Notes on Canada

Have talked to Canadians on ferries and BBs, and in campgrounds including 3 who had cancer.  All have been very happy with the medical system.  I asked one if she had to wait for treatment.  She said no that there were rules about how fast things had to be done.

One result I have seen of a socalist form of government is that the fisherman can not sell their fish to anyone but the big company in their town because their catch has to be recorded , so they get their quota, so they can get their unemployment checks in the winter.  So, local people can only get frozen fish like the rest of us unless they know a fisherman who is willing to sell them some on the side.  The BB owner told me she had to buy 70 lbs of cod to get any from the plant and then she salts and freezes it.  Have been fascinated with the way fishing was the whole economy.  Every village was on the water on the coast.  We thinks of fishermen being poor, but they were wealthy in the early days of european settlements.  Fish were salted and sent all over the world.  The cod industry was considered decimated ( probably thanks to Russian factory ships that skimmed up everything) and strict controls were put in in 1992.  There is all most no regular fishing any more.  Thanks goodness they could turn to lobster ( once considered food for convicts) and the new industry of  snow crabs.

Do not like being where I can not understand the language.

The highway signs are complicated here.  In tead of the side of a school bus, as our signs have, theirs has the front of a school bus with a child on either side.  The view point, instead of having a pair of binoculars, has a man looking though binoculars and a child under his arm pointing.  His straight body and his arm and the straight child under his arm always look like an letter to me-probably a H.  In NS and NB the signs are in  in French and English.  There are so many words on the signs that you can not get them all read, sometimes, before you pass the signs.  I think in the US we have, maybe, 4 or 5 pictures on our road way sign.  They seem to be unlimited here.  We think the @ sign must mean some one on the exit has WiFi, a house with a flower we figure must mean a garden shop, the hand holding a pot must be craft stores, we saw a new one yesterday- a bed and an egg - we figure meant a BB.  Lots of moose signs, but some have the moose standing by a crumpled car.We think it is nice in rural areas from Vermont on up that the gov. tries to help local businesses by putting the name of the businesses on blue signs on roads so you know a business is down them.

Never saw junk and old cars sitting beside houses in Canada.  They seemed to be neater.  Lots of artificial siding on houses which made them look neat even in small fishing villages of 5 or so homes.  Was fascinated by the way you were never far from a small village when you were on the coast even though you felt like you were in the middle of no where.  Never had been exposed to how important fishing was to the north east.

Saw lots of smoking.

Favorite park- Gros Morne  Besides the walks, and scenery, I loved all the little villages to visit.  Loved all the living history parks.  Loved the whale watching experience at Digby Neck.

Read lots of books- Longfellow"s poetry including Evangeline,  Ann of Green Gables.
Got some books from a park gift shop- Memoirs of a Light Keepers Son about a boy who spent 5 years living with his parents on an island off of Nova Scotia in the 1950s with no electricity or a way to keep anything cold and no supplies could come from Nov to April due to the frozen sea.  Also, got The Island Doctor about a man straight out of his internship who becomes the only doctor in Digby Neck 1950s with the hospital 50 miles away including a ferry ride.  Both great books.  Also got a book of short stories about the area.
Read Reading Lolita in Tehran which I would recommend.  Just finished Electric Barracuda about a crazy man who kills bad people and hids out in little towns all over Florida- trash but fun reading.

Homeward Bound

Hi kids- It's Barney Bear
We went over to the Adirondack mountains to see what they were like in NY. Had always heard of them.  We camped on a lovely lake called Craneberry Lake in a state park, but the wind was so high and cold that we did not try to get out on the lake.  We did drive over to Lake Placid where 2 winter Olympics have been held.  We were going to go to Heather's tomorrow, but we are not going to drive into a hurricane, so we are coming home to Fla. to get away from a hurricane!  We are going west away from the coast into Virginia to get away from Interstate 95 and all the people who may be evacuating the storm and then stop by Nana's.  Will get home in about a week.

