New Brunswick

Ah, another trip to our northern neighbors.  When looking at our atlas, I had decided upon Aroostook State Park, up near Caribou.  I mean, Caribou, right?  Only there are no caribou in Caribou.  But it is fairly northern, and the atlas had tons of roads in and through the area, so there must be a grocery store nearby, right?  So with all those reasons, that's why we went north (plus, I had never been that north in Maine before).  But Bill found a cheaper campground (Maine's state parks are EXPENSIVE) with full hookups in New Brunswick.  We are much happier when we're able to use many lights, can run A/C when needed, and can watch a movie now and again.  So we took advantage of Canada's hospitality.  

We stayed at Mulherin's Campground near Grand Falls, New Brunswick.  Bill found this by accident, as it doesn't show up in any of his apps, but it was recommended to him by another campground that was filled up for the weekend.  Mulherin's is so nice, we decided to stay the week until we had reservations at Acadia.  The first night we took a walk to the pond, Bill showed off his duck calling skills.  They seriously booked it over to us.  By the time we left, they were wise to us.  Some would always come over, but it was just perfunctory--someone was paying them good money to appease the crazy customers!            

We could hear a ton of frogs, but only found them now and again.  Amazing camouflage those guys were sporting.  NB took this picture--the frog looks just like the slime he's living near.  There are tall grasses on the edge of the pond, and I scared a frog that was in those grasses one day.  He moved so fast, he freaked me out.  Clearly I need to work on my zen meditation.                

The evening before we left, I spotted this dude.  Bill checked with the owners of the campground, and he's a muskrat.  Apparently there's a whole family there, but this one is the only one I ever saw.  Never saw it again, in fact.  Not for lack of trying, trust me.                  

We also crossed back into the US a couple times.  One evening we went to Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge, which was in maintenance mode, so we didn't do much.  The auto tour was shut down for spraying and such.  We also wanted to find the moose that everyone assured us we'd find aplenty, but we missed those, too.  We did drive Rt. 1 all the way up to Ft. Kent.  It was a pretty cool drive, very scenic, and much more populous than people led us to believe.  Still rural, but towns interspersed throughout, unlike the west, where you can go for hundreds of miles with NOTHING.            

We did NOT eat at McDonald's for dinner, despite the promise of surf and turf.  Yeah, we passed.                                        

Back in Canada, we hit the Gorge and Falls.  So beautiful. We even walked out on a scenic overlook.  If you looked down, you could see all the way to your death.  I only made that mistake once.                                      

On our way back, we saw Saturn.  It was at that point that I remembered that the University of Maine has a HUGE model of the solar system up and down Rt 1.  We missed the sun through Jupiter, but we managed to see all the rest.  It was really cool to see as we drove down the highway.  My pictures did NOT turn out well, but the website shows them off very nicely.