That’s Saint John New Brunswick of course…as distinguished from the other Saint John over on Newfoundland…which is actually Saint John’s so I guess it’s already distinguished from this one…we’ll be there in some weeks.

Turns out that we missed mentioning the easternmost town in the USA…the other day on our drive we passed through Lubec Maine which is that easternmost town. We wouldn’t have passed through there except the roads weren’t marked very well and we missed the turn we actually wanted…but since we went through it I figgered I should mention it.

Friday we got up early and headed off on our 106 mile trip over to St. John…we headed back up US-1 to Calais ME then crossed the border…and once again the border guards in eastern Canuckistan proved to be pretty much jerks. We were a bit over the permissible allowance of alcohol to bring in…but where as the ones out in Saskatchewan and points west of there didn’t ask about alcohol at all but about cash, some food items, and particularly guns…the ones here on the Maine border told us 3 times how it was illegal to bring guns into the country…and wanted to know if we had guns back in the states…Connie said yes but they were in storage and Neil said I don’t have any with me. Then then wanted to know how much alcohol we had…and were very unhappy that I hadn’t counted our cans and bottles of beer beforehand…who knew? Is there anybody that knows exactly how many cans of beer they have on hand? Then they asked about pepper spray…which is again illegal in the country…Neil told them we had bear spray and they didn’t care about it at all…despite the fact that it’s the same chemical as pepper spray only in a stronger formulation. Again…who knew…simply by making it stronger and calling it bear spray instead of pepper spray they’re quite happy to have us bring it in. 

So $120 CN or so later in excise taxes we were in…we could have just abandoned the excess at the border…but there was no way we were going to finance Happy Hour for those jerks…and besides the cost of beer and wine is way more up here…so it was cheaper to pay the duty than to buy new.

Anyways…we pressed on and arrived in Saint John NB…it’s right on the Bay of Fundy and quickly got backed into site 99 at Rockwood Park Campground…it’s a city park right off the freeway.

A couple of last shots of Eastport ME before I move on…we don’t take all that many photos of the beautiful campgrounds we’re in as we…mostly…go there because (a) it’s in the area where we want to do Fun Stuff© and (b) campgrounds are where the utility hookups are. Seaview Campground in Eastport on the other hand…most definitely has the It Factor and if we ever come up to Maine again we’ll plan on spending a couple of weeks there. Not much to do…but in the middle of the summer when it’s a bit warmer sitting in the recliner watching the tide go by ain’t a bad way to spend time.

Neil processed one of our shots to look more like it actually looked via his eyeballs at almost sunset…this is our favorite It Factor campground shot in the past 7 years.

Here’s a shot of the little dock at the campground…shown here just to illustrate the tidal range here in Quoddy Bay you can see above between the campground and Canuckistan on the other side. This shot was taken at just about high tide…at low tide the entire dock was sitting on the bottom at about a 30 degree angle and the waterline was 30 or 40 feet past the end of the dock. The rocks you can see at the far right past the red building were dry at low tide.

And then there’s what Rockwood Park Campground looks like…when we drove into the camping area from the check in building…we said to each other “Looks like an Alaska campground”…because that’s exactly what it looks like. We’ve lowered our standards appropriately for the remainder of our time north of the border…they mostly just don’t have what we would call beautiful campgrounds.

We lazed around Friday afternoon after our arrival…Neil had to use 5 sewer hoses to get to the dump connection which is behind the end of the rig…obviously the campground was not designed by anybody that knows anything about RVing…but that’s been typical of our experience in both this country and Alaska…hence our seeing it as an Alaska campground…the only difference being that the sites are much bigger than out there and the rigs aren’t jammed so closely together than you have to position yourself so your slides go into the openings where your neighbor’s slides aren’t. In the photo above, there is enough room in our site for both Big Red and Little Red as well as a picnic table to the side of the parking pad before getting to the edge of the next site. We headed off for dinner to a local pub…we ate lunch late so just had a couple of beers and an appetizer that we split before heading home.

Saturday…we had two Fun Stuff© destinations on the schedule…Reversing Falls and the Cape Spencer Lighthouse…along with a haircut for Neil and lunch out. We planned on visiting the Reversing Falls twice…at the end of both the inward and outwards flow to see it reverse.

