OH CANADA: OFFICIALLY HEADING TO THE STATES

June, 2018

There’s just a little more than 1,400 miles between Baddeck, Nova Scotia and Detroit, Michigan.  Our way back into the States through Detroit?  We have chosen to spend some time in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula – well at least the eastern half of it.  To get to the UP it’s either a damn long isolated route north to Sault Ste. Marie or a more direct populated route (Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Windsor) and re-entry through Detroit.  We usually keep our daily travel miles to no more than 200-250 miles, and therefore have 6 stops along the way back to the States.  You already know about leaving Baddeck and our visit to the Hopewell Rocks while staying in Shediac.  Our next stop would be Woodstock, New Brunswick simply because it was the right distance from Shediac.

Along the way to Woodstock we saw signs for Maine and New Hampshire border crossings; a reminder of just how close we were to the US.  The highest rated campsite in the area was Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park, our first adventure with a campground devoted to entertaining families.  Driving into the park we passed oversized inflatables, a “Giant Jiggling Jumping Pillow” loaded with kids of all ages, several pools, waterslides and a waterpark playground, and a miniature golf course.  Our site was thankfully some distance from all of the family shenanigans, weekend guests and local families in just for the day to enjoy all the amenities a park like this has to offer, including nightly hayrides, bedtime stories and a songfest lead by camp staff known as Rangers.  The park is highly choreographed, with daily schedules of kid-centered fun: arts and crafts activities, scavenger hunts, target tag games, and lots of unstructured time to just run around and be kids.  Streets were named after the Yogi Bear cartoon crew: Boo Boo Blvd., Picnic Basket Drive and Ranger Road.  What a joyful place to be!  We found ourselves longing to share this campground with our own grandkids.

So what is there to do in Woodstock?  Visitors can marvel at the longest covered bridge in the world, they can arrange a tour of the potato chip factory, or they can go bowling. What could be more delightful?

Built between 1898-1901, the Hartland Bridge, in Hartland, New Brunswick is 1,282 feet long, and it crosses the Saint John River from Hartland to Somerville.  The covered bridge claims to be the longest covered bridge in the world.  One local attraction down and two to go!

Next we went to check out the Covered Bridge Potato Chip factory. We decided against the tour and shopped for flavored potato chips instead, settling on fried dill pickle, barbecue, and sour cream and onion.  The potatoes are locally grown, dark russet potatoes, and despite how bad they are for our diet, we enjoyed every last morse!

To complete today’s trifecta we drove to the Woodstock Bowlacade.  Bowlacade?Candlepin Bowling?  The octogenarian owner explained to us that Candlepin bowling has been around for over 3200 years, dating back to ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire, and references to bowling games are found in English and German history (lawn bowling anyone?).  Candlepin bowling has several unique qualities. First the pins. They look like rolling pins minus their handles.  Second the ball.  It is wooden and a little larger than the size of a croquet ball (between an 8- and 12-pound outdoor shot).  Third the game.  The scorecard and wooden alley look the same as one would expect to find in an American bowling alley, but that’s where the similarity ends.  Players get three throws with the wooden ball to knock down all the pins.  The pins that fall over are not cleared between throws making for an interesting strategy to knock down the remaining pins.  The owner is long a veteran of the game, and he said that no one has ever scored a perfect game.  We declined to bowl with bumpers and bowled three games; neither of us scored over 100 points.  The format of this game is a great equalizer, and strategies like aiming for the headpin achieved inconsistent results.  We were often more successful when we had a gutter ball that bounced out of the gutter at the end of the throw!  What a blast!

Back at Jellystone Park we enjoyed some miniature golf and the always-popular Bingo before calling it a day.  We had a leisurely morning the next day to bid New Brunswick goodbye and off we headed to Quebec Province.

Barbara and Brian