Maine and Maritimes road trip report (long, with photos)

[oscar]

After the Portsmouth NH road enthusiasts meet on June 1, instead of turning south back home, I continued north into Maine and eastern Canada, with some fairly aggressive Canada county-snagging in mind.  I'm right now in Prince Edward Island province (second time this trip), about 80% through my trip, but with probably the most interesting parts out of the way.  EDIT: I later added a brief followup below, covering the rest of the trip back home.

Maine (June 1-3)

After some tooling around a few Maine routes north of Portsmouth, I returned to I-95 and I-295 (via unsigned I-495), winding up in Augusta for the night.  The next day, I went on ME 9 from Bangor to Calais, and there picked up US 1 where I left off on a 1989 coastal road trip.  Then I turned north on US 1 through Houlton, to Van Buren then back to Presque Isle for the evening.  I had planned to take Alt US 1 back to Presque Isle, but the north end of that route was closed by flooding, and at that point torrential downpours dampened my interest in doing more than limping back to the hotel room I'd reserved in Presque Isle.

In Caribou north of Presque Isle, through US 1 traffic is steered around town on the ME 161 bypass to the east.  However, US 1 is still signed through town.  It would make sense to move US 1 to the bypass, and turn the existing route to Business US 1.

On June 3, I continued on US 1 to its northern end in Fort Kent.  Before crossing the border, I snagged the western end of ME 161, to the Allagash River bridge, and a few miles beyond on what some maps (including my car's nav system) call part of ME 161 as well.  While there's no "End 161" sign anywhere, there is an "End Byway" sign at the Allagash River bridge, and the pavement quickly deteriorates then disappears a few miles later.  So I think ME 161 ends at the Allagash River bridge, where the Clinched Highway Mapping project puts the west end.

New Brunswick-Quebec-NB-Nova Scotia (June 3-5)

Crossing into Canada from Fort Kent, I was subject to a secondary search by Customs Canada.  The vehicle search was quick, except I had to wait twenty minutes for the two-person inspection team to be assembled.  This is not the first time this has happened to me; one would think the previous searches would show up on the customs agents' computer screens and they would have figured out that searching my vehicle again would be a waste of time.  One inspector took out my laptop computer, but after I convinced him there was no kiddie porn on my hard drive, he did not make me turn it on. 

I then made my way to Rimouski, Quebec for the night, after snagging the newest segment of A-20 (but another one is under construction, so my re-clinch of A-20 will probably not last long).  The next day, I did a quick loop around the Gaspe Peninsula on coast-hugging QC 132 except an inland shortcut on QC 198, but first with a side trip on parts of the eastern leg of QC 132 (a three-legged route, with the coastal and inland segments meeting in Mt. Joli east of Rimouski) and QC 297, to the one Gaspe area county that doesn't touch the coast.  That day's trip, ending in Campbellton NB for the night, snagged most of my remaining counties in Quebec. 

June 5 was basically a mad dash from Campbellton NB on NB 11/NB 8/NB 11 again/NB 132/TCH 2/TCH 104/NS 102 to the Halifax airport, to start the next leg of my trip.  This was a mostly freeway route (NB 11 and NB 8 are mainly super-2s), with 100-110 km/hr speed limits, helping me get to the airport with time to spare.

Side trip to northern Labrador (June 5-7)

This side trip was to snag the no-highway-access census division no. 11 in far northern Labrador, which I thought I had covered during my 2011 trip through Labrador, but on further review I found I hadn't even come close.  At the Halifax airport, I caught a direct flight to Goose Bay NL (hat tip to ghYHZ, who mentioned on this forum his own trip from Halifax to Goose Bay on business -- though of course someone else paid for his trip).

On June 6, I had a rather harrowing set of flights to and from Hopedale, what seems to be the largest community in division 11.  High winds were messing up flight schedules, and I wound up leaving for Hopedale more than two hours late, in the back of a plane (with one other passenger) filled with cargo.  Once at the Hopedale airport, I found there was no local taxi service, and with sub-freezing wind chills I was not quite prepared for (I left my winter coat at home, had to get by with a sweatshirt and slacks), the long walk into town was not an option.  The airport terminal closes between the morning and afternoon flights, and the ticket agent didn't want me hanging around waiting for my afternoon flight, so she gave me a lift into town, to a hotel where I could get a shuttle back to the airport that afternoon.