So this will be my last blog.  It was quite a trip.  Will be glad to get back home.  

Signing off,
  
Barney Bear

Ottawa

Hi kids- It's Barney Bear

Arrived in Ottawa yesterday.  It is a beautiful city on the St Lawrence river.  We have done some neat things.

 Yesterday we went to a  Aviation Museum.  It had airplanes from the beginning to now.  The picture is of me on a pier where a pilot is loading up his plane to fly goods into areas like Alaska where there were few people and some times no roads.  The people who did this were called bush pilots.

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, so today we went to see the capital building called Parliment.  It looks like a church.  We got up early so we could get in town to see the "changing of the guards."  Canada never broke away from England like we did, so they do things like the English do here.  The soldiers are dressed in red and march around.  It is pretty neat.  We, also, went to a museum that talks about all the earliest people in Canada like the Eskimos.  It was neat too.  My feet were so tired from walking around that we did not get to see much of it.

Tomorrow we will come back into the United States.  We are going to the Adirondack Mountains in New York.  Then we are going down to see Heather and her family.  Heather is my mommy too.  She made me when she was about 10 years old.

Quebec, Montreal

Arrived at Levis which is across the river from Quebec on Aug. 16th.  Trying to get around any big city here is a misery because of all the road repair which may block off an exit from a highway.  They have little time to be able to repair their roads.  There is a ferry from Levis to Quebec but getting there was not fun with all the detours.  Walked to the the top of the hill and took a tour of Quebec's parliament. It is very pretty.  The picture above is of the House of Commons.  They did away with the House of lords( in the  60s I think).  Not democratic.  Trying to populate the area so France could keep it, one governor had girls brought over from the orphanages.  They had to get married in 2 weeks and the men had 2 months.  The population here had gone up very lowly compared to the English colonies. On interesting fact we learned was that a meeting and what was decided in it is considered to have never happened if the masse (looks like a gold club) is not in the room.  It makes the meeting official.  We walked on the walls of the old citadel which was built after the War of 1812 by the English to  protect Quebec from the Americans.  Walked around old town and had a good lunch.  Had fun.  Weather is low fifties in the day time to 64-75 in the day.  They keep saying it is going to get warmer but it never does.  Lots of rain but no more fog, and we left the mosquitoes behind, thank  goodness.  The next day we drove 150 miles to St Catherine which is beside Tadousssac to go whale watching.  It is suppose to be the greatest whale watching area due to being near the mouth of the St Lawrence.  It was a cloudy, very windy day, and the boat was crowded.  Whales jumped out of the water several times, but I only could see it once ( due to not being able to see over people) and it was far away.  There were mink, fin, and humpback whales, but none came real close to the boat. Did see flashes of white in the water on the way back in and learned it was beluga whales.  That was neat.   Stopped at a fromagerie (cheese making shop) and got fresh cheddar and brie.  Still enjoying it.
On the 19th drove to a little town across the river from Montreal.  We were told that the traffic came to a stand still after about 2PM on the highway into Montreal.  It was under construction also.  Butch says he gets a sinking feeling every time he sees an orange sign.  We decided not to risk it and stayed in and did our wash and cleaned up till we left for supper at 7:00PM.  Celebrated our 45th anniversary early with a very nice meal in Montreal.  Big cities scare me to death.  It had ramps off of ramps off of ramps. When we got there I was not sure I could pry my hand off the arm rest I had been holding so tightly.  The next morning we drove to the subway across the river which was in the town we are staying in.  Getting to it was not easy, but once we did we enjoyed using the subway to get around.  Went to the Beau Arts museum.  A lot of it was closed, but we enjoyed the exhibit on Napoleon (They had one of his hats and boots there.) and one on ancient civilizations.  I enjoyed it because it gave a good time line of the civilizations.  Then we went to Montreal Underground- 4 stories tall, 1700 stores, and 40 movies underground.  Then we went to the Notre Dame Cathedral  (gorgeous) and walked through old town to the old port which has a lot of tourist things like a discovery center.  Had supper in a restaurant which was in a 300 year old stone building in the old town.    There are 3 universities here and everyone seems to be younger than 40.

