O, Canada!

A few seconds after I take this photo, we are in Canada! 

 AFTER A COUPLE DAYS  of driving, and a night at Wendilee's, we hit the border at St. Stephen's, New Brunswick.

 The border guard, Jordan, asks for our passports and we hand them over. He is a young man, clean-shaven, a little humorless.

 He asks the purpose of our trip, and we tell him tourism. He asks if we have anything in the van that we are planning to leave in Canada. Electronics, televisions, gifts? No.
Our hotel in Truro. Love how her pants
match the hanging flowers. 
"Do you have any guns, mace or self-protective devices?" he asks.

 "Do you think we need some?" I ask.

 He doesn't find me funny. Doesn't crack a smile. Even so, he lets us into Canada and we are on our way.

 It is really exciting to be in another country. And it is really different, immediately. It feels different. It looks different. The streets are a different width. The highway signs are worded differently. The set-backs are different. The store parking lots (we pull into one to look at a map) are set up differently. These are all tiny things, but together, they insist into your consciousness and make you notice that you are in a different country.

 We ground ourselves a bit and set off north. Soon enough, we are on the Trans-Canada Highway, a beautiful, smooth road that we will stay on, more or less, throughout Nova Scotia.

 All along the way, we see "No Vacancy" signs on the hotels. We have a reservation for the night, in Truro, so we don't have to worry - but the "no vacancies" are surprising. Later in the trip, we find out that many Canadians are fearful of Trump, and unhappy with him, and so they are taking their vacations in Canada instead of the U.S., where, typically, they would go.
***
Wild Blueberry Land




“Which way are you going?” Wendilee asks after supper in Winter Harbor. We tell her the route we’re planning on taking to North Sydney, Nova Scotia. 

“Oh, good,” she says. “You’ll go by the giant blueberry.”

The talk moves to other subjects, and honestly, I forget all about the giant blueberry. 

But the next morning, after about an hour on the road - an hour of pine trees and pine trees and more pine trees - we drive by…. a GIANT blueberry! 

I pull over and do a U-turn, and we go back. It’s not open, but I drive around and take photos, and later, look it up. 

It’s formally called Wild Wescogus Berries, with “Wescogus” meaning “above the water” in the Passamaquoddy language. It is run by Dell and Marie Emerson, who built it in 2001. 

According to the website, Dell worked at the University of Maine for 53 years on the only wild blueberry research farm in the country. Mrs. Blueberry, a chef, taught in the Maine community college system for two decades. 

The Emersons say that the wild blueberry, cranberry and wild grape are the only three fruits native to North America. Blueberries are grown in two-year cycles, and the glacial soil of Downeast Maine is perfect for them. 

My question is - if you are cultivating wild blueberries, can you still call them “wild”? 


For more, check wildblueberryland.com

***
Road Art


This guy was advertising fireworks, somewhere in Maine

***
Dog of the Day
It's Woody, left, with the cone, and half of Abby, too, on the right. 
Peter says Woody is out of the cone now, and doing well.  

***
A Final Thought

"Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world."

- Gustave Flaubert

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