We Went to Canada! (But First We Stopped at Acadia National Park)

Here's our first stop at Steamtown National Historic Site.

Here's our second stop at Lowell National Historical Park.

And our next stop on our great Canadian road trip is still not Canada, on account of Canada is really far away!

After spending the morning in Lowell, Massachusetts, it was all I could do to fight New England traffic all afternoon to get us up the coast of Maine to Acadia National Park, our nation's smallest national park. At first, the kids weren't super impressed with Acadia, as all we did was drive straight to the visitor's center so I could buy our park pass and the kids could pick up their Junior Ranger books (because of course!). We browsed the gift shop, watched the intro film, and the kids were about ready to start asking when we were going to our hotel and did it have a pool and wouldn't it be nice if we ever had air conditioning and at least it would have electricity to charge one's tablet, etc., etc., blah, blah, when I headed them off by instead driving them up to the top of a mountain:

It turns out that the top of Cadillac Mountain during magic hour is just the right place to be to recuperate from a long, tedious drive through New England:

It was breezy and pleasant, and with signage assuring us that we could leave the path if we took care to step only on the bedrock, my little mountain goats were off to explore:

You are also permitted to pick and eat wild blueberries, and so Syd found us some:

Such wide-open space felt great after all those hours cramped into our seats and having to sit still!

If you look carefully in the below photo, you can spot the elusive Wild Willow:

Sun-worshipping Sydney is easier to spy:

We did, eventually, get back down the mountain and over to our little motel in Bar Harbor, but it was only for a few hours. At 3:00 the next morning my alarm rang, and up I got my sleepy-eyed girls, bundled them back into the car, and drove them in the middle of the night back to Acadia National Park and back up to the top of Cadillac Mountain to wait for the sunrise:

It seemed like we sat forever in the darkness, but then in the space of minutes suddenly the sky was this--

--and then it was this:

And these little ones went from this--

--to this--

--and this (with the littler one still unconvinced):

The big one took her energy from the sun, and as soon as she could see to put one foot in front of the other she was off to mountain goat some more:

Syd was still deeply unimpressed by the splendor of the natural world, however:

Fortunately, I know something that will always impress our Syd, so after Will was mountain goated out for a while, I piled the kids back into the car, drove down that dang mountain again, and took them over to Sand Beach.

It was maybe 6:00 am by this time, and it showed it, with the beach all to ourselves and surrounded by fog:

Would this, finally, please my girl?

It would:

I was able to lie down on our picnic blanket and doze for a while, and still get in some lovely shots of the early-morning beach:

A couple of hours later, the kids declared themselves hungry enough to part from the beach, so we packed ourselves up, made sandwiches at the car, and then hit up some more tourist spots. Thunder Hole wasn't very thundery, although we did see the hole!

We hiked the Ocean Path to Otter Cliffs--

--and sat down for a nice rest and look around:





After quite a while, we spotted something diving in and out of the water between the cliffs below:

It was a genuine otter, hunting for its breakfast right there on Otter Cliffs!

The kids told this to the park ranger who was going over their Junior Ranger books, and had asked them if they'd seen anything interesting, but he thought that it was more likely a mink, because apparently actual otters are rarely spotted at Otter Cliffs? Will took to the research guides, but we could barely see a difference between a mink and an otter IN the research guides, much less on the cliffs.

Ah, well... we saw one or the other!

Look how close we are to Canada--we're starting to see French-language signage!

Thanks to our early wake-up, we were able to spend about ten hours at Acadia National Park and still leave around lunchtime. I drove us onward through Maine forests, listening to a radio show on the topic of the dwindling lobster industry and fretting about how I was about to run out of gas (we went at least 60 miles with no gas station and no warning that there would be no gas station--I had about 5 miles of gas left in my tank by the time we re-entered civilization, as if my stress level wasn't already high enough). Finally, we found a gas station, and just a few miles beyond that I was handing over our passports and a notarized letter from Matt assuring whoever read it that he knew what on earth I was doing with our children to a Canadian border patrol agent, and a minute and a half after that I was trying to both drive and figure out how to switch my car's dashboard and my GPS over from miles to kilometers.

Finally, we're in Canada! Next stop, the highest tides in the world!

We Went to Canada! (But First We Stopped at Lowell National Historical Park)

Once again, what I thought would be just a pit stop at a convenient point along our route turned out to be bigger and better and WAY more fascinating!

When the kids asked me what Lowell National Historical Park was about, I was all, like, "I don't know. Factories?"

Indeed. Factories!

But also navigable canals that were built to divert water to power the factories:

And a super-fun trolley to ride around on to see everything while a park ranger sat up front and told us all about it:

The girls and I got the most enjoyment out of a large exhibit on the mill girls, the young women who left the countryside and their family farms to come live and work independently, living in boarding houses with other women from all over:



 The kids and I had a lot of discussions about the trap that this was--of course the wages and opportunities looked amazing to someone just arriving with hay still in their hair, but over time they'd eventually have to see that the wages were barely livable, the workload and hours and tasks completely unsustainable. But what could they do? Even if they quit, there were plenty more young women arriving every day with hay in their hair, gazing around in wonder at the big salaries and full shops.

The exhibit covered what they DID do, which was all kinds of peaceful protests until finally the sea change of labor laws was attained. Sort of, more or less, but that's the subject for many, many more exhibits!

Here's Will in the kids' area, happily weaving on the exact same loom that she takes no interest in at home.