Caraquet,NB

Caraquet is in the north west part of NS.  We went there to see Acadian village Historic.  It is considered the most accurate living park.  Over 100 buildings from the 1700 through 1900s have been taken apart, numbered and rebuilt there.  People go about their daily business they would be doing  in their time period from cooking biscuits in a dutch oven or making barrels, but they stop what they are doing to talk to you.  It was excellent.  The only frustration is they would talk to us in English if few other people were around, but if their were a lot of other people they would give their info in French.  I was surprised that they kept a lot of white turkeys.  Main crops were turnips, potatoes, onions, and the only spice was savory in their gardens.  They also had wheat fields.  They had pigs, turkeys, chickens, and cows, so life seemed pretty good.  They liked to drain and use the marshes, also  We were there from  10 to 3 when it closed for Festival Acadienne.  It began in the 70s when a priest told the people to let the world know they were still alive.  Everyone had dressed their houses and themselves in red, white, and blue.  The flag has a single star.  At 6:00 is the tentamont when everyone goes downtown and walks in a parade either up or down the street at the same time making as much noise as they can.  It goes on for an hour and then everyone parties the rest of the night.  Activities go on for a week. We got a plastic flag and walked too.   Some Acadians escaped the deportation from Nova Scotia and made their home here.  You see the same family names over and over.  Acadian pride is big.  I can see why Quebec wanted to succeed.  Today we drove to Quebec.

Dear Kids It"s Barney Bear writing,
We have see some really neat things!

Went on a walk around some mountains that were a rusty brown.  It was because the were formed when 2 land plates collided and the inside of the earth, called the mantle, rose above the other land.  The mantle is liquid iron.  It hardened into a mountain and has been rusting ever since.  Because the iron is poisonous only a very special few plants can grow on it,so it looks dry and barren, but water flows down it.

Have seen 5 moose- 3 in our camp ground.

Drove to the very tip of Newfoundland to see a settlement where Vikings lived for awhile 1000 years ago.  The foundations of their villages are still there.  The park has  built a village to look like their village  .Also went to a place where their are remains of 5 different Indian groups that have lived there as they passed through looking for whales from the first men  to the Eskimos we know called Inuit.  The neatest  thing we  saw there was ICEBERGs floating .  One was know to have broken off a big glacier in Greenland and took 2  years  to float there.  It is over 4 1/2 miles long!  You can tell an iceberg from regular ice because it looks blue.

Took a ferry to Labrador.  Way up near the Artic.  We drove as far as you can drive on a paved road- 50 miles.  You can only get to the rest of the country by boat or gravel road.  Because they have so much snow melt here and in New Foundland,  most of the land is a bog with mosses and low bushes growing on it. Lots of berries grow on it and people pick them.  We walked out to try picking some.  It felt like walking on a pillow!

We are in a great big ferry now with our car inside leaving Newfoundland.  I hate to leave.  It is a neat place.    

