Ah yes, summer in the Hamptons: sun, sea, and a classroom of snotty Chinese kids. After three weeks of summer term trying to wrestle iPhones away from them and teach them how to put together a coherent sentence, Anna and I decided to take advantage of the week off before staff training for the upcoming year and de-stress with a road trip. Since Anna had never been camping before and I hadn't been since I was 16, we bought a cheap tent and headed north to Maine for some peace and quiet---and cool weather. First stop: Acadia National Park via Portland.
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| Portland Harbor. |
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| Narrow gauge railway! |
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| Bah Hahbah. |
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| Acadia NP, Mount Desert Island. |
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| Caspar David Friedrich? |
Anna had always dreamed of going to Maine, and of course, it was beautiful---plenty of nature, pine-scented air, and cheap gas to boot. On the first day, we dreamed of having a little cabin in the Maine woods, but after a few days we were stumped by the question: what the hell do people
do in Maine? I mean sure, there's the tourist season, but otherwise it appears the only thing people did was work in the grocery store, fish for lobsters, and cut wood. Plus, it must get real isolated in the winter with all the snow and whatnot. A few days driving through Maine convinced us that living there might not be such a good idea: nothing to do, and a little too isolated for us.
Nonetheless, we had a lovely time strolling around Bar Harbor (its kitchy touristness remided me of Ocean City), hiking in Acadia, and giggling at the local accent. The beer in Maine was good, and the stars were incredibly bright at night. However, since we only had a week, we wanted to maximize the places we could see, so we continued north. Final destination: Prince Edward Island, Canada.
To get to PEI, you have to drive through New Brunswick first. If you think that Maine is isolated, have a drive up through New Brunswick. Talk about
nothing. I think the sheer size of the forests and space was overwhelming for Anna, and when we had some minor car trouble along the way and had to stop (amazing what a 6-penny nail can fix!), I dare say she was a bit scared. But the landscape was beautiful, the accents even funnier, and the Francophone radio stations played some
really good music.
After a four-hour drive through New Brunswick and a drive over an 8-mile straight of open ocean flanked by the mountains of Novia Scotia, we finally made it to Prince Edward Island, a red-shored jewel in the azure north Atlantic.
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| PEI---we made it!! |
If you would like to get a good idea of the meaning of
idyllic, you have to visit PEI. It is an island of rolling farmland dotted with tiny cottages with perfectly-cut lawns. The roads wound around farms and undulated through forests and crossed over shallow tidal bays, which made for pleasant driving, and no town was more than five minutes' drive from the next. The weather was warm during the day, and cool at night---indeed, it is nearly perfect. Well, it's perfect until you have to go to the store (food is expensive, with a 6-pack of beer weighing in at $15) or fill up the tank with petrol (more than $5 a gallon). But the beauty of PEI's nature and friendliness of its people made it worthwhile, and we had a wonderful time exploring its red sand shores and tiny fishing villages. Oh, and did I forget the best oysters I've ever eaten?
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| Cavendish. |
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| Anna of Green Gables |
PEI is bigger than it looks on the map, and since we were a 1000 miles from home and had only a couple days to get back, we could only explore a fraction of the island. We both promised that we would be back some day soon, but I still shed a tear as I watched the steep red cliffs disappear in the rearview mirror. Back to New Brunswick, the land of dead porcupines, and on to New York.
