#st. stephens

Nikki Davis at the St. Stephens Historic State Park Camp Store.

Hi everyone Are you ready to explore a new state?  Is it even a state in the USA?  What time zone is it in?  Ten years ago today, I first visited the Atlantic maritime province of New Brunswick.  Where is New Brunswick?  It is a bit southeast of Quebec and northwest of Nova Scotia and west of Prince Edward Island.  

I had a nice time in Bar Harbor.  It was nice for Thursday the first of July 2010, at least the morning and afternoon.  There was a rainstorm about 12 PM until 2 PM.  Sometime after that, we had hours of family time, some of it going into downtown for dinner and an evening concert.  Many kids were playing around the gazebo in the city park.    

On Friday 2nd July 2010, we had family brunch before heading off to New Brunswick.  I went with family in our 2010 Chevrolet Impala from Bar Harbor to Calais on US-1.  Once we crossed from Calais to St. Stephens, New Brunswick in Canada, the time changed from about 1:10 PM to 2:10 PM as we crossed a time zone boundary, from Eastern US time to Atlantic Canadian time, both of which were using Daylight Saving.  Theoretically you can use US Dollars in Canada, but it is preferable to have Canadian dollars.  In 2010 the US Dollar was about CA$ 1.04 or so.  We did not have to fill up the car as we had only gone about 80 miles / 130 km, but later we would have to do that.  That might be in tomorrow's story.  Once we had Canadian dollars in cash, we drove on to St. Andrew's for lunch.  We went to a tea restaurant to have tea and a light lunch.  

The NB 1 highway was recently constructed as a four lane highway.  The speed limit was in kilometers per hour, so 110 km/h would be just under 70 mph.  On the two lane portions, the maximum speed was 100 km/h or 62 mph.  The four lane highway did not, in July 2010, cover the entire distance from St. Stephens to Moncton.  When we arrived in St. Andrews, it appeared that the town was still in holiday mode, owing to the fact that the previous day was Canada Day, a legal federal holiday.  Also there were about a hundred motorcycles in town for some motorcycle festival.  

After lunch, we went back on NB 1, to NB 111 past St. John.  Saint John had the only known toll bridge.  I think it was CA$ 2.00 to cross each direction.  We did not make any other stops in St. John.  NB 111 is kind of a crescent route in New Brunswick.  It has a western terminus in Rothesay NB and an eastern terminus in Sussex NB.  NB 111 is almost all two-lane throughout, with at least a dozen hills and curves.  We arrived in St. Martins about 5 PM.  We checked into the Salmon River B&B which was booked a few months prior.  Everyone had their own room.  I had left my MP3 player in the car, so I had no music for the night.  There was no working internet, no wifi to speak of, as it somehow went down due to some local outage.  We had dinner at the B&B and went on a short walk, and most went to bed.  I walked up and down Main Street to St. Martins Road, then as far east as the Hardscrabble Covered Bridge.  I was also able to see the Vaughan Creek Covered Bridge, only a few hundred meters away.  

The beach was a five minute walk from the B&B.  It was not exactly the most inviting beach as it was very rocky.  It was just some place to watch the waves come and go, and see marine wildlife.  I think it was about 9:30 PM Atlantic time that the sun went down and night creatures were awake.  I thought I heard frogs croaking when I walked to the Hardscrabble Covered Bridge.  There were definitely crickets chirping.  I stayed up very late, I think until 12:30 AM.  I was waiting to see the moon rise over the Atlantic.  I had my camera pointed eastward towards Nova Scotia, and I think just after midnight there was a sliver of orange light, kind of like that of an orange highlighter felt tip pen, peek over the horizon.  I did not have a good "gimbal" to hold the camera in place so the first few minutes looked a bit choppy and jerky with the low light setting.  I switched to real-time video and it looked a little better.  The moon was in its waning gibbous phase and still orange.  It did not fully rise from the horizon until about 12:10 AM.  Its reflection on the Atlantic Ocean was spooky.  Some clouds covered the moon a few minutes later and I decided eventually to go to bed.  It was interesting to see the moon rise finally, as I was not able to do so the Saturday that I visited Cape Cod.  

Spirals in Perspective.

Szent István Bazilika (St. Stephen’s Basilica, Budapest) We climbed the stairs to the top of St. Stephen’s Basilica on the Pest side of Budapest. After we came down, I took two photographs with my iPad from the very bottom. On one I used the regular rear-facing camera while the other was taken with the facetime front facing camera.  Seeing the two photos together surprised me with their…

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