Road Trippin’

by Ev Newton

When Judy and I picked up the M3 in April 2003, we charged off on an impromptu lap of northern New England to burn the break-in miles and unravel the mysteries of that little yeehah! button on the console. Fun – oh, yeah – but something was MISSING. We came home, we drove the driving schools and rallied some rallies, but we never indulged in that great American ritual, the no-itinerary, no-reservations, no-holds-barred ROAD TRIP. Till now. Sunday morning, September 12, trip odometer 0.0, compass (if we’d had one) pointed N, Valentine One set to “stun,” we headed for the Maine coast and points beyond.

Star-date 7 hours, 385 miles. After evading the mostly southbound hordes on I-95, we descended on a sleepy, out-of-season Bar Harbor, only to discover the mighty cruise ship Norwegian Prince of Darkness moored in the bay. Three thousand fun-seekers (and that was just the damn crew!) washed over the town, leaving Stella Artois umbrellas shredded in their wake and stripping Starbucks-by-the-Sea of its last Arabican Peaberry coffee bean. We resisted the temptation to join the merrymaking and instead retreated to the dimmest recesses of Acadia National Park. Now, truth be known, neither Judy nor I is a born-to-trek backpacker and wilderness-seeker. If you are possessed of such an inspired soul, then Acadia is your Shangri-La. It is crammed with enough natural wonders to start a new branch of a major science. If you are driving a red M3, however, Acadia holds but one fire-breathing wonder to ignite your imagination: the curling, sinuous, backtracking, convoluted, practically Moebian road to the top of Cadillac Mountain – and back. You need not exceed the park speed limit (whatever it was) by a whole lot to appreciate geometry in its most glorious manifestation. This little drive gives new life to the terms left, right, up, down and “Whoa, Nellie!”

We returned to Cadillac later that same night, at a more sedate pace, to lie on our backs on the summit and inhale the black sky that never appears in light-soaked Connecticut. The Milky Way slashes across that utter blackness, and the stars are so brilliant and numerous that it is difficult to pick out familiar constellations. The night sky is one reason we keep returning to Maine and the Canadian Maritimes.

While you’re in Bar Harbor, by the way, spend the extra 50 bucks and stay at the Inn at Bay Ledge, where Jack and Loni Something have assembled an elegant house at cliff’s edge overlooking a tranquil bay and enough rocks to send a fleet of Princes of Darkness to their well-deserved doom. The place completely belies that fact that, in a former life, Jack used to acquire real estate for McDonald’s restaurants. The irony was as delicious as the breakfast.

10 a.m. Tuesday morning, 560 miles, Eastport, Maine, which is reputed to be the easternmost city in the lower 48 states – by everyone but the nice folks in nearby Lubec, Maine. Far more significant than Eastport’s geographical quasi-uniqueness, however, is the time-warp that is Raye’s Mustard Mill. Five massive stone wheels, whose actual ages are lost in antiquity, grind local and exotic mustard seeds to a mystical slurry of yellow magic. The millwheels are belt-driven by an overhead shaft, once powered by steam, and the final product is bottled by a combination of hydraulics cobbled together in the 1940s and sleight of hand. A tasting table was overrun by mustard fanatics, your humble reporter not excepted. How many of you have ever spent $77 on mustard? I have the receipt.

Later Tuesday, on a coin-flip and a confluence of well-timed arrivals, we caught the last ferry from St. John, New Brunswick to Digby, Nova Scotia and three hours later checked into the Admiral Digby Inn, not far from the ferry slip. Digby is a village of unselfconscious charm, with but one reason for being: scallops. The local Digby scallop is the size of a $1.50 stack of quarters, midway between a sea scallop and a bay scallop. The townsfolk treat the little beast with the reverence it deserves, and they reserve the freshest scallops on the planet for Digby residents and lucky guests. When in Digby, you can – and should – eat scallops in omelets, in chowder, in butter sauce and on buns, morning, noon and night. We stayed with the Admiral two nights and left sated.

