A bald eagle welcomed us back to the States
Franklin Roosevelt's Canadian "cottage"Copyright 2009 Lydia Hinshaw
HULL'S COVE, ME -- The weather went south Saturday and so did we.
Dreary weather makes a road trip exhausting instead of exhilarating. Saturday we drove across New Brunswick where the sky was gray, the beaches brown, the water muddy, the roads crumbling.
Saturday night we wound up as the only guests in a three-room motel because it was raining and getting dark and there were no campgrounds on the horizon. The oceanfront setting was wonderful, and the room looked OK when we checked in at dusk. The light of day revealed new levels of bleakness and we packed quickly and were on our way.
We crossed back into the US at Calais, ME. No more than three miles south of the border, a bald eagle lifted off from the roadside just in front of us and alighted in a nearby tree. What a good antidote to dismal weather! Naturally we stopped to take pictures.
The bird was patient and didn't fly away from us right away. We soon smelled why. Our passage had interrupted his breakfast of dead skunk.
Yes, friends, our revered national bird is not above eating road-kill, though the main part of his diet is supposed to be fish. I don't much blame him for not wanting to fish in cold water on a chilly morning.
On down the road, we detoured to Lubec, ME, and crossed back into New Brunswick to see Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 18-bedroom summer "cottage" on Campobello Island.
There, we had the somewhat strange experience of learning about President Roosevelt from a series of Canadian tour guides. They knew their stuff, as far as we could tell.
What struck me about the "cottage" was how similar the house and the setting are to FDR's main residence at Hyde Park, NY, which I visited two weeks ago. Both are large, three-story houses high on a hill overlooking a wide body of water.
But Campobello had no electricity or telephones until after Roosevelt's death. It was a place he could get away from it all.
Sunday night we landed in a motel across the road from the campground where we spent three nights last week. The motel room cost just $4 more than a campsite, and the weather is still ugly. Those late-night runs to the rest-room are no fun when it's raining.
Dreary weather makes a road trip exhausting instead of exhilarating. Saturday we drove across New Brunswick where the sky was gray, the beaches brown, the water muddy, the roads crumbling.
Saturday night we wound up as the only guests in a three-room motel because it was raining and getting dark and there were no campgrounds on the horizon. The oceanfront setting was wonderful, and the room looked OK when we checked in at dusk. The light of day revealed new levels of bleakness and we packed quickly and were on our way.
We crossed back into the US at Calais, ME. No more than three miles south of the border, a bald eagle lifted off from the roadside just in front of us and alighted in a nearby tree. What a good antidote to dismal weather! Naturally we stopped to take pictures.
The bird was patient and didn't fly away from us right away. We soon smelled why. Our passage had interrupted his breakfast of dead skunk.
Yes, friends, our revered national bird is not above eating road-kill, though the main part of his diet is supposed to be fish. I don't much blame him for not wanting to fish in cold water on a chilly morning.
On down the road, we detoured to Lubec, ME, and crossed back into New Brunswick to see Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 18-bedroom summer "cottage" on Campobello Island.
There, we had the somewhat strange experience of learning about President Roosevelt from a series of Canadian tour guides. They knew their stuff, as far as we could tell.
What struck me about the "cottage" was how similar the house and the setting are to FDR's main residence at Hyde Park, NY, which I visited two weeks ago. Both are large, three-story houses high on a hill overlooking a wide body of water.
But Campobello had no electricity or telephones until after Roosevelt's death. It was a place he could get away from it all.
Sunday night we landed in a motel across the road from the campground where we spent three nights last week. The motel room cost just $4 more than a campsite, and the weather is still ugly. Those late-night runs to the rest-room are no fun when it's raining.
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