First off…Reversing Falls is really a gross overstatement. There’s no waterfall at all…and not even any rapids to speak of as the water level never gets low enough for that. What you have instead is a tidal river…the skinny spot with a couple of islands in it that surround the “Falls” is only about 2 or 3 miles of river length from the Bay of Fundy…which has the largest tidal range in the world with some portions seeing 45-50 feet between the water level at low and high tides. So the river flows downstream…as most rivers do…during the later portions of the ebb tide and the early portions of the flood tide…but when the level in the bay gets higher than the level in the river the flow in the river reverses and it flows upstream. The “prime” times to observe are at the two changes between inflow and outflow…so we dutifully arrived at the Falls 1bout 15 minutes before the end of the inward flow. Sure enough…the water was flowing upstream and then over the course of about 10 minutes it went from 2-3 knots upstream to 4-5 downstream flow with a bunch of swirls and eddies around the ends of the island. You could clearly see the border between the darker brown ocean water that had flowed over the sandbars and downstream silty areas and the cleaner river water coming from upstream.

After that it was off to lunch at the Saint John Ale House where we had a brew and a couple of appetizers. The food was OK and Connie’s Barking Squirrel Amber Ale was excellent…but Neil’s Saint Ambroise Oatmeal Stout tasted like it was peed out on a dead raccoon by a drunk hobo.

Next stop was the Cape Spencer lighthouse for a quick stop and photo op…then back home to the rig for a nap. After that we headed back out to the Falls to see the end of the outgoing flow…again it was pretty anticlimactic…the water went from moving downstream to moving upstream over the course of 10 minutes or so. We did meet a local man who came out to fly his drone over the Falls and get some video…he wasn’t any more impressed than we were. Still though…it’s one of the few tourist attractions in town so we visited it…although it’s probably not worth coming to St. John just to see.

Sunday we went to Mass at the local cathedral…thought we were in Italy again as the entire inside was filled with scaffolding…they’re doing something to the roof/ceiling area but the center portion was open for seating. After Communion we were treated to a short string piece played by a group of children from the parish…we thought it was a Civil War tune at first but on research it turned out to be Ashokan Farewell which was composed in the early 1980s by American folk musician Jay Ungar…although not composed for it was made famous by Ken Burns mini-series The Civil War which aired in 1990. It’s a very Civil War sounding tune…by design of the composer.

Ok…on to some photos.

Looking first upstream (to the right of the viewing area), then downstream, then straight across between the islands. My apologies for the paper mill on the far side…how rude of them to position it right in the middle of where people want to take photos.

You can see the swirling of the browner Bay water coming up along the near shoreline between the islands and the cleaner river water coming from right to left past the island and from left between the shore and the island as the flow reverses.

A couple more shots of the disappearance of the browner section as the reversing continued on.

Huge seagulls sitting nearby…we only saw them at the end of inflow viewing…later in the afternoon at the second visit there were no birds to be found. These are Great Black Winged Gulls.

More Common Loons then we’ve ever seen before in one place…again they were gone by the afternoon visit.

Another gull type airborne…this one is a California Gull…large but not the size of the Great Black Winged.

The border between the browner downstream water and the cleaner upstream water as it passed us…simultaneously the cleaner water was pushing into the opening between this island and the one 20 yards to the left from it.

More Great Black Winged Gulls.

Lunch.

Ren-Ale-Sance…this is what a beer tap selection should look like.

Cape Spencer Lighthouse…it’s sort of a bust as far as picturesque goes…and I had to crop out all of the bottom part as it was full of graffiti…cursed kids.

Looking southwest from Cape Spencer…as you can see the lighthouse is pretty far up from the water…too bad it didn’t provide a better photo opportunity.

A couple of shots of the eddies and swirling water as the tide shifted from outflow to inflow.

We headed home after this…it was 1915 by the time we got home and after 2000 by the time dinner was fixed and eaten…Connie needed to wash her hair so that was it for the day.

