MAPLE LEAF RAG Part 5: Planting the Flag and Hauling the Mail

by Pat Branyan

I can’t remember a thing about the ride up to Grand Island where we camped just south of Niagara Falls. Even though I’ve surprised myself by becoming an old coot and memory is becoming a sometimes thing, I don’t worry about it. A whirlwind trip like this would muddy the memory of almost anyone. In any case I can rely on Dahna to remind me where we stayed yesterday because she sees distinguishing details where I see blobs that run together into clumps.

I do remember the Branches of Niagara campground and our happy neighbor Brian, computer analyst and Buffalo native. The campground is privately owned and one of the few that capably caters to adults and children. The kids have plenty of playgrounds and games plus their own zip line. The adults have one too along with a pretty lake and lots of room to walk or jog. We were even able to let Sacha off her leash so she could run off some of the treats we’re helpless to stop giving her.

Mallard at Branches of Niagara

As a general rule, private campgrounds are more expensive than state parks and tend to put the sites closer together so as to maximize profits. They offset these drawbacks by offering more amenities like cable TV and WiFi internet and complete hookups including water taps, power and sewer. We prefer state parks because they’re always beautiful, much larger, the sites are more spread out, and they’re cheap.

It might be my imagination, but I think the campers at the state parks are happier and friendlier. Cost might be a factor, but it is undeniable that the campers in the state parks run the gamut of economic class and I think that eases everything out a bit for everybody. Too, the natural beauty surely helps to put everybody in a good, hobnobbing mood. Letting Sacha go and watching her run through the woods chasing out her almost boundless energy is pure pleasure for us and helps us forget the news for awhile.

On the road we get our news on the internet, usually provided by our new iPhone. We bought an “unlimited” data plan to go with it which works fairly well as an internet hotspot for three out of the four weeks per month we use it. AT@T then tells us we’ve been greedy and slows the speed down to a dial up crawl. I get a kick out of AT@T telling me how greedy I am. Anyway, I asked my neighbor Brian why this was happening. He said that automatic upgrades of the phone’s apps eat up a lot of data, and that you could turn the updates off. When I told Dahna about this, she was her usual step ahead of me and said that she already had turned them off. AT@T…what’s not to like?

Brian also told us about the Erie Canal town of Lockport and a boat ride you can take through a manmade cave. The cave was designed to complement the Erie lock gates in moving water faster down the canal to speed passage of the barges through the system. It was painstakingly excavated by placing small gunpowder charges in drilled holes by young, nimble and, presumably, replaceable boys and blasting out small chunks at a time. The cave produced a “hydraulic raceway” of rushing water that also mechanically powered a series of factories up above that mostly burned down to the ground either accidentally or by design.

We learned about all this and more from our perky tour guide who was a sweet young woman of about twenty. She was surprised by her sister who had just driven in on the sly from California to see her and we were all delighted by the affection they had for each other. Our little group would tag along from point to point as they led, holding hands, and excitedly whispered to each other. They both loved their historic little town in an endearing, wry kind of way. The whole thing put everybody in a jolly good mood.

We watched a large tour boat full of passengers move through one of the many locks that stair-step the nearly 600 foot elevation difference from the Hudson river in Albany to Lake Erie near Buffalo. The original canal itself was dug by shovel, wheelbarrow and oxen-pulled scrapers in one of the greatest engineering feats of the early 19th Century. It linked the Great Lakes and much of the continent’s system of rivers to New York City’s harbor and was essential to the development of the midwest and the western expansion. New York City did okay too, and you can, and should, read all about it. We used to do big things back in the day of American Exceptionalism.

Tour Boat Waiting for the Lock to Fill

Oh! I almost forgot Niagara Falls. But what really impressed me was the Niagara River itself. In fact, most of the rivers we crossed on this trip have been impressive. These monsters are huge compared to the dinky streams we call rivers in Texas. In spite of the Austin Lounge Lizards singing about Texas rattlesnakes being the coil-i-est and our beaches being the oil-i-est, our rivers aren’t the anything-i-est…maybe the mud-i-est. You want water? Go East young man! Seriously.

Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls is impressive as you no doubt know since you’ve probably seen it if you’re like most of the people on the planet. If you haven’t been there, a word of warning. Never get in the way of a Japanese man and his camera, especially at elevated landmarks where you can fall to your death. I know that sounds racist and you could credibly accuse me of this particular sin if I hadn’t restrained my natural impulse to slug the guy when he shoved me out of his way to get a shot of his family at the rail.

The same thing happened to Dahna twice: once a little later on at Acadia National Park and once a long time ago at the Grand Canyon. I’m working on the idea that photographic shoving is not considered rude in some cultures, and I hope to internalize the notion more in order to remain out of jail in my golden years. Let me add in my defense that 50 years ago I had a great time on R & R in Tokyo. Loved the place and the people.

From Niagara our next stop was at a nice private park on the Mohawk River near Schenectady. Our three days at that park confirmed what we suspected about the big trip as we headed north and east and deeper into Fall. It was going to get colder and wetter. I wondered if they made raincoats for dogs which is a pretty dumb question if you’ve ever been in a big Pet Smart. Before you knew it, we were standing on the Mohawk’s bank with Sacha in her new Day-Glo lime green raincoat looking at the sailboats transiting our part of the modern Erie Canal system.

Pat and Sacha Just Walking In The Rain on the Mohawk River

A steady parade of sailboats motored by, masts lowered and carried in deck cradles. They were traveling from the Great Lakes to points east, up to and including New York’s harbor. From there it’s the world if you choose and have the boat for it and we had the boat, almost—her deep keel drew 6’, a little too much for some rivers, but great for oceans. Back when we were sailing Alchemy out in the Gulf, we sometimes entertained the idea of tackling the “Great Loop.” This is a roughly 6,000 mile circumnavigation of the eastern U.S. and part of Canada using interconnecting rivers, lakes, canals and various waterways like the Intercoastal. Oh well. Mice and men.

The cold rain followed us up to Old Orchard Beach, ME on Saco Bay just south of Portland and has stayed with us ever since. We have been very lucky to have enough beautiful days to keep our spirits up and see most of the sights we had in mind. Best of all we were lucky in our timing vis-a-vis the fall colors. Almost from the beginning it’s as if the trees decided to explode in their fieriest colors just as we arrived to see them. I understand now why the peak fall colors in New England and Canada are so famous. It’s unreal. Some of the trees actually looked as if they were on fire. For hundreds of miles, Dahna took shot after shot of the trees in a jerky series of dangerous roadside swerves and stops.

Marsh Grass Saco Bay, Maine

The biggest downside of driving way up north in the Fall is the decrease in camaraderie with the people you’re camping amongst. Hell, everybody’s tucked inside their heated RV. This isn’t entirely true because some of the people who live up north think drizzly 40 degree weather is perfect for sitting around a smokey, wet-wood campfire. We think it’s perfect for giving these people a wide berth. But, sadly, you meet a lot less people when it’s wet and cold, loony or not.

We didn’t get to know anyone at Old Orchard Beach, but we did have our first, and best, lobster roll near there in Saco at the Sea ’N Salt Restaurant. Getting to eat a lot of lobster was one of the prime attractions for me and I wasn’t disappointed—neither was Dahna. We ate our weight in lobster (mostly rolls) up and down again from New Hampshire to Nova Scotia. In our minds, the quality of a lobster roll depends on the ratio of tail meat to claw meat, and you always want to go with the higher number. Another thing is making the right choice of other stuff to put on it.

If you forget to specify you’re liable to get your not-cheap lobster roll slathered in mayonnaise or some other cheap crap. You want to order them “naked.” The lobster roll, I mean. That’s when they grudgingly break out the good stuff—drawn butter, the only thing that justifies taking the lobster’s life. Now, I know there’s no small controversy about the pain a lobster feels when it’s being boiled to death, but I also know that its “brain” is just a small ganglia mass.