Nova Scotian roads were good to the M3, with a single exception noted later. Highways are lightly populated two-lane affairs, dotted with ample passing zones, and the citizenry knows to keep right except when passing. Radar detectors are banned in Nova Scotia, so we retired the Valentine to the trunk, but as it turned out, we never saw any radar to detect. We routinely slowed down when overtaking so as not to terrorize the nice Honda drivers. Nova Scotian gasoline, however, is not so good to the M3. Hi-test in Nova Scotia means 91 octane selling for as much as CDN$1.029 cents per liter. The computer coped with the reduced calorie gas far better than I did the high calorie price. Allowing for the exchange rate and the metric conversion, we paid something uncomfortably close to US$3 per gallon.

Thursday, 964 miles, Lunenburg. Lunenburg is one of a handful of places in the universe designated by UNESCO as a world heritage site, one that captures the essence of another time. Lunenburg today is both a window into the 19 th century fishing industry and a touristy parody of that industry. Its harbor front could be the world heritage post card; it is breathtakingly beautiful. Fishing remains an important occupation in town, and the fleet in the harbor is authentic. But too many of the lovely little restaurants on the water serve pre-portioned frozen fish, likely as not from Japan, and the quaint shops sell mostly tee shirts. Still, we lingered for three days, taking some meals a few kilometers up the road in less-flashy Mahone Bay (try the Chowder House, right on the water). In Lunenburg, we stayed in the 120-year-old Boscawen Inn, high above the harbor. $109 per night, Canadian. Did I mention the advantageous exchange rate?

Sunday, with 1402 miles on the clock at the end of the day, we checked into the newly renovated Gillespie House in Parrsboro. To comprehend Parrsboro requires a little Nova Scotia tidal science and a good bit of paleogeology, neither of which have I fully mastered. Distilled to its essence, the official line is that tides and the funneling effect of the Bay of Fundy and the wedge-shaped Minas Basin in western Nova Scotia conspire to produce a tidal variation of as much as 48 feet in six hours. The tidal surge past Parrsboro, four times a day, carries more water than all the rivers on Earth. Standing at the municipal pier in Parrsboro harbor while this is going on (and it’s always going on; it’s the tide) is a treat of global significance. At low tide, not only is there no water in the harbor, but Parrsborians cannot even SEE the water from the pier. Operating a fishing boat from Parrsboro requires a delicate sense of timing.

A few hundred million years of tidal washing at Parrsboro has laid bare the bedrock along the walls of the Minas Basin.   From the rock has gradually emerged a menagerie of dinosaur bones, trilobites and assorted fossils from every age in the history of the planet. You can walk the ocean floor along the Parrsboro cliffs at low tide and find fossils like beachcombers in less blessed parts of the world find seashells. As you stroll the base of the fossil cliffs, you watch carefully over your shoulder for the onrushing tide to return.

1525 miles, Monday afternoon. The Minas Basin and the Bay of Fundy meet Chignecto Bay, which separates New Brunswick from Nova Scotia, at a point called Cape D’Or.   Three miles of hardscrabble road named Hardscrabble Road lead to the lighthouse and a panoramic view of the Basin-meets-Bay tidal skirmish. To the right is a little sign reading “Restaurant and Accommodations at Bottom of Cliff.” I take a deep breath and point the M3 almost straight down a crushed-rock path that drops alarmingly toward the sea. The path ends with a hairpin turn into a grassy area; the last thousand feet to the water is navigable only by parachute. Incomprehensibly, a Saskatchewan expatriate operates a tiny restaurant and a three-room B&B at this astounding plateau at the edge of the Earth. He makes potent seafood chowder and plays any music he wants on his stereo; he has the best job on the planet. He says to me, “You won’t have trouble climbing back up the cliff as long as you have 4-wheel-drive.” Uh-oh. “Front-wheel-drive is OK, too,” he says. Uh-oh times two. “As long as you don’t have those fancy low-profile tires, that is; the stones eat them up something terrible.” I don’t tell him I have no spare tire. He blithely offers to drive it out for me. Bravely but briefly, I skewer him with my coldest stare. I nevertheless take his advice and get a running start into the hairpin, tracking out at the sign reading, “DANGER, Unstable Cliff Edge.” Feathering onto the gas, I accelerate out of the turn into a series of loose-stone moguls that cause me to lose my nerve and slow to about 5 mph. Stalled it! Back down the hill; try again.