Sunday we pretty much did laundry and not much else…although we did have a mini New Horizons rally while we were here. Friday on our arrival…we noticed another NH Summit nearby and figured we would stop by and visit…while Neil was up in the back of Big Red getting the water bin out this pickup stops next to him…and it’s Roy and Ann Brody…they were the rally masters for the NHOG Rally in Chattanooga 2 rallies back…we visited with them both Friday and Sunday evenings. Strange running into them…with only about 1200 or so total NHs ever built we’ve seen a grand total of 6 outside of the rallies we’ve attended (NHOG and RV-Dreams) and traveling with Bill and Linda Napier…who will also be up in the Maritimes this summer albeit not in the same place we are at the same…they’ll be in PEI a month before us and back southwards (I think) by the time we’re over to PEI.

Interesting stuff found on the net this week.

If you don’t want to read my castigation of arrogant assholes who have no understanding of basic high school civics, how laws work, how laws are changed if you don’t like how they work, and think that their political opinions outweigh all of the above…then go ahead and skip down a few paragraphs…because Ima gonna open a can o’ verbal whoop-ass on ‘em. 

No photo for this one…but you probably saw the story in the news last week about the illegal immigrant Equadorian citizen pizza driver who was arrested in NY…he’s got a US citizen wife and two kids…he was arrested for immigration (and probably numerous other) violations but the liberals are all up in arms because this “innocent father who has committed no crime” is up for deportation. Unfortunately…the liberals completely ignore the facts…like these…he agreed to voluntarily leave back in 2010 rather than be detained and deported and was given 3 months to leave. He failed to leave so a final deportation order was entered…which makes him by definition an illegal alien and criminal with an arrest warrant to be deported. Subsequently he married his wife and has children aged 2 and 3 by his wife…they are citizens as is his wife…he could have easily filled out the forms to receive a permanent green card but didn’t bother. He could easily have gotten a proper drivers license…but that would have resulted in him being found out and deported…so he doesn’t have a drivers license…no social security number…and since no license no insurance…but he was driving and delivering pizza illegally…not to mention he was working illegally…not to mention he tried to enter a US military installation without an ID…he only had a “city ID card” which means he didn’t get entered into the database and hence caught up on his illegal warrant. Not to mention that the pizza place he was working for hired him illegally since he can’t legitimately fill out the I-9 required for working in the US…and not to mention that if he was in an accident the pizza place would be liable.

But…no, he’s completely innocent of any crime according to the liberal press, the governor of NY, and a 2011 appointed federal judge who’s stayed his deportation until July 20 so that he can have a hearing about whether his deportation is legal and whether or not he’s committed any crimes.

And the governor of NY…says he was illegally detained despite the fact that he submitted an invalid ID for entry into a military facility and despite the fact that running his name through the active warrant check revealed his outstanding arrest warrant for immediate deportation.

And his local Senator…Kirsten Gillibrand…claims that this is “another example of inhumane immigration enforcement policies” and that “it’s shameful to separate him from his wife and children like this”.

Nope…nothing criminal or illegal to see here…not at all. Assholes need to review the facts and see how many crimes he’s actually guilty of…instead…what’s shameful is that he knowingly and willfully violated the law and now liberals want to claim it’s all not his fault…he’s guilty of nothing and it’s “inhumane” to arrest him.

BEP I say…just BEP. For those who don’t recognize that acronym it stands for Bovine End Product…which is a polite way of saying BS.

I am tired of politicians and judges selectively enforcing and also creating laws to suit their political agenda. Now I sympathize with the 11 million or so illegal immigrants in the US…let’s not sugar coat it by calling them undocumented because the fact is that they are here in violation of the law. All they want is to have a better life for their family for the most part…and for the most part they’re working (albeit not paying taxes) and stay out of trouble. I sympathize…I really do…but until the immigration laws get changed they are here illegally no matter what “immigration reform” proponents have to say. I’m not in support of trying to kick all 11 million of them out…if for no other reason than the government doesn’t have either the competence or the facilities to round them up and kick them out…and a lot of them are either children whose parents brought them here illegally or were born here and thus are US citizens…but until the law gets changed then the law is the law…and politicians, law enforcement, and judges should either enforce the law or be impeached and removed from office. Maybe I can get a judge to agree with me that I don’t have to pay taxes any more…I wonder how far that lead balloon would fly.

OK…enough ‘bout that…ya’ll that skipped can start reading again.

Ya know what these are…doncha…why they’re snow angles.

Scottish weather forecasting stone…very similar to the Alaskan one I posted some time back.

More truth.

Punk arrested during a haircut.

Ya sure ‘bout that?

Cyas.