So, do they feel pain when cooked? Probably. Did Marie Antoinette wince when her head face-planted in the basket? Again probably, but I’m sure she forgot all about it soon enough. The thing is, you don’t know if it hurts or not for sure. You’d have to ask them and they ain’t talkin’ are they? That gives us the moral wiggle room we need to happily eat lobster and humanely whack off heads from time to time. The mind is a marvelous thing. Voting Republican can even make sense to a Christian.

We generally have good natures even though they do slide up and down the scale a little. I consider myself to be a “very fine fellow” every time I don’t tip a Japanese photographer over the railing. On the other hand, to be honest, I worry that I’m only “basically a good person” when the butter sauce is flying. But, that’s good enough when it comes to lobster, so dig in!

Our next stop was at famed Acadia National Park up along Maine’s rocky coast. This park is one of America’s headline attractions on the order of Yellowstone or Yosemite. Mostly we remember the rugged shoreline with its big jutting rocks, the prevalent cold rain and the huge wet trees that seemed to whisper, “Kill yourself.” That’s a little unfair because you shouldn’t judge a place solely by its weather at the moment. Actually, the sun would come out periodically and the peak leaf color would smash into your retina like a freight train making everything groovy all over again. It also smelled great there, like Christmas trees and all the Rawlings ball gloves and WHAM-O slingshots that go along with it. I bought a hat.

Rocky Coast at Acadia National Park

Four-Masted Schooner Off of Bar Harbor, Maine from Atop Cadillac Mountain, ACADIA NP

The Rockefellers and Dahna’s dad have an interesting history with the place involving Naval Intelligence during WWII. Because of the site’s lack of background clutter, Schoodic Point at Acadia, donated by John D. Jr, was used a a radio direction finder station serving to locate enemy ships, especially U-Boats, in the North Atlantic. Then, U.S. hunter aircraft could launch from carriers, find and sink them with bombs or torpedoes.

Schoodic Institute Campus includes the former Naval Observation Station

Dahna’s decorated dad was a turret gunner on one of the planes. His job on the bombing run was to keep German gunners away from their deck guns with his electrically-operated twin .50 caliber machine guns as they flew away. Occasionally the hunter became the prey, and he was shot down into the drink twice. His main bitch was that certain assholes, I mean Assholes, would steal the chocolate bars from the life raft rations. Dahna had no idea about her dad’s combat experience and was shocked when she overheard Sid and I telling war stories. Like most WWII vets, he didn’t talk much about the war.

Sid liked to fish for perch from the bank. He wasn’t much of a boater.

Greater Yellowlegs – Schoodic Point Acadia National Park

We only stayed three days at Acadia which doesn’t begin to do it justice even in perfect weather. When we planned this northy trip we knew time wasn’t on our side considering the distance involved. In order to get to Nova Scotia and back without jackknifing into a snowbank, we had to really scoot along and we did. Before we knew it we were at the Canadian border.

The Canadian Trees Greet Us at the Border Wearing Their Best Fall Colors

The traffic was oddly heavy coming back into the U.S. but we were the only vehicle going into Canada. I thought, ‘Huh, what the…?’ That made no sense to me considering…well, you know…but that’s the way it was. When I pulled up to the booth the young, unsmiling woman asked for our passports and drivers licenses. I gave them to her and then she asked me to recite our address and destination which I did. I can’t say that being from a place called Comanche, Texas had anything to do with it but the rest of the conversation was very close to that below, in its entirety:

She: “Did you bring your guns?”
Me: “No, I didn’t bring any guns.”
She: “So, there are no guns in the RV or in the truck, is that correct?”
Me: “There are no guns aboard, that’s correct.”
She: “You left your guns at home?”
Me: “Yes Ma’am, I left my guns at home.”

That was it. She let us through after about one minute of our little gun minuet. We were on our way to Canada’s Fundy National Park and teeny tiny Alma, the New Brunswick town now of fond memory.

I’ve wanted to see the Bay of Fundy since learning about its enormous tides which can measure up to 40 feet. The low tides produce vast sloping tidal flats which should be great to explore, but the one at Alma resembled more of a desert than a chock-full-o’-life seabed suddenly exposed. We wondered about that as we unhooked Sacha from her leash in the gentle drizzle. Since we’re not Bay of Fundy experts, we could only speculate as to why.