On the way to the hotel, I saw an old-fashioned yellow yield sign, on main drag Harbour Drive (the stop sign on the other side of that intersection was normal):



All the roads in Hopedale are unpaved and potholed.  Many were lined with snow banks, and light snow resumed later in the day.  Summer definitely has not yet started in northern Labrador.



Getting back to Goose Bay that afternoon was touch and go, given the weather, with the plane arriving late in Hopedale having to abort its landing and come around again to land on the second try.

I flew back to Halifax the following morning, uneventfully, as the Labrador weather started calming down. 

Nova Scotia (June 7-10)

While the weather was somewhat better in Nova Scotia than in Labrador, I was hoping for and didn't get something resembling decent beach weather (I've been to Crystal Crescent beach south of Halifax on two earlier trips), so I spent a few days tooling around the province while recovering from Labrador.  I didn't get out to Cape Breton Island, but I did get to the east end of mainland Nova Scotia, at Canso via NS 16 and NS 316.  On the way, I re-clinched some recently-realigned parts of TCH 104, including the new section in Antigonish ghYHZ has been writing about.  Another segment east of Antigonish is still being twinned and realigned with a new river bridge in the early stages of construction (I'd thought the realignments were done, guess I didn't read ghYHZ's reports carefully enough).  The rest of my stay in Nova Scotia, I drove many of the trunk routes in the northern and western parts of the province (US route-like markers, with single- or double-digit route numbers -- I already had the 100-series freeways).  My updated CHM map for the province shows my travels, including both the old travels (largely on the 100-series routes) and my latest ones.

Prince Edward Island part 1 (June 10-12)

I crossed over from Nova Scotia to PEI on the Wood Islands ferry, from Pictou NS.  As with the Confederation Bridge, the trip to PEI on the ferry is free, but you have to pay to leave PEI (more on the ferry than on the bridge -- later, I'll use the bridge instead).  I also picked up extra 2013-edition Nova Scotia road maps.  The visitor centre at the border with New Brunswick still doles out maps one at a time from behind a counter, but the ferry had an unattended information counter where I could pick up as many Nova Scotia maps as I wanted.  I also stocked up on 2013 PEI maps (those are widely and freely available elsewhere in PEI), including a few of the French-language version.  Those will be giveaways at the next road meet I can attend.

I tooled around parts of the PEI highway system I hadn't covered before, focusing on some of the coast-hugging back roads. Route signage was consistent, generally excellent, and covers a lot of numbered secondary highways (including some unpaved ones, if you don't mind getting red dirt or mud on your car).  The exception on signage is that there's lots of stray old route signage in Charlottetown inside the TCH bypass opened a few years ago, for apparently bypassed or truncated segments of PE 2, PE 15, and PE 236.  Also, a pet peeve with PEI signage is that an intersecting route is shown with a straight left or right arrow banner under that route marker, but several hundred feet ahead of the intersection so you have to slow down to distinguish between the road you want to take and one or more driveways preceding the intersection.

An unwelcome surprise as I was winding up this leg of my trip was something unidentified shattering the window on my rear driver's side door, on highway 248 as I was returning to my motel.  The motel desk clerk scrounged up some plastic sheets to keep the rain out, until I could stop by a glass shop in Charlottetown the next morning.  The shop had to order a replacement window from Montreal, which I had them send to a sister shop in Moncton NB, for installation on June 18 once I was back on the Canadian mainland for good.

Side trip to Quebec's Iles de la Madeleine (June 12-14)

After the glass shop built a better temporary replacement for my shattered side window, I made my way over to Souris PEI, to catch the five-hour auto ferry to the Iles de la Madeleine.  That is a remote Quebec outpost much closer to PEI than the rest of Quebec, and also the last county equivalent I needed to complete eastern Canada (still missing one in roadless far, far northern Quebec).  My two-night/one-day stay there was pleasant and scenic, and had I known more French, I would've liked to stay longer.  The Iles have lots of beaches for tourists later in the summer, but like in Halifax the preceding weekend it was too cold and windy to use them when I was there.

