Grand Falls, Nuveau Brunswick – August 21

From a campground south of Perce we proceeded to NB on Highway #132. Debbie started questioning whether we were on the right track. Unfortunately we had bypassed our correct turn off by 75 kms. Later the same day I said to Debbie; “We should be in Edmonston in an hour”, Debbie responded with “Warren, that’s the wrong direction”. Fortunately that was only a 30 km mistake.

We were, by then, both getting a little grumpy but decided that we were learning some important lessons.

We got exceptional assistance at the Grand Falls tourist information office. We asked about campgrounds and the enthusiastic and knowledgeable lady asked what services we would need. We said we really didn’t need any services, she said then why don’t you just stay right here at the visitors centre? We did and had a very pleasant evening viewing the falls and walking along the canyon of the St. John R. Our mood improved substantially.

We awoke after a good nights sleep and took the suggested scenic route to St. Stephen’s. Along the way we visited the longest covered bridge in North America (over 1200 feet). We wondered why they covered their bridges? No one could answer? We visited the Covered Bridge potato chip factory, the McCann potato museum, and an interesting small town railway museum.  .

August 22 and 23 we took a room in St. Stephen’s toured the Ganong Chocolate Museum/factory and generally relaxed and regrouped prior to moving to St. Andrew’s for the Pleasure Way owners rally.

Some recent pictures along the way.

One of the complications we are facing is collating pictures taken by my cell phone, Debbie’s cell phone and our Panasonic Lumix camera. Here are a couple of recent photos and one video taken off the Panasonic camera:

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Perce Rock from a distance (ignore the wires)

Coming from the town of Gaspe getting our first glimpse of Perce Rock.

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Perce Rock up close.

The town of Perce was very touristy and we could not understand what attracted people here once they had had a good look at the rock with a hole in it. Bonaventure Island might have been interesting but we did not go there.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7Z1r1YTyO9ONG5EYXRtWEhVdTg/view?usp=sharing

The above link is to a 30 second video taken just south of Perce. It struck us as not only beautiful but fairly typical of the type of scenery along the Gaspe. The purple flowers are fireweed (Epilobium Anagustifolium) common in burnt areas of Alberta and BC but very common along the Gaspe.

We travelled today from Grand Falls, NB to St. Stephen’s on the Bay of Fundy. Interesting day – potatoes, railway, covered bridge and potato chip factory.