Blueberry Beer and Fried Dough in the Minors

Written by guest blogger Nicky

I arrived in Portland this afternoon coming straight from the homecoming service for my friend and colleague, Charrise. It was a long week, and I was very much looking forward to these next few days.

I had visited Portland once about ten years ago, and only for one night. I remember really liking the city, and when I decided to meet Gaby here I imagined us spending a few nights in the historic downtown. But, thanks to my procrastination, by the time I sat down to book a hotel there was nothing available downtown for Saturday. This ultimately worked to our advanatage because we ended up staying just few blocks away from Hadlock Field, home of the AA Portland Sea Dogs. We decided to catch a game.

We strolled up the ticket window and lucked into two free tickets. The game was great--much more laid back than the majors, but suprisingly, almost as commercialized.

The highlight was the local delicacies that we enjoyed while at the game: blueberry flavored microbrews and fried dough.

Nicky really likes the beer.

Gaby trying fried dough.

Most of you are probably thinking, 'how is fried dough a local delicacy?' The answer: it's not, but Gaby thought it was. I learned something surprising about my sister last night. Somehow she managed to live for 35+ years without ever having fried dough, elephants ear, doughboys, or whatever-it-is you want to call dough that is fried with powdered sugar on top. How's it possible to travel the world but never have experienced something found at every boardwalk, amusement park, and fairground in the United States?

Leaving Canada Today

All I've got to say is... dismantling and packing a tent in the rain freaking sucks!

Oh, and Nicky, if you're reading... You warned me you might not look your best when you arrive at the airport.  Well neither will I.  Nor will my car.

Sad news about a follower

On Monday, I learned from my sister that one of my followers, Charisse Cecil (aka CSoulScribe) passed away that morning.  She was 32, and died fairly quickly.

I only met Charisse once, while stopping by my sister's office, but something about her really caught my attention and I knew we'd chat more when I met her again.  I was delighted when she started to follow my blog, as she was my first almost-stranger to do so.  And I especially liked that she decided to follow because she liked my use of the word "woebegone" in one of my posts.  I found it both cool and unusual that a single word would catch someone's attention like that.

This week my sister shared some of Charisse's writing with me.  I'll urge you to read these three short poems based on photographs taken by other artists.  And for those of you who knew Charisse better than I did, I'm so sorry for your loss.

Farewell, stairwell
Metro Outlaw
Lottie

Prince Edward Islanders are the shittiest parkers on the planet

All of these shots are from one small parking lot.  I didn't even have to search for them, I could see all 5 transgressions from my own car's location.  Which is why they stood out, and I took their photos.

Prince Edward Island: Attractions

There's quite a bit to see and do on PEI, although most of it is pretty simple fare.  The islanders seem to take a lot of pride in most of it, though, and everyone I met would recommend places I should visit.

A spooky old house that I liked.

I'll start by talking about the one major thing I didn't see, and that was anything having to do with Anne of Green Gables.  I suspect that when most Americans are asked what they know about PEI, they manage to stammer out the name of that book (well, at least that's all I knew about the island before my visit) and indeed, it seems to be the most famous thing about the area.  But I worried before I went that all of the Anne sites would be really cheesy.  So I asked the locals and other people I met in Canada who had been there, and they all agreed the Anne sites were both cheesy and too crowded with tourists.  So I spend my time on other things.

A spooky old, abandoned church.

One unusual stop was the Fox Museum and Hall of Fame, a donation-based, one-room museum dedicated to PEI's fox pelt industry of the 20th Century.  I somehow missed the inductees into the Hall of Fame ... where they foxes or farmers?  I'll never know.

A potential fox hall-of-famer.

Another unusual stop was the Bottle House... well, actually three houses made entirely of bottles held in place my cement.  Some guy several decades ago decided to build these building out of abandoned bottles, then locals and visitors starting bringing him more bottles to help his work.  There's something like 10,000+ bottles per house.  Kitschy, but fun.

The alter of the bottle church.

The Potato Museum was another stop.  Potatoes were (and still are I think) one of the major industries of PEI.  In fact, it produces more potatoes than any other Canadian province.  Among other things, I learned that the potato originated in the Andes and were used and worshiped extensively by the Incas.  (I also just learned that "worshiped" has only one P.)  All along my international trip, I liked seeing how the culture of one country would blend into the next country, through things like religion, art, food, clothing, etc.  So I unexpectedly got to see how the culture of my last stop on the world tour (Peru) merged into the present day culture of PEI.

Is the exhibit or the potato the amazing thing?  Or both?

Incan potato pottery.

I lucked out on the day I went to the Potato Museum.  Its city, O'Leahy, was hosting its week-long Potato Blossom Festival, and I arrived in time to watch the parade!  O'Leahy is a small town, so I figure half of its citizens were in the parade, and the other half were watching along the route.  I was told it's pretty common for all the little towns around the island to have festival days, you just have to ask around to find out which town is holding a festival in any given week.

I heard she performed the same talent as the girl in Little Miss Sunshine.  Only with some potatoes thrown in.

Look out, D.C. Cowboys!

Um... yeah.