It's possible to get you and your car to the Iles directly from the rest of Quebec, via a weekly cruise/ferry in the summer.  But access is much easier and more frequent through PEI.  Most of the vehicles on the ferry with me in both directions had Quebec licence plates, some for Iles residents but many others for tourists from the Quebec mainland.  French was the prevailing language on the ferry, but English was spoken enough for me to get by.

The ferry takes you to the Iles' largest town Cap-aux-Meules, at the middle of the Iles' only provincial highway QC 199.  Here's a view getting off the ferry, including one of the Iles' many bluffs:



The various islands in the Iles are connected mainly by thin strips of land, with no significant bridges.  This bridge is the exception, carrying QC 199 between Cap aux Meules and Havre aux Maisons islands:



The isthmus connecting Cap aux Meules island to Havre Aubert island to the south has this great view on QC 199 southbound, with a long ocean beach along the east side of the highway:



Here are photos of the north and south ends, respectively, of QC 199, at small harbours on Grande Entree and Havre Aubert islands:




QC 199 is about 85 km long, with speed limits up to 90 km/hr.  I was able to clinch that route, and travel most of the Iles' side roads, in about five hours hehind the wheel.

Gas is about 14 cents/liter more expensive in the Iles ($1.429/liter RUNL) than in PEI or NS.

The ferry ride back to PEI, where I started part 2 of my PEI visit (some more roadgeeking, but also a lot of pool time, with the weather finally cooperating), was uneventful, without the seasickness I suffered on the ferry leaving PEI.  The ferry had wi-fi access, but rather than pay for that, I elected to work offline on my laptop, mainly on the first draft of this trip report.

Prince Edward Island part 2, and the trip home (June 14-20)

This part of the trip was pretty uneventful.  While not lounging by the pool in the afternoons, I racked up a lot of mileage on the PEI highway system, including just about every possible route between Cavendish and Charlottetown (in part because a cooked modem at the small resort where I was staying near Cavendish meant a half-hour trip every morning to grab both breakfast and wi-fi access at a McDonald's or Tim Horton's in Charlottetown). 

On PE 236 west of Charlottetown, and many other places in PEI, I saw trail crossing signs like this:



I don't recall seeing signs like this in other provinces or states.  The bicycle symbol is hard to make out, but there is enough on the sign to alert motorists to watch out for trail users crossing the road.

Monday the 17th, i left PEI for New Brunswick via the Confederation Bridge (C$42.50 toll, charged only when you leave PEI), stopping over in Moncton for installation the next morning of a new side window.  By now, the Confederation Bridge has long lost its novelty, and I didn't have much luck finding new bridge souvenirs at either the Gateway Village shops at the east end of the bridge, or the Cape Jourimain visitor centre at the west end. 

From there, it was mostly the NB 1 freeway to Calais ME (including the new bypass around St. Stephen NB), to US 1, ME 6 over to Dover-Foxcroft (seat of Piscataquis County, to improve on my borderline "spinback" clinch of that county in 2003) to ME 15 then overnight in Bangor.  Thereafter, it was two days of filling in gaps in my coverage of US 201 in ME, US 1 north of Boston, US 20 from I-84 to I-87, and US 209, before completing the trip home on all-too-familiar routes via Harrisburg PA.

Overall notes

-- I saw a lot of enclosed plexiglass phone booths in Quebec, more than I've seen lately anywhere else in North America.  Oddly, this was just a few days after i viewed a slate.com film clip compilation on what dangerous places phone booths can be.

-- There are a lot of signs in Quebec pointing travelers to public "toilettes" along the way, some of them formal highway rest areas, others in municipal parks.  However, since June is still the off-season up there, many of them were closed.  Usually the roadside signs indicate which ones are closed for the season, but some of the ones that were supposed to be open weren't.  Grrr.  But at least Quebec tries harder than the other eastern provinces to provide easy traveler access to restroom facilities. 

-- Traveling in the off-season, in Quebec and elsewhere in eastern Canada, is generally a mixed bag -- fewer crowds and less traffic, easier to get overnight accommodations, but many ferries and other traveler services are still closed or on reduced schedules.  Also, the weather often didn't allow my usual travel attire of T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, and when the weather improved, the road construction crews came out in force.  The chance to combine this trip with the Portsmouth meet, plus wanting to put some space between this trip and one I've penciled in for late summer (to the centennial festivities at my father's home town, Rosholt SD), are why I traveled in early June rather than the July-August high season.