Gros Morne

Friday August 5^th

We fit a lot into a day.  This AM we went on a hike with a guide which was advertised as a walk across 15 million years in 1 km.   It is a place on the coast where the upheaval of the tectonic plates is where the Cambrian and the Ordovician layers can be seen.  The layers are so well defined that they are used as the reference standard by the scientists of the world.  The layers are shell and granite which are standing on their edge.  Very hard to walk on but fascinating to see under you feet in a solid mass.  The earliest layer has microscopic fossils, but the more recent layer has fossils you can see in it.  You can walk around in the area of this recent layer and find fossils all around.  This is on the coast.  The guide said headlands are the stronger granite and  coves are the weaker shale.  Very interesting.  Came home, had lunch, and then went on a 4 1/2 km walk to the most beautiful water falls I have ever seen.  The unusual thing is that at least 3 1/2km of the walk was on a boardwalk about 18 inches wide.  It went through a bog.  It reminded me of the much smaller one at Swallow Falls we went to at Swallow Falls in Md.  At first there was a streamlet coming under it about every 6 -10 yards.  Then it was just wet all the time.  Beautiful, interesting flowers, ferns, fallen trees.  They had a bad insect infestation here also which killed many trees.  This they say is natural and would let other trees grow.  Moose were introduced here 100 years ago and have no natural predators, so they have become completely overpopulated.  They love to eat the new young trees that should be repopulating the forests, so they say they are missing 30 years of new forest growth.  They are having a hunt his fall.  Came home fixed supper.  It stays light till 9:30 or so.  It is hard to stay inside when this is often the loveliest, sunniest time of the day.  Today was beautiful sunny day.  We would not resist , so we went on another walk around a pond right here in the camp ground.  Very pretty.

As you can tell, we love Gros Morne- beautiful forested low mountains, closed of fyords, and interesting rocks and blue sea.  No individual services here, but as all Canada parks, they do have showers. Camp sights are set back in the trees.  We have the trailer facing a mountain away from the road, so we feel like we are alone.  No stink of campfires for some reason.  It is fairly full, but it does not seem so.  No rules.  We thought it would be isolated, but there were fishing villages all along the coast.  The little ones they bought out but the bigger ones are still there, so there are stores, laundries, etc. near by.  Going on a cruise on a closed up fjord in AM.  Suppose to be beautiful.  Dad says the national temperature of Canada is 60.  It did warm up nicely today into 70s but still had a chilly wind.  Gets down in mid fifties at night.   

August 2nd Sidney, NS

Came here today to take the ferry over to New Foundland.  Drove on down to Louisbourg- the biggest French fort in North America. The town was settled by French people from New Foundland who were being displaced by the British and from people from Spain and Dominica.   It was captured by the English in 1745 and sent the French settlers back to France,but the French got it back in negotiations.  The English captured it again in 1755 and sent the French settlers back home.  This time they burned it down, but the French kept the plans and the Canadian government used them to  built it back.  It is a fascinating living history museum.  It is the largest reconstruction in Canada.This city had one of the biggest and busiest ports in North America.  Goods from China and India moved through here.  The biggest export was not furs but salted cod.

We leave for a 4-6 hour ferry ride in the morning.  Have not had data service available in Canada on our phones though Verizon had  said we would so have only been able to bog where we had Wfi.  Will probably have none in New Foundland.  Will be there 11 days.  Will write when we get back

July 31st Cape Breton National Park

Arrived here on July 29th.  Spent night on way here in the only place in North America that they make single malt scotch- Glenora Distillery. The Scotch will not let them them call if scotch, so they have to call it single malt whiskey.  Grandpa enjoyed having a tasting.  The area around there is  suppose to be the center of Celtic  music, so we went out looking for it that night but did not find any.
Cape Breton is truly a beautiful island  but with its fecund mountains rolling down to a dark blue sea.  Fog is never far away here.  It often only clears out for a short time.  We immediately went on the premier walk since we had rain forecasted for the next few days. We walked on the top of a mountain out to a overlook of the sea- the Gulf of St Lawrence.  It reminds us a lot of Big Sur.  The next day we took a walk to a falls and drove some on the famous road around the park called the Cabot Trail.  The park is huge but only has a road around the outside of it.  That evening we went to a motel where the park rangers told us there would be some Celtic music.  There was a fiddle player and a guitar player.  They were great.  The locals were dancing to the music.  A visiting person played the harmonica.  He was fantastic.  I told him I had never heard a harmonica sound beautiful before.  I heard someone at the motel say there was a Celtic festival the next afternoon in a near by town, so we went looking for it.  Got to the 55th Annual Broad Cove Scottish Concert about 3:00 thinking it would be over between 4 and 5, but it was just starting.  It was an out side concert that went on till 9:00PM.  We stayed for it all.  You can hardly keep from dancing to the music and the fiddle players always pat one foot but by the time the music gets faster ( which it always does) both feet are dancing away.  Had some step dancers like the  River Dancers but was mainly fiddle payers with accompaniment.  Today  we drove all the way around the end of the park and walked out on a peninsular through the wood overlooking the ocean.

