June 10 - 16

June 17 - 23

June 24 - 30

July 1 - 7

July 8 - 14

July 15 - 21

July 22 - 28

Jul 29 - Aug 4

Aug 5 - 11

Aug 12 - 18

Aug 19 - 25

Aug 26 - Sep 1

Sep 2 - 8

Sep 9 - 15

Sep 16 - 22

Sunday, June 10

With Judy attending a three-day weaving workshop, I began getting stuff together for an early departure on Thursday morning and, by the end of the day, had the dinghy trailer converted back from a construction trailer to something that would carry our dinghy again and the garage cleaned up.

Monday and Tuesday, June 11 and 12

Most of the day was spent in getting things packed up in boxes and all the other chores associated with leaving home for three months. By the end of Tuesday, the back of the Land Rover was almost full and we still had to pack food and clothes. It always seems amazing that we can get so much packed away on the boat but, on the other hand, we almost strip the interior each winter, leaving very little behind.

 

Wednesday, June 13

The last minute jobs and packing were completed by the time Dean and Charlotte arrived in the early afternoon and we head out to the Cove restaurant for an enjoyable meal as we had no food left.

Thursday, June 14

With three days of great weather predicted, we left around 7:00am in convoy with Dean and Charlotte for the first leg of our trip, crossing into Canada at Port Huron with an overnight stop in Trenton, Ontario right on the Bay of Quinte, Lake Ontario. We have done the journey in two days but we opted for shorter days and an arrival with plenty of daylight time to get the car unloaded and batteries hooked up on the boat. The drive was uneventful but very slow around Toronto as usual even at mid day. We had visited Trenton several times before but always missed out on Tomassino's Italian Restaurant, supposedly the best in town. it lived up to its reputation with all of us having a great meal and an early night.

At Thomassino's

Friday, June 15

 

On the road at 9:00am with Sherbrook, Quebec our goal for the day. Another unevenful drive with Judy doing most of the driving while I worked on re-loading our website which crashed dramatically last year and had to be completely rebuilt. It will be a work in progress for some time but will host our blog for this year. By 3:00pm we had arrived at Le President on the outskirts of Sherbrooke. We were in France now with English spoken with a French accent. Charlotte had done a fine job of finding this one as it was a great hotel and very reasonable. We dined very well at the Siboire brewery downtown, (and sampled their local brews).

At Siboire

Downtown Sherbrooke

Saturday, June 16

Le President had an excellent buffet breakfast and we enjoyed a leisurely meal and good coffee before setting off for the last leg of our trip. The major highway was soon gone and we were on a less travelled road through the rolling farmlands of southern Quebec until we reached the USA border in the middle of nowhere. Crossing here before had been relativley quick and painless but there was a large contingent of touring motorcyles and a number of cars backed up before us and a single CBP processing people through.

Just our luck, we were selected at "random" for a full inspection. The CBP agent was very professional and just gave us a limited inspection and, seeing nothing suspicious in the car or dinghy, passed us on. Emptying the Land Rover and unpacking about 25 boxes would have taken hours!

We were now in wilds of northern Maine and infrastructure money only reached about 5 miles from the border.

"Can't get there from here" is the motto here and we drove at a much slower avarage speed the last two hundred miles to Blue Hill where we stocked up on a few essential food items before making the last 15 miles to Atlantic Boat.

Wayne, the Yard manager, has done his usual fine job of positioning our boats on the hard down near the water with ladders and extension cords. We had a good location on the concrete washdown pad instead of the gravel and had a great view over Herrick Bay.

Within an hour we had things quite shipshape and boxes broken down to be used on our return trip. Slept well in our treehouse!