Eventually, we got to the top in one piece, without asking Mr. Smug Restaurateur to take the wheel. Some guy in a Subaru at the top of the cliff applauded. I inspected my tires, pleased to find no damage.

Back on the main road, payback! The road from Cape D’Or hugs the west coast of Nova Scotia through the tiny fossil-berg of Joggins, then dives inland for 50 twisting miles with no towns, no intersections, no people. I never saw the Subaru again. I love this car. 1640 miles, we check into a Generic Inn in Amherst, road-tripped out, for now.

Tuesday, September 21, 1685 miles. We have decided on Prince Edward Island because we have never driven the new bridge from New Brunswick. The no-nonsense, concrete-pier bridge spans 8 miles of the wild Northumberland Strait, one lane and a miserly breakdown lane in each direction. At the end, we motor sedately (everything in PEI happens sedately) across 40-odd miles of potato fields and Anne of Green Gables tourist traps to oyster-Mecca: the “town” of Malpeque, aiming straight for the harbor with all taste buds firing. There we find . . .     nothing. The local oyster bar is nailed shut for the season, dock deserted, boats parked. Disappointed, we press on to the lesser-known village of Stanley Bridge, which turns out to be the home of Carr’s Oyster Bar and of oysters so fresh they taste like the ocean itself. (Note to editor: two dozen of them, shiny, slippery and raw, with a little horseradish. Yum!)

A few miles further on, we checked into Coastline Cottages, overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence. From Cottage 4, we watched the normally gentle Gulf surf, driven by the remnants of Hurricane Ivan (which, thankfully, passed far to our east), beat it self to froth on the rocks.

Wednesday, with 1808 miles behind us, we turned south, planning to overnight in St. John, NB or possibly St. Andrews, just north of the U.S. border. But the highway from Moncton to St. John was so open and deserted that we made somewhat better time than the law and perhaps common sense allow. More than this I shall not put in writing.

Later Wednesday, 2080 miles and only 35 miles north of the U.S. border, we braked hard for an exit labeled “Grand Manan Island Ferry” and, after an unforeseen 90-minute crossing, landed at the island’s Grand Harbor. Now, for all we knew, Grand Manan (rhymes with “ Japan”) could have been a New Brunswickian version of Plum Island. We were therefore pleased to find friendly fishing villages, heart-stopping scenery at every curve in the road, and a clean, modestly priced (OK, cheap at CDN$75) waterfront cottage. We stayed two nights, with an excursion to White Head Island, a little further in the general direction of Ireland. The ferry ride there is free, and for good reason: there’s nothing on WHI but a post office, a couple dozen houses and a ferry slip. Back in Grand Manan, we capped Thursday evening with lobster and scallops and a nice Shiraz at the Compass Rose, which dangles from a cliff over Grand Harbor. Serendipity lives on, on Grand Manan Island.

The time always comes on any road trip when you want to go – you need to go – HOME. Friday morning, September 24 and 2185 miles into our trip, that time came, so we boarded the ferry to the mainland and hightailed it for Connecticut. We arrived in Manchester on Saturday afternoon, 12 days and 2682.6 miles after we started; overall fuel “economy” for the trip: 20.8 mpg according to the OBC. The car performed flawlessly and drew curious stares from people – especially kids – all over the northern coastline. (Why do kids always know this car is special, even kids who have never seen one before?) Wanderlust satisfied for now, we headed for the next day’s Humpa picnic and some hometown comforts with friends.