got up at 7:45 AM. Even the cat settled down when she realized neither us was getting up at 6, or even 7 AM today. We got up to a cloud layer but bright morning sun. The clouds eventually opened up to reveal the blue sky above, and the forecast was for a wonderful weather day, with a high temperature of 67 (F) and winds out of the NNE at under 10 mph.
While we had our morning coffee, Linda checked in on the world and I continued working on the blog post for yesterday. I had already selected and processed photos from the SONY SLT a99v camera, but still needed to get a few from each of our phones. I selected and processed those, and then finalized the post. I write the posts in Microsoft Word, and include the placement and captions for the photos. This allows me to minimize the time I spend actually logged in to our WordPress site, especially when I am on an erratic Internet connection.
We had planned our time in the Hopewell Cape area, 5 nights and 4 full days, around doing our chores and errands today, the mid-point of our visit. We were going to drive into Moncton to buy groceries and top up the fuel tank in the F-150, and then do a couple of loads of laundry back at the campground. We also talked about returning to Hopewell Rocks Park as our park admission was good for two consecutive days. What we did not realize until this morning, was that today was also Labor Day here in Canada.
Linda called a couple of different Sobeys supermarkets in Moncton to make sure they were open, but got no answer. She checked the website, and they were closed today. Well, we did not see that coming. In the States, many stores are open on holidays, but might have reduced hours. But this is not the States, and we have enjoyed traveling in a “foreign” country where things do not always work the way we are used to.
We decided to make it a “camp day” anyway, but thought we might walk over to Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park during the afternoon and possibly grab a bite to eat at the restaurant. The trail from the campground is about 1.7 km (~ 1 mi) through the woods, so long pants and shirt sleeves would be required, along with our bug nets for our heads, which we had not yet used.
We had bagels and grapefruit for breakfast and watched other campers slowly break camp and pull out. We reasoned that the laundry facility might not be in use, so we gathered up the soiled laundry and carried it to the building. Three of the five washing machines and at least two of the five dryers were in use, but we only needed two washing machines to get started. Linda stayed with the laundry but brought her iPad along so she could read.
I returned to our trailer, did the dishes, and started writing today’s post. With many of the campers gone, the Wi-Fi/Internet connection was strong, solid, and fast. I took a break from that task around 12:25 PM and hooked up the sewer hose and black tank flush hose; might as well do it while the weather is nice. As long as I was up, I walked the trash to the receptable. The mosquitos were out in force. Annoying as they are, they are part of the natural world.
Given that Nova Scotia is “New Scotland,” the question had been on my mind as to what “New” Brunswick” was a new version of, so I searched online and found the following from Wikipedia under the heading New Brunswick:
“ … After the founding in 1784, the colony was named New Brunswick in honour of George III, King of Great Britain, King of Ireland, and prince-elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg in what is now Germany.
Indigenous peoples have been in the area since about 7000 BC. At the time of European contact, inhabitants were the Mi’kmaq, the Maliseet, and the Passamaquoddy. (The Mi’kmaq people and culture are still very much present.)
Prior to European arrival, Indigenous tribes did not leave a written record, but their language is present in many placenames, such as Aroostook, Bouctouche, Memramcook, Petitcodiac, Quispamsis, Richibucto and Shediac.
New Brunswick (French: Nouveau-Brunswick, pronounced [nuvo bʁœnswik], locally [nuvo bʁɔnzwɪk]) is one of the ten provinces (and three territories) of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and French as its official languages.
In 1969, New Brunswick passed the Official Languages Act which began recognizing French as an official language, along with English. New Brunswickers have the right to receive provincial government services in the official language of their choice. About 2⁄3 of the population are anglophone and 1⁄3 are francophone. New Brunswick is home to most of the cultural region of Acadia and most Acadians. New Brunswick’s variety of French is called Acadian French and 7 regional accents can be found. …”
So, now I know.
Linda got back to the trailer with the laundry at 1:30 PM, which had to be hung up or folded and put away. It was obvious to both us that we were not going to walk, or even drive, over to Hopewell Rocks Park today, either for lunch or to look at the Rocks again. Instead, we snacked on pistachios and hummus with Fritos and Veggie Straws.