-- The Canadian government seems to have done a thorough job hoovering up pennies from circulation, after ending production last year, and banks stopped supplying them to customers earlier this year (so businesses don't give pennies in change, and instead round to the nearest nickel).  The only Canadian pennies I saw on this trip were a few in donation boxes at Tim Hortons.

Major accomplishments

-- Clinched over 90% (360 out of 393) of Canada's counties/equivalents, though the remainder includes the three really expensive-to-visit districts of Nunavut.

-- Completed all the county equivalents (census divisions) in Newfoundland and Labrador province, and all but one in Quebec.

-- Clinched, for now (subject to realignments later this summer east of Thunder Bay ON, and the longer-range one east of Antigonish NS mentioned above), the entire Trans-Canada Highway mainline, from Victoria BC to St. John's NL.

-- On the way back, clinched all of US 201, US 1 north of Boston (except the bridge closure in Portsmouth NH), and US 209 (except a bridge closure in Tamaqua PA).

[ghYHZ]

Great report.....thanks for posting. Glad we're finally getting a nice day for your stay on PEI and it was so nice here this morning I got out for a few shots of the Phase II construction on the Antigonish Bypass (check it out in the Canada forum)......this spring has been the worst in years in the Maritimes....... "June — The New April"

The Iles de la Madeleine can be especially nice in mid to late August on the beaches and dunes.

[AsphaltPlanet]

I don't know how people can live in a place where it snows in June... 

(I say that knowing that probably a significant percent of the world population couldn't fathom how to live in a place where it snows at all)

Is Hopedale a fishing village?

[oscar]

I don't know how people can live in a place where it snows in June... 

(I say that knowing that probably a significant percent of the world population couldn't fathom how to live in a place where it snows at all)

Is Hopedale a fishing village?

It's on the coast, but I didn't get to the harbour to see what was docked there.  My impression is that Hopedale is not primarily a fishing village.

[ghYHZ]

I don't know how people can live in a place where it snows in June... 

(I say that knowing that probably a significant percent of the world population couldn't fathom how to live in a place where it snows at all)

Is Hopedale a fishing village?

It's on the coast, but I didn't get to the harbour to see what was docked there.  My impression is that Hopedale is not primarily a fishing village.

Hopedale is the capital of the "Nunatsiavut"  Inuit Lands......so it's a service community with government offices, hospital, schools etc. I think of it as being much further north than it really is. It's at 55 deg Latitude.....only slightly more than Edmonton or about the same as Glasgow, Scotland.

Hopedale was one of the small airports we stopped at on the way to Natuashish, NL.
 
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/trip_reports/read.main/180211/?threadid=180211&searchid=180211&s=Natuashish#ID180211

[1995hoo]

....

It's possible to get you and your car to the Iles directly from the rest of Quebec, via a weekly cruise/ferry in the summer.  But access is much easier and more frequent through PEI.  Most of the vehicles on the ferry with me in both directions had Quebec licence plates, some for Iles residents but many others for tourists from the Quebec mainland.  French was the prevailing language on the ferry, but English was spoken enough for me to get by.

....

A former colleague of mine took that longer weekly cruise ferry a few years back on a family vacation–they took the ferry from Souris to the islands and then departed via the other ferry, which I believe went all the way to Montreal. It rather surprised me because he doesn't strike me as a cruise type of person. They enjoyed it but said it felt like a long trip on the boat. I imagine for the vast majority of people on this forum the shorter route from Souris is more logical, especially because it allows more flexibility as to roads to and from the ferry!

Nice report, BTW. I've seen those islands from the air going to and from Europe and I remember the section about them in the Canadian Book of the Road, but I doubt I will ever get out there. I may prevail on Ms1995hoo to go on a golf trip to PEI, but I doubt she'll be willing to take the ferry out to the islands. She isn't keen on the idea of going to Newfoundland either.

[oscar]

Hopedale is the capital of the "Nunatsiavut"  Inuit Lands......so it's a service community with government offices, hospital, schools etc.