Kernville, Nova Scotia July 27

Drove here on 24th.  Went to see Grand Pre in the evening.  It is a memorial to the French speaking settlers called Acadians who  were deported from here in 1753.  This land had passed back and forth between the English and the French but finally the English won out.  The French had gotten along with the local Indians for 100 years, but they did not like the English.The English were afraid theAcadians would help the Americans against them, so they came in one day and called the men to a meeting and arrested them.  A poem by Longfellow called Evangeline made this event famous.  They shipped them southward, but some places would not let them in, so they spent many years drifting around.  Some went to Lousiana and settled in the New Orleans area.  What we were interested in was the fact that they choose this land because it was a tidal flat of the Bay of Fundy, and they thought they they could make it good farm land.  They built dykes to drain the land .  We were told it took 2 years for the rain to wash the salt out of the land so they  could farm it.  What did they have to eat in the mean time?  So after all that hard work, the English shipped them out with nothing separating families as they did it.  The next day we drove 130 miles down Digby neck to go whale watching.  Saw lots of blue whales and birds called petrals who swam around with their head under water looking for fish and a few puffins and seals.  It was lots of fun! The next day we drove to Halifax and looked around the city.  Started with the Citadel which is an English fort where they have people dressed like the Scottish soldiers in their kilts  like they would have been around 1870.  They were marching around drilling and practicing shooting off their muskets  and cannon.An interesting fact was that all though the fort was built on the harbor, it was built to defend the land.  They said other forts on islands in the harbor were built to defend the harbor from ships. The fort is on a hill over looking the harbor.  We walked down the hill and went to a Maritime Museum which had lots of boats in it.  We had a very English lunch- fish and chips- very good.  Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia.  Enjoyed looking around there.

July 24th Prince Edward Island

Arrived here on 21st.  Prince Edward Island is a large island about 100 miles long.  Beautiful rolling farm land - bright gold flowers we were told were canola flowers.  Potatoes and corn and barley are  big crops here also. Had some excitement when we were setting up the trailer.  The handle came off the water spicket when dad  was attaching the handle and a very strong  plume of water was shooting out.  He was afraid it would hurt the trailer and tried to direct it away while Becky  ran to the office to tell them  All they knew was to call a plumber who turned out to be on vacation.  The maintenance person did not know what to do, so Becky asked for another site.  Becky  ran back and tried to cover the water with her hand while dad moved the trailer.  We left water spouting in the air.  First thing we did after we got set up was go  to a lobster supper at St Ann's church.  They have been putting them on there for 40 years.  It is a big business-long lines waiting to get in.   They had a Irish country and western player who was fun to listen to.  It was great!  Thought we would sit at a long table with others so we could talk to some Canadians, but we were placed at a table for 2.

We are camping in a national park which is very nice.  Canadian parks have showers and laundry mats.

 Some people are camped on the hill right over the beach. The beach has sand, but it is red with out croppings of red rock that is so soft you can rub a line in it.  The water temperature is 64 degrees.  I could not bring myself to swim in the water, but dad did.  It is the Florida of Canada. There are Band Bs every where.  We took a long beach walk.  Drove to a near by town and walked a board walk around their bay and ate some of the oysters from that bay- Malpeque.  There is a famous book called Ann of Green Gables which was about a girl who lived on this Island.  We went to the house that the author lived in and talked about in her book.  Walked a trail around the dunes and some the places the girl in the book talked about.  Today we drove to another beach to a beautiful inn on the beach and rented bicycles and biked up and down the trail which followed the dune lines.  It was fun.  This area is covered in wild roses.  It is one of the reasons it is so lovely. Today the ocean is very rough.  Yesterday it was smooth.

