At 7:40 AM and 64 degrees we said good-bye to Bob and Gloria and set out on our way north to Canada. We drove for several hours through rural Maine where 70 degrees is comfortable enough for shorts and short-sleeved shirts; Maine, where they are proud of their history and do not tear down old homes to make way for new ones, a place where charming 100+ year old homes are appreciated and are massaged and treated with loving care;  Maine, where old churches are still churches and where, in some towns, every other telephone pole has a large American flag mounted on it, flowing in the gentle breeze.   We drove through small towns where people are born and raised, work all of their lives, raise their families, die and are buried in the graveyards next to the churches where they worshiped every Sunday morning, where single and doublewides rest on large plots of land and are intermingled with 70's ranches, 50’s bungalows, colonials and modern homes, all sharing the same landscape, and where, scattered among all of these, old farm houses sit beside barns with rusty roofs and siding thirsty for a coat of paint. 

We drove through forests of green maple and oak trees, intermingled with white pine and spruce and speckled with white birch. And we drove past blueberry fields where workers were busy harvesting with their long-handled rakes. And we shopped at Bell’s IGA where the parking spaces are longer than the usual spaces, presumably to allow for the parking of the customary long-cabbed pick-ups that so many people drive in this part of the world.

Eventually we made it to the border crossing in Calais, Maine where we were "randomly selected"  by a computer for a full-car search. That held us up for more than half an hour. Of course, we passed that with flying colors and were eventually on our way. We arrived in Saint John, NB around 4 PM and, after driving in circles for a while, trying for some interesting views and photos of the coastline, we checked into our hotel for the night, tired, hungry and ready for a relaxing glass of wine. Tomorrow, Nova Scotia.