I went inside the Nunatsiavut Assembly building -- mostly because I was freezing my ass off and wanted to warm up a little before continuing my walk.  But it does seem like the equivalent of visiting the county seat, since I think census division 11 where Hopedale is located was carved out of division 10 (the rest of Labrador) to give the Inuit their own census division in NL.  Here's a photo of the building from Harbour Dr.:



One quirk I noticed inside the assembly building, that I think applies elsewhere in Hopedale and maybe beyond -- the washrooms are designated "male" and "female" (along with equivalent Inuit terms) rather than "men" and "women":

[oscar]

A former colleague of mine took that longer weekly cruise ferry a few years back on a family vacation–they took the ferry from Souris to the islands and then departed via the other ferry, which I believe went all the way to Montreal. It rather surprised me because he doesn't strike me as a cruise type of person. They enjoyed it but said it felt like a long trip on the boat. I imagine for the vast majority of people on this forum the shorter route from Souris is more logical, especially because it allows more flexibility as to roads to and from the ferry!

Actually, I'd wanted to do something like that (Souris-Iles ferry, Iles-Chandler QC leg of the cruise), to minimize backtracking through PEI and NB.  But by the time I booked the trip, the cruise (first of the season) was already full. 

[froggie]

I don't know how people can live in a place where it snows in June...

Plenty of places in the lower 48 where it can snow in June.

[1995hoo]

A former colleague of mine took that longer weekly cruise ferry a few years back on a family vacation–they took the ferry from Souris to the islands and then departed via the other ferry, which I believe went all the way to Montreal. It rather surprised me because he doesn't strike me as a cruise type of person. They enjoyed it but said it felt like a long trip on the boat. I imagine for the vast majority of people on this forum the shorter route from Souris is more logical, especially because it allows more flexibility as to roads to and from the ferry!

Actually, I'd wanted to do something like that (Souris-Iles ferry, Iles-Chandler QC leg of the cruise), to minimize backtracking through PEI and NB.  But by the time I booked the trip, the cruise (first of the season) was already full. 

Yeah, you would be one of the exceptions to the rule simply because you've covered so much more territory than most of the rest of us! 

[kphoger]

I don't know how people can live in a place where it snows in June...

Plenty of places in the lower 48 where it can snow in June.

That's what I was thinking.  I've been snowed on in June while travelling through Colorado.

[NE2]

holy crap southern hemisphere

[kphoger]

holy crap southern hemisphere

[agentsteel53]

That's what I was thinking.  I've been snowed on in June while travelling through Colorado.

I've had snow in every calendar month.  July and August were both Wyoming.  July 15th, 2005 in Yellowstone; August 20th, 2006 on US-14A.

[Duke87]

And here I thought dealing with it being in the 50s in Rocky Mountain National Park in June was nutty.

[oscar]

I just added to my original post above, to cover the rest of my trip after returning from the Iles de la Madeleine.  That part of the trip was pretty uninteresting, but I did throw in another photo from part 2 of my stay on PEI.

[Brandon]

I don't know how people can live in a place where it snows in June...

Plenty of places in the lower 48 where it can snow in June.

Michigan's Upper Peninsula comes to mind.  Had sleet there when I had a geology field camp in early June.

[agentsteel53]

Michigan's Upper Peninsula comes to mind.  Had sleet there when I had a geology field camp in early June.

indeed.  lots of places with low elevation that will get snow in June.  I remember it sleeting in Boston in June before... and May 18th, 1987 (my birthday) bought a solid snowfall: 6 inches. 

I don't know if any place lower than ~3000 feet elevation will get snow in July or August, though.  anyone have any counterexamples?

[Dr Frankenstein]

Nice to see you clinched QC 199.

Has any other roadgeek been to the Magdalen Islands so far? That's something I want to do eventually, too.

[deathtopumpkins]

Michigan's Upper Peninsula comes to mind.  Had sleet there when I had a geology field camp in early June.

indeed.  lots of places with low elevation that will get snow in June.  I remember it sleeting in Boston in June before... and May 18th, 1987 (my birthday) bought a solid snowfall: 6 inches. 

I don't know if any place lower than ~3000 feet elevation will get snow in July or August, though.  anyone have any counterexamples?

According to NOAA, Boston has received trace amounts of snow as early as July 10 and as late as June 17, though significant accumulation has never occurred outside of the October to May timeframe.

Source: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/box/climate/snowbos.html