Fundy National Park

Thursday July 21

Hi kids.  It is BB- Barney Bear.

We like the Campground here.  Nice wooded lot where you can not see anyone else around.  The National Parks here are much nicer than ours.  They have showers, golf, a room nicely set up with skins and 2 wood stoves, a salt water swimming pool right on the Bay of Fundy.  The funny thing is that all most everyone we have talked to comes to Florida for the winter.  Canadians are very nice.  We walked down to a pretty water falls and a trail through the woods.  The woods here are full of ferns and moss also.  Today we drove to Hopewell rocks. Very interesting.  We are told that there have not been very many people here from the US in the past 2 years.  This place had lots of tourists but we saw only 5 cars from US.  There were a lot of French speaking people from Quebec.  We walked around the rocks when the tide was out.  We wanted to go kayaking among them when the tide came in but the wind got too high and the tour was cancelled.   Had a wonderful lobster tonight.  They are as expensive here as they are at home but really fresh and good.  Also they have soft shell lobsters but they are not in yet.      

At Bay of Fundy New Brunswick, Canada

Hi kids,
We arrived here 3 days ago.  We are staying in a campground bout 30 feet from the Bay of Fundy.  The picture is of me waiting for the tide to come in.  Here tides go out 30 feet.  At low tide you can walk a block out in the water.  Like all this area the beach is covered with stones, so if you wanted to play on the beach, you would gather stones.  There are no shells or sand.  We walked out to some caves in the side of a cliff the first day we were here at low tide.  We went back there today and the caves could not be seen.  They were under water.  We went to a church supper yesterday where they served Salmon.  I learned that there is no such thing as commercial fishing for salmon.  All salmon that says it came from the Atlantic is farmed raised.  Over 500 wooden boats were made here in the late 1800s- early 1900s.  Timber cutting was the main employer is some little towns.  A lot of the lumber was taken by ship to England to make ships and other needed things.  England had all ready cut down most of their trees making ships.  All most everyone I have talked to goes to Florida during the winter.  It is very cold and snowy here.  The big thing they do here  and all up the coast from Maine up is  catch lobsters in little wood traps they put on the bottom of the Bay.  They are stacked up all over the place and every restaurant serves lobsters in hot dog buns for lunch.  I had fish cakes for lunch yesterday  Went to a market  in St Johns that has been around since 1880 and got the fish cake there.  The fish was mixed in with mashed potatoes and fried.  It was okay.  I got a dish called poulain.  It was french fries covered in something like mozzarella cheese and gravy.  Hmm.  Went to see a place there called Reversing Falls where the water from the Bay of Fundy is suppose to come in so strong in the river that the water falls flow backwards away from the sea.  It was going backwards, but it was more like a rapids than a water falls.  We took a trip up a road called Fundy trail today and saw a pretty water falls and beautiful  views of the Bay.

Saturday, July 16 Arcadia National Park

Arrived here on Thursday afternoon.  Staying in a very wooded campground.  There is no running water or electricity here, so we run a generator to refill our battery for an hour once a day.  It is hot during the day but the breeze is cool.  Bob was going to save water by taking a shower.  He got all his stuff and walked down to the bathrooms.  He forgot that national parks have no showers.  I think it is awful.  It is very crowded here.  They say a quarter of the US population lives within a days drive of here.  There is a free bus service to all the surrounding towns to try to keep cars down.  The park has the typical Maine rocky coast line with moutains behind it .  One interesting thing is that about 30 feet from the water line water flows through the pebbles down to the sea like springs in the rocks.  The park does have a couple of sandy beaches which are extremely popular.  We went to the big one Thursday evening before the crowds descended on it.  We drove around the unpopular side of the island to day to get away from the crowds and took a quick  cold swim at a small sandy beach called Echo lake.  It was beautiful.  We hiked on a carriage road this morning.  Rockefeller wanted roads only for horse and carriages so he began building these 16 ft wide roads through this area before it was a park.  Bikers love them.  No cars allowed.  They wind around about 50 miles.  We went to a unpopular area and had few other people on the road.  We have mainly driven around the island but have taken a few walks on the cliffs.  Drove up to the highest point on the east coast- Cadillac Mountain 1500 feet.  If you are here at Sunrise, you may be the first person in the US to see the sun. This is the 2nd time Becky has seen the rocky coast.  The first time was the Calf. coast. The area reminds her of Point Lobos there- beautiful, dark blue water roaring over rocks.  We went to Thunder rock where the waves crash into a hollow cave that really hollows. Tired of one way roads that make it take a long time to get anywhere and anxious to get to Canada, so will leave a day early- tomorrow.