Lobster Boats High & Dry During Low Tide at Bay of Fundy in Alma, New Brunswick

Our best guess is that the critters that live in the water have adapted over the many ages to not be caught high and dry like they would be immediately before the arrival of a tsunami. All that was left was a bare sweep of compact sand that was nice to walk out on and it gave Sacha plenty of traction for her high speed jukes and jives. We were scanning the retreating bay when we noticed a solitary, red-haired woman walking toward us under a bright yellow umbrella, about 1,000 feet away.

Sacha Makes a New Friend, Irish Kate!

My first paranoid thought was that she must be some pompous ass coming to insist we get Sacha back on her leash. Some say that people like that exist in great numbers, like fraudulent voters, and I’m sure that’s true since they say so even though I’ve personally never met such a jerk type person. It turned out that my fears were, as usual, misplaced. It was Kate, a citizen of Northern Ireland, domiciled since 1971 in the U.S. in various places like California but now living in Alma, N.B. where she owns a home. Like any sensible person, she beats a retreat in winter and goes down to Florida near Daytona to kick back until it’s over.

I said, “Hey, I’m Irish,” and told her my name. She thought for a moment and slowly shook her head, “I don’t know any family name of Branyan. There are similar names though…maybe your name is derived from one of them.” So much for my fantasy of being being warmly welcomed home by my long lost kin of the Emerald Isle. Maybe the good island folk forced my family to flee to America for hoarding the only good potatoes left from the blight or something. If our name is derivative, it’s probably for our own protection.

This is a delightful lady and we got to know her over a dinner later that evening of lobster and chowder at one of the little restaurants on the main, and only, drag. Irish Kate, as she’s known about town, is an artist. As soon as we found that out, Dahna got out the iPhone and, using Canada’s excellent wifi internet, hosted by the cafe, brought up the some of the paintings by our friends, Paul and Enid of South Carolina. They spent a good while looking at them and conversed in some arcane art lingo leaving me, mercifully, out of it.

Then Kate dug her own phone out of her purse and fiddled with it while telling us the story of her “Fish Head” painting. There is apparently a healthy international trade in fish heads from Iceland that the Canadian lobstermen use for bait in their traps. Kate is close to the owners of one of the restaurants in Alma, the Lobster Store, and they showed her the heads once on one of their boats.

When she got the picture of her painting on the screen and showed it to us, we both let out a little squeak of pleasure. You might not think a painting of a bunch of fish heads can have much impact but it did. The triangular heads were arranged in a beautiful mosaic of color, tightly fitted together and the whole idea of it really jumped out at you. She laughed when she rotated the picture electronically and said, “See? You can look at it from any position…up or down or sideways.” That was true, and it was also true the heads could look at you from any position as well.

I could still kick myself for not asking if any prints were available but, at least, I have the image seared permanently, and happily, in the forefront part of my brain. In addition to that gift, she gave us a CD of the Chieftans. Her cousin was a member of the band and played the harp. She told us that he was the only Protestant in the group. That brief touch on religion led us to a shared view on politics to the discreet relief of everyone.

We had a nice leisurely visit with her and when we parted company, she gave us a hug and that same smile you see in the photo. Sacha loved her and, as Kate said, (They had) “the same hair color.” So Dahna took the shot capturing her smile and a panoramic view of mutt butt in the foreground. Dahna cropped that last part out in a nod to decency and to spare Sacha embarrassment.

Common Loon – Bay of Fundy

Kate was headed up somewhere in Nova Scotia the next day and so were we. She was going to see friends for Canadian Thanksgiving, and we were going to Cape Breton, specifically a park near Baddeck. It was a long drive through several towns, including St. John, complicated by being unschooled in the national signage system. So, there were a few missteps and anxious moments and neither of us would deny there was an accusation or two, but we made it. The roads, like the internet, are great in Canada and we miss them both now, now that we’re back, back in the U.S.A.

