Traveling PT Adventures: Where to start

Sue and I did so much this weekend I really don't even know where to start. I guess the beginning is as good a place as any. :)
We left my house Saturday morning and headed to the Blueberry Festival in Machias. Along the way we saw a huge field of blueberries with a bunch of blueberry pickers out working. Maine wild blueberries are a lot smaller then what you get in the store. The pickers use these rakes to pick the berries off the tiny bushes.

The blueberry festival was much nicer then the Skowhegan State Fair that I went to on Monday of last week. I tasted a bunch of different blueberry jellies, salsas, and preserves. We had blueberry pie and saw the end of a blueberry pie eating contest. Sue met some people she knew and they had friends in town from Gainesville! What a small world. It was a nice to feel connected to Florida. We left the festival with a few books from the local libraries book sale and 15 pounds of blueberries. Yum!

Then we went over to Campobello Island, New Brunswick. This little island is a part of Canada even though its only connection to the main land is a bridge connecting it to the US. It was strange that while you are standing on the island you can see US soil. In fact, you could probably swim across to it if you were a pretty good swimmer and you didn't mind hypothermia, but you can't call there without international long distance charges and you can't cross the bridge without a passport.

The US so close, yet so far away.

Campobello is only 8 miles long and 5 miles wide, and is home to about 1,000 people. It lays claim to having the only international park in the world, The Roosevelt Campobello Park, along with Franklin D Roosevelt's summer home since he was a child. The island is surrounded, in part, by the Bay of Fundy which has the largest tides in the world. They can be up to 25-30 ft high! It was amazing how the landscape changed from high tide to low tide. We went to the northern tip of the island to see the East Quoddy Lighthouse which you can only get to during low tide. At high tide it is no longer accessible by foot. There were gorgeous views and it was neat to think that you were walking over the bottom of the ocean floor (or what would be the bottom in a few hours.) There were some pretty steep stairs to get over to the lighthouse and you could see seaweed growing on the stairs that were near the bottom.

standing at the base of the stairs, low tide

Tide coming in near the stairs I mentioned from the previous pic.

Water up to the stairs now. All the rocks covered.

After we hiked the little trail back from the lighthouse to the mainland we spent quite some time just sitting looking out over the bay. We saw whales, porpoises, and seals hanging out in the water. It was so peaceful.

Since this is the "busy" season for the island they were having a little concert at the lighthouse. Which consisted of a three person singing group and about 20 people in the audience. So we got to see the sunset while we listened to music... BUT what was even more entertaining was when someone came up and announced that there was a boat sinking on in the harbor. Apparently, this boat had hit a whale and the boat sunk in less then a minute. There was another boat nearby that picked up the people. The whale...just swam away like nothing happened. Do not try to take on a whale in a boat. You will lose. According to the locals this type of collision was a first and, let me tell you, it was the biggest news this little island has seen in a while. Everyone knew about it before the evening was out.
So what did Sue and I decide to do the next day? ... Go on a whale watching tour! :)
It was a ton of fun and we did not hit any whales. The whales that we saw were fin whales which can grow to be about 80-90ft long. I have never seen a whale in real life before so I could never really get a good perspective on how big they are. I have my perspective now...they are pretty darn big! It was one of the most amazing sites. I loved it when they would come up to breathe and you would hear this big puff of air and water and when the sun would hit it just right it would make a rainbow in the mist. Breathtaking!

It was really hard to get a picture or video of the whales since you never knew where they were going to come up for air, but I did get one video just by pure luck. However, it would not let me post it to the blog (maybe it is too long). Anyway, it is posted on my facebook profile if you would like to see it.

After the whale watching we walked some trails in the park and toured FDR's summer home.
Since we had seen the East Quoddy Lighthouse on Campobello we decided we needed to see the West Quoddy lighthouse across the bridge in Lubec, Maine. The sight of this lighthouse is the most Eastern Point of the US. I have been to the most southern point in Key West and now the most eastern point. Maybe I will add hitting all four points of the US to my bucket list.
After the pic of the West Quoddy lighthouse are some random pics from the trip.