While doing laundry, Linda crossed paths with Laurel, a solo traveler from Alberta, Canada that she met while doing laundry at the North Sydney / Cabot Trail KOA back in late July. That has happened a few times, and it’s always a fun surprise when it does.
The remainder of the afternoon was pretty low-key. Linda mostly read and played a few word games on her iPad. I split my time between my computer (blog and file management) and my iPad (games and puzzles). I’d been getting notifications on my phone from Google for a while letting me know that my 15 GB of free storage was almost full, and warning me about the dire consequences that would befall me were I to actually run out of storage. This Google account is used by my phone and iPad for Google Photos, Google Drive, and Gmail, and all of these would stop working.
The was a “manage storage” link in the notification, of course, but I decided to log into my account from the Chrome browser on my laptop. My storage pool was 93% full, and most of that was Google Photos. It’s been a while since Google stopped providing free/unlimited storage for Google Photos, with the free storage now capped at 15 GB. I knew that additional storage was available for a monthly subscription, and the cost was competitive with Dropbox and other similar services. What I did not expect, and did not appreciate, was how aggressive they were in “promoting” this solution. I just wanted to delete things (after verifying I had them on my camera and backed up) but every time I tried to do something, the website wanted to know how much additional storage I wanted to sign up for. None, thank you very much. I did manage to free up about 8 GB of storage, but I was a bit annoyed with Google by the time I was done.
Since I still had a solid Internet connection, I searched online for information about what we had to declare when crossing back into the USA. I was interested, in particular, on the rules regarding wine, and ended up at the official Customs and Border Patrol website.
Since we have been out of the country for over 48 hours, our “personal exemption limit” appears to be $800 each. The stuff we are bring back only cost a small fraction of that amount, so no worries there. There is no stated limit on the amount of wine we could bring back for personal use, but only the first bottle (1 L) would be included in the personal exemption. After that there could be a small duty and tax. Bringing a large quantity, however, might raise the suspicions of the CBP officer as to possible commercial use or resale. Large quantity, however, was undefined. We will only have four bottles, so we should be OK.
The report we got from Nancy, however, indicated that they only thing they seemed to care about when crossing at Calais, Maine, were fresh fruits and vegetables. When they came through that Port of Entry, the CBP Agents were checking every RV, especially the refrigerators. We could not find anything online, however, listing what is not allowed. Our presumption will be no fresh fruits and vegetables, and no meat, eggs, or dairy. No problem for us on the last three, and easy enough to make sure we don’t have any of the first two.
By 6:30 PM we were both ready for something to eat. Dinner was a green salad and Daiya Deluxe Cheezy Mac Alfredo Style. Quick and easy and tasty. We were just finishing dinner at 7 PM when Laurel knocked on our door. She had discovered the Strawberry Trail, which leads south out of the campground along the top of a long earthen dike. She was very excited to have us hike out there with her to see the salt marsh and mud-flats and the rocks of Hopewell Rocks Park off to the north. We said we would join her as soon as we were done eating and she went on ahead.
We caught up with her part way along the dike where she was sitting. She did not take the trail as far out as it goes because the mosquitoes were swarming. High tide would be around 8 PM, and she really wanted to see the water come in but realized she needed to be out here about 3 hours before high tide. We talked on the walk back, and she plans to return tomorrow around 6 PM, as high tide will be around 9 PM. We will be away from camp most of the day tomorrow, but if we have time go back out, we will definitely wear our mosquito netting. The view was certainly worth the short, easy hike.
When we got back, I backed up all of my camera photos and videos from my phone to our WD MyPassport drive, and then organized them for better access. I then did the same for all of the camera photos and movies from my iPad Pro. Most of the files copied just fine, but a few of the iPad movies (.MOV files), and a couple of other files, either copied as 0 KB in size, or wouldn’t copy at all.
Linda and the kitty headed off to bed at 10 PM and I put the finishing touches on this post. Our plan for tomorrow is to drive back to Moncton in the morning to fuel up the truck and do our grocery shopping at one of the Sobeys supermarkets (there are five of them). After the groceries are put away, we will continue south on Hwy-114 to Fundy National Park. I uploaded this post just before midnight, local time, and headed off to bed.
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