That same day I stopped at the Acadien Museum.  Have you heard of the Acadians?  I had not, until my visit here.  They were colonists from France who settled in the three maritime provinces in the 17th Century, then were treated very badly by England when the provinces became English-governed.  Many of them (or their descendants  more likely) returned to the area many years later, and they continue to speak in French and maintain many of the traditions of their ancestors.  I'm writing out of turn here, but the town I visited today in Nova Scotia -- Cheticamp -- also has a large Acadie population.

The Acadie flag.

Finally, I popped into a few graveyards around the Island.  I unknowingly (at the time) stopped at one of the most famous Acadie graveyards.  I liked it, as it overlooked farms in one direction, and the water immediately behind it.

Oh, last tidbit about my travels around PEI.  There are still lots of unpaved roads (which were a bit harrowing when wet from the rain!) and they are all this same shade of copper-orange.  The same color as my car, in fact, which prompted a local to note he couldn't tell if my car was clean or dirty, because it was the same color as the island mud!

From now on, I'll tell people the color of my car is "Prince Edward Island."

Three nights on Prince Edward Island: Lighthouses & Water

I spend three nights on Prince Edward Island, which I think is Canada's smallest province.  One could drive between the two furthest points on the island in about 2.5-3 hours, so I was able to see a lot of the island in a short period of time.  I'll break my blog into two posts, because I took a lot of photos and saw a number of things.  Too many for one post.  So not everything will be in order.

Being an island, one is never far from the water on PEI.  Most of the island feels like one huge farm, and there are maybe 4 areas that most people would call "cities," although they are more like "towns."  It also felt like I was at the end of the earth.  Even when I was driving or walking places where I couldn't see the water, and even though PEI is not the furthest eastern point of Canada, it felt very remote and isolated.  That might have been psychological, as I'd been thinking of PEI as my farthest northeast point of my trip, and I'd been looking at the map a lot.  /shrug

These are seals playing in the water.

And, being an island, PEI still has several of its old lighthouses (and a few new ones).  I think lighthouses speak for themselves, so I won't go on and on about them.

From the 1860s.  Furthest point from the mainland.

This is a "range light." Ships follow its steady beacon into the harbor.

Finally, being an island, there is water all around.  I stopped at one of PEI's more notable beaches:  home of the "Singing Sands" where, if you walk properly, you can hear the sand "sing" back at you.  Well, it really sounds more like squeaking or a dog yelping or something.  But I guess Singing Sands sounds more alluring than Squeaking Sands.

While the southernmost part of the Singing Sands was a pretty popular beach (and by popular, I mean by standards of the island, not, say, Florida or the mid-Atlantic beaches), by walking a few hundred yards north, one can have the beach all to themselves!

And in my final bit about PEI and the water... I left the island and went to Nova Scotia via ferryboat.  It's a faster way than driving to the eastern side of NS, and at $70 was only a little more expensive than the toll back across the PEI bridge to New Brunswick ($43!).  It's free to get onto the island, but you have to pay to escape.  I wonder if the high toll keeps PEI more isolated than it would otherwise be, as people wouldn't want to leave and return too often.  I also wonder if I'm getting over my motion sickness, as I've now taken a few ferries recently and haven't felt queasy at all.

Pulling away from the dock.

The view out to sea.

Through New Brunswick

I'm writing from Nova Scotia tonight, and I'm about a week behind in blogging.  Even with not writing every day, I am behind.  I have more to fill my evening hours than I did when I was abroad.  When I'm not with friends, I'm out to dinner, setting up camp and cooking, out for a jog, playing WoW, or chatting with friends on Skype.  I'm please with my discipline when it comes to getting exercise, but I've been very undisciplined about writing.  Anyhoo...

I left Quebec a week ago today and drove east to New Brunswick.  I knew I had a lot of time to kill during that day's drive, so I stopped a few random times to see what the roadside attractions were like in eastern Quebec Province and western New Brunswick.

My first stop, still in Quebec, was at Le Musee Francoise Pilote, a museum about agriculture and science.  I decided to visit on a whim, I didn't know what the museum contained until I was inside.  Anton, if you're reading, you would have loved it.  I liked it because it smelled like an old museum, and I learned stuff about farming and animal husbandry.

Is anyone else a little scared by that top owl?

The museum also had some non-agriculture related exhibits, like one about computers.  I played on the Appli IIe when I was a kid, and now it's in a museum?!  I'm not that old!

Photo taken and posted so my mom can see the quilt.

Later that day, after crossing into New Brunswick, I drove over the world's longest covered bridge.  It gets a lot of traffic, actually, and each side has to take turns going through because it's only one lane wide.

Eat your heart out, Madison County!

My first major stop in New Brunswick was King's Landing.  King's Landing was built in the 1960s when the government dammed the St. John's River, flooding the riverbanks upstream of the flood.  To save all of the historic buildings, they were moved to this one spot -- King's Landing -- sometimes piece by piece, and reconstructed there.

