Happy Father’s Day! Paul’s gift was clean laundry and I made the tuna salad. We are busy during the day checking off the list of museums, tide changes, and all the sites mentioned in brochures; by nightfall we check email and do a bit on facebook (which is very easy to update). If you are coming here for updates, I’ll aim for at least once a week; wifi can be spotty also which is what this site needs. We can do facebook on the iPad and the 3G network; life with technology is so very easy. Myphotoalbum is easy to update also and the pictures are probably more interesting; be sure to do them as a slideshow because it is quicker and then you can go back to pictures of particular interest.
Currently I am sitting on my bench looking out over the Bay of Fundy and over into Maine. The Kiwanis Oceanfront Camping is at the point of the peninsula where St. Andrews is situated; we have truly been enjoying the view. Today we drove to the Fairmont Algonquin and checked out the lobby with pictures from 1915 to the present, dining area, pool, and gift shop; again – the views are magnificent. Also tried to see Katy’s Cove, the beach area but it was all gated; so we drove past the several cemeteries: St. Andrews Cemetery – nice drive through looking at headstones past and present, the Loyalist Burying Ground – all locked up, and the Historic RC Cemetery. Yesterday we walked through Kingsbrae Gardens at the head of King Street for a few hours; also saw the eleven sculptures vying for the $10,000 first prize. From there we walked to Downtown (five blocks) and walked the five blocks along the waterfront; St. Andrews First Annual Seafood Festival sported several canopied vendors and in the larger tent the chefs from the Kennedy Hotel and Fairmont Algonquin prepared salmon and lobster dishes – we were around to try two of them. We did buy some salmon jerky; now that’s different. Lunch was a lobster and swiss sandwich at Sweet Harvest. We walked out on the pier and looked back at town; yep, there is a 28’ tide here; high watermarks on the rocks and pilings and the floating docks make that very evident. At the end of town is St. Andrews Blockhouse National Historic Site built during the War of 1912 to protect the town from American privateers; Navy Island is about a mile away in the bay and Maine (don’t know what town, if any) is just about a mile further – yep, I can see the USA from here! On Friday we drove a few miles to the Atlantic Salmon Interpretive Centre; didn’t even know there were Atlantic salmon and Pacific salmon; but the Atlantic salmon must be smarter – they don’t die after spawning and can return several times if they survive the hazards of ocean migration. The website for more info is http://www.asf.ca It was time for lunch so we stopped at a roadside stand, the ClamDigger Seafood Take-out in Chamcook and ate at the picnic benches; cute little girl named Chloe and her brother Xavier kept us company while they played on the swing set. Fortified with fish and lobster, we drove to the Saint Croix Island Historic Site and looked across the bay at the island first settled in 1604 but then moved to Port Royal, NS, because of the terrible winter storms (very good presentation boards along the paths) and made plans to visit Annapolis Royal near Digby next week. We had to check out Ministers Island, which can only be reached by driving over the access bar road when the tide is low; we happened to arrive at low tide but decided against looking at another rich man’s estate that we can probably view online. The grocery didn’t have diet Dr. Pepper so we drove to the convenience store – yes, Regina is in luck. Well, I guess that about covers the last few days. Time for another meal. BTW, pictures are of sand bar to Ministers Island, St. Andrews downtown, and St. Croix in background.