In Maine

Hi again.

Next we went to Kennebunk and Kennebunkport Maine to see the houses there.  They are more like normal houses- not castles.  We saw the house of former president Bush.  The next day we drove here to Rockville Maine.  We saw the Farnsworth and Wyeth museums with paintings by painters from New England the most famous of which is Andrew Wyeth.  Most of his paintings look like black and white pictures.  The other paintings looked too fancy compared to his simple ones.  We took a walk a mile out on a wall called a breakwater which is built  to protect the boats in the harbor.  It stuck out all most a mile in the water and led to a light house.  It was made of large blocks of granite in 1891.  Then we walked down to the river where we are staying through a field of purple flowers that smelled wonderful.  If you know what they are anyone, please let me know.  Today we went to the Owls Head transportation museum.  It was wonderful. Becky fell in love with cars for the first time in her life.  They had different engines, early cars, and early airplanes all of which they use occasionally.  Wish we had had more time there.  Wish we could see these old cars and planes in action at one of there shows.  The picture is of me in front of one of them.  Then we took a 2 hour ride on a 45 foot long windjammer into the harbor here.  We saw a few seals going by.  We love this little town.  Would like to stay longer here.  The flowers are beautiful.  We have seen Rhododendron all over and wild roses and beautiful blue and lavender flowers called Hydrangea and pink and white dog wood.  It has been hot in Main.This town has the largest fishing fleet for lobster in the US.  Every restaurant has fresh lobster.   We have had lobster in some way for the past 4  days and wonderful mussels.  We cleaned our trailer and clothes today getting ready to go into Acadia national park tomorrow for 4 days.   Do not think we will have water or electricity there.  Do not know if we will have Email either.  Will write you when I can.  Would love to here from you kids.

   

On the road

July 8th

 Hi everyone.  I am Barney  Bear.  I am traveling with Bob and Becky Clapp ( often know as Grandpa. Grandma, Mom, Dad, or friend.  We have been traveling north since June 25th.  As you know, we started our trip going to see Nana and Papa.  Then we spent 4 days in the mountains of Virginia.  I had forgotten how beautiful they are.  Logan, Miranda, Nathan, and Cameron can follow our trip on a map if they want to.  We then went up and spent time with Heather, Rob, Nathan, and Cameron at Swallow Tail State park almost in West Virginia.  Had a good time climbing on the rocks there.  Then we went home with them and headed to New York to see Becky's cousin.  Then we arrived here in Newport, Rhoad Island.  We came here to see the enormous homes rich people built here on the water.  They are ridiculously big.  You can see me in front of them.  The beaches here are very popular but not as nice as ours in FL.  Most of the coast line is covered in rocks, so a sandy beach is pretty rare and popular even if the sand is not very nice.  We took a walk on a trail along a cliff and got to see a lot of the fancy houses from there.The next day after we got here we drove to  Mystic Seaport to see a museum of old wooden sailing whaling boats where they restore the boats and show how they were built..  The next day we drove to Old Bedford to see another museum about whaling boats.  Got to climb in them.  Very neat places.  The houses here look very different from ours.  Many are covered in dark wood shingles about 6inches long by 8 inches tall.  We went to a farm and picked raspberries.  It was the first time we had ever done it.