Iconic Owl’s Head – Fundy National Park, New Brunswick

Caribou Plain Bog – Fundy National Park

We only spent four days in Nova Scotia. If we had it to do over again, we would have left Comanche earlier and spent the extra time there because we loved it even though the crappy weather still dogged us. Four days doesn’t even scratch the surface of a place like that, so we’ve resolved to go back sometime for a much longer stay. There are plenty of logistical problems considering the distance and shiver factor, but we liked everything about it. Maybe the best plan would be to buy or rent a little place for the summer like Kate, and bail out around mid October for points south. Well, grist for the mill.

I mentioned in an earlier piece that the little town of Baddeck is the birthplace of Canadian aviation which occurred only a few years after the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk flight. The first flight by the Silver Dart took off and landed on the frozen waters of Baddeck Bay in the winter of 1909. The plane’s construction was a joint American/Canadian effort partly financed and designed by Alexander Graham Bell. Bell loved the place so much he spent much of his life there on his large summer estate, complete with genius inventor laboratory. He messed around with fast boats too, apparently enjoying himself like a kid in his later years. You can get the whole story at his museum in Baddeck which, unfortunately, we missed.

We did get a very good look at Cape Breton’s world famous Cabot Trail. We allocated a whole day for the big Cabot Trail loop that begins and ends near Dahna’s perfectly-chosen camp near Baddeck and runs for nearly 200 miles. We were again lucky with the weather for that day because it stopped raining and cleared off. The sun came out and once again fired up the bright Day-Glo red, yellow and orange leaves to set against the deep blue Atlantic ringing most of the course. What a Maxwell Parrish day!

The Land Views of the Cabot Trail

And the Atlantic View of the Cabot Trail

I probably couldn’t describe it better for you even if I tried. Much better for you to see it for yourself. Sure, it’s a bit of trouble to get there, but that’s part of my point. Go to Nova Scotia because it’s there and if you’re there, you’ll see what I mean. It’s an extraordinarily beautiful and friendly place.

From Baddeck you can take the trail either clockwise or counterclockwise. I have to give myself a great deal of credit for taking the counterclockwise direction instead of the stupidly “preferred” clockwise one. Any moron could see that the counterclockwise motion offered easy access to the many ocean-side pull outs along the way instead of having to cross the heavy traffic going the other way. Any moron could see that…Well, I’m sure we all can think of one moron who couldn’t.

Cabot Trail – North Side of the Island

Each year for nine days in the fall, the natives get all up for the Celtic Colours music festival on the Ceilidh (“kildee”-means party) Trail where Celtic bands perform all over the island. After eating yet another killer lobster roll at the Yellow Cello, we walked across the street and down to the bay to the Baddeck Yacht Club for a free performance. A girl set the up tempo beat with a couple of spoons tapping against her leg while the other musicians came in with a little hand drum called a bodhran, a guitar and two fiddles. We listened to them play a nice set of Irish favorites until a lady walked in with a tambourine as we, regretfully, walked back out into the rain.

Ceilidh at Baddeck Yacht Club

We had to leave early before the Post Office closed in the vain hope our vote-by-mail ballots had arrived. Even though Patty had forwarded them to us a couple of weeks earlier, they got hung up at U.S. Customs for some reason, no doubt BENGHAZI! Those damn things chased us for about three more weeks until we finally got to Ft. Meade near Washington D.C. We did manage to get our vote in barely on time to help improve our dire political situation a little. Maybe. Who knows? Texas is pretty bad but at least it’s not Georgia, so maybe they got counted.

The rain let up overnight giving us a chance to get hooked up comfortably the next morning for the long trip home. When everything was all done and Sacha, the perfect dog, was settled in I started the truck. Dahna said, “Why can’t we just stay here?” I said, “We can come back. We know how to get here.” She said, “All right then,” a tad emphatically. A few minutes later it started to rain and didn’t let up for a long way. Finally, the sun came out again and so did the magnificent color of the maple leaves as they shook themselves dry in the wind. They look good on the flags too.

Rain Can’t Quench The Flames as We Depart Cape Breton