Jack Kerouac was from Lowell, but I was struck by this excerpt from his memoir not because of that, but because he mentions the Anzio beach head, where my Pappa also stormed.

You should always know the location of your local fallout shelter!

 When we were finished seeing all there was to see (for free), the kids earned their Junior Ranger badges--

--back we went to the car for sandwiches and then 5+ hours of the WORST traffic that I have ever driven in. New England highways were just not built to support the number of vehicles that they were seeing on this day in August. First of all, everybody was on vacation, in their overstuffed cars so they couldn't see out the back window, bicycles and kayaks strapped on every which way, or in their giant RVS careening around every curve, driving too slowly and towing cars and forgetting their turn signals. Everybody else was in a semi, taking up acres of lane, inching up every hill and then speeding back down, not letting anyone so much as relax into their cruise control for a full minute. Zipping around all this mess were the locals of every area, cutting people off and changing lanes with no warning and honking their frustration at their regional highway system.

And that's when traffic was actually moving. Mostly it was stalled, or crawling along, because of course everybody has to run their road construction projects during the height of tourist season.

I am completely OVER Massachusetts. And New Hampshire. And great swaths of Pennsylvania and New York. By the time I was finally safely in our cottage in Bar Harbor I was just about beside myself, the closest that I have ever come to a panic attack while alone with the girls. It was... not great.

But our cottage was adorable, run by a lovely old couple. The sandwiches were sauced with the happy tang of being able to eat them while laying on a comfy bed and reading the next book in the Young Wizards series, which Will has gotten me hooked on. And little did I know it, but I was going to be okay, because the traffic would never be that bad again...

...until Toronto, that is, but that's another story for another day!

We Went to Canada! (But First We Stopped at Steamtown National Historic Site)

We're baaaaaaaack!

There were so many firsts and brand-new-to-us experiences in our Great Canada Road Trip!

1. This is the longest trip the kids and I have taken together--sixteen days of travel!
2. This was the longest time that Syd has been away from her father--he joined us in Quebec City, after ten days of travel without him.
3. This was the longest that I've traveled without Matt, with something like 40 hours of driving before he joined us. Frankly, it was too much for me, especially the long drives that I had to schedule to get us halfway across the dang country and back. Lesson freaking LEARNED.
4. This was our first visit to Maine! It was also the kids' first drive through New Hampshire, but I'm not counting that as a "new state" for them, because all we did was drive through it. We don't count states unless we do something in them!
5. This was the girls' first trip to Canada, and only my second. It was their first border crossing by car, and my first time driving in Canada.
6. It was my first time driving in a French-language area! I am NOT functionally literate in French...

Even though I wanted our road trip to focus on Canada, we saw several US sites on the way there and back, primarily because it takes SO long to get where I wanted in Canada--over 20 hours of driving! I broke it down into 3-ish days, with the idea on the first day we'd drive 10.5 hours and get it over with, and then for the next days we could spend the morning somewhere interesting, and spend the afternoon and early evening driving to our next stop. 

So here we are bright and early, the day after a 10.5-hour drive into Pennsylvania, checking out the Steamtown National Historic Site:

By now you likely know that we visit these widely varied national park sites entirely because the children are obsessed with earning Junior Ranger badges, and we will go to ANY national park site that has one on offer. I am always surprised, however, how even the most dull-looking site (sorry, Steamtown!), one that I'd never consider visiting without the motivation of a Junior Ranger badge to earn, is always so much more than it seems--so much more interesting, so much more to do, so much more fun!

And so it was with Steamtown. Chosen solely because it lay directly in my path a good day's drive from our hometown, it was actually absolutely fascinating. It had tons of real TRAINS!

This, we learned, is a roundhouse, and when we saw one later in Toronto, Will and I were able to immediately recognize and identify it:

You can approach nearly all of the trains:

Notice the exhaust vent above each train's chimney in the repair area. Clever!

And explore inside several:

Can you see a tiny Syd? She's in there ringing the bell.

mail train

creeper outside of a dining car

The museum also had loads of interesting artifacts from the heyday of commercial train travel:

There's always something on-point when applied to current affairs. Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it...

The kids had a happy time earning their Junior Ranger badges and exploring the site--

Will's bemused expression is because Syd and I were standing on a balcony overlooking the first floor and quietly calling her name only until she heard us and looked around. Then we'd stand still until she thought she was imagining things and went back to her business, and then we'd call for her again. It took sooooooo long before it occurred to her to look up, and even then it was likely only because Syd and I were cracking up too hard to stay properly quiet.

Afterwards, I was even able to have some time to myself at a picnic table with an apple and a book while the kids geocached two or three caches that were in the area--bliss!

Of course, after THAT I tried to leave town and discovered that every single exit to the turnpike in Scranton was closed with no warning and no marked detours. We circled the city endlessly, griping about how Scranton was never going to let us leave, until I finally gave up and calculated an alternate, longer route to Lowell, Massachusetts. I was able to find an on-ramp for THAT path, until, safely out of city limits, joy of joys, there was again a sign for the turnpike! I took the exit, thrilled that I was back on track, could save myself that extra hour+ of driving, and maybe even make up all the time I'd lost wandering around Scranton.

Until several minutes later, when we recognized a billboard and realized that the path to the turnpike was doing nothing but leading us back to Scranton, where every on-ramp to the turnpike was blocked...

Welcome to driving in New England!