Now it's one of those historical villages, where everyone who works there acts in character, but also makes products that are sold to the public (foodstuffs, lumber, printing jobs, etc.) or are used in the town itself.  For example, if you go into any of the houses at lunchtime, you'll find the staff gathered around the dining room tables, eating the food that was recently cooked over the open fires or in the cast iron stoves.

They use old fashioned tools to shape the lumber, then use it or sell it.

Scarecrow or 19th Century cheerleader?

It's hard to tell in the photo, but these pigs are enormous!

I stayed several hours but could have stayed longer.  However, I had a 5:30 date with the high tide in the Bay of Fundy waiting for me a few hours to the east, so I had to leave kind of early.

If you haven't heard of the Bay of Fundy, it is the place on earth with the largest difference in height between low tide and high tide.  I remember learning about the place in 9th grade Earth Science, and when I discovered it was mostly on my path towards Prince Edward Island, I had to stop.

Seeing the Bay at both low and high tides requires a wait of at least 6 hours, and it was most efficient for me to see high tide in the evening, then low tide the next midday.  As you can see from the photos, the difference in the height of the water is huge.  And I didn't even see the Bay at its absolute highest or lowest.

It's a little freaky, standing on a beach, and seeing the shoreline about 200 yards away, then looking up and knowing that in 6 hours, the shoreline will be 10 feet above your head.

At high tide, the water reaches up to where the rock mushrooms out.

On camping

I have now spent several nights of my trip camping at various campgrounds in the U.S. and Canada.  And I'm learning a lot.  For example...

Taking the tent down takes almost as much time, maybe longer, than putting the tent up.  Oh, in an emergency, I could take it down in 5 minutes and toss it unfolded into the back seat of my car (like, if I had to take it down in a storm, which I sure hope I don't have to do).  But to get it cleaned and dried, like you're supposed to, and wrapped up in a way that the next set-up will go smoothly, takes quite a bit of time.

Generally, I've been sleeping pretty well in the tent.  I was worried at first that I'd be scared and I wouldn't be able to sleep.  Scared of animals or noises I couldn't identify or of bad people.  That hasn't been the case, although I came to dread the birds every morning in Iowa, because they were very squawky, starting at 4 am.  :(  Oh, and at my Quebec campground, some fellow campers told me to watch out for the bear(!) that was supposedly wandering around the grounds on my first morning there, but I didn't see the bear myself (too bad, really) and I stayed away from the edges just in case.

But the temperature inside the tent fluctuates a lot and it can be hard to keep warm (at night, when the temperature drops) or cool (any time the sun in on the tent, and it starts to act like a greenhouse).  Keeping the windows open while the sun is up helps, of course, but that makes things like changing clothes a pain in the butt.  I either have to roll up the windows, head to the bathroom, or just resign myself to changing my clothes with a (possible) audience.

I've also learned to cook with my single-burner propane stove, although I'm still a little afraid of it.  It needs to be started with a match, which makes me nervous, then it's tall so gives the appearance and maybe the actuality of being wobbly.  And it's a single burner with no surrounding "table" so anything cooked on it is balanced pretty precariously on top, and I imagine accidentally pouring boiling water on myself as I try to cook.  :(  No accidents so far, though, and my fear of the thing will make me be careful with it.

Overall camping is fun, and saves a lot of money.  But it takes a lot of time and brings a few discomforts with it.  One has to stop earlier and either wake earlier or leave later than if they were at a motel.  I'll keep doing it, though, when the weather cooperates and the local motels are too expensive.

Montreal & Quebec

From the Toronto area, I headed east towards the Atlantic Coast.  On the way, I spent time in Montreal and Quebec City, both of which have an "old town" although Quebec's is much older and much cooler.

Montreal

Montreal (an old convent)

Quebec

Quebec

I'd been to Quebec City when I was about 11 and my memories were vague but that it was like Europe, with narrow streets and old buildings.  And yes, it was still like that.  A chunk of my time was spent just wandering the streets, popping into shops and things.  And into this church, which has some historical significance I've now forgotten.  Maybe it's just an old church, on a big square in the old city.

Some old church in Quebec

It contains this magical flying boat.

I also took a tour of the Citadel, which is a walled fortress overlooking the city and is still an active military base (so you need to take the guided tour to see the grounds).  It was pretty cool to look at and learn about, and added to the knowledge I'm either learning or remembering about eastern Canada's history.  (Things like, I vaguely remember there was a war between the British and the French in the 18th Century, but I don't know what it was about.)  Among other things, I learned that the Citadel was originally a French fort, and that in whatever war it was, the French lost it to the British in twenty (20) minutes.  Maybe because the French sent runway models onto the field to defend the fort.

The French Army

At the Citadel:  This device keeps the official time.

The Citadel

Montreal's old city was also nice, for a downtown area in a big city, but not as cool or fancy as Quebec's.  Its highlight is the Church of Notre Dame of Montreal, a huge and ornate Catholic Church.  As in several of my other stops along the way, I learned more about the history of the area at the church, because in addition to being a church, it's highly decorated with scenes from Montreal's past.  I liked that the building was both a religious center and an homage to its city.

Notre Dame de Montreal

The French converting the Indians, instead of slaughtering them, unlike some other countries I could name.