Goodbye Quebec City Hello St. Andrews NB – July 29 2021

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Daniel our host was really nice. I wish I had more time to talk to him. We had to take off early for the super long drive to NB. Silvia was awesome and we were packed and on the road by exactly 6 AM. Getting out of QC was super easy at that time. The roads were kinda rough at first but it was not long before they smoothed out. Bumpy roads are not so easy on the fit with it’s shocks already compressed.

I was really concerned about the hills along the way. The last time I did it, I found the cars little engine really struggled with the climbs. With the extra weight, a new bike rack, 2 bikes, 2 humans and a silly bag on top it was way more than the last time. I had a few hill climb tests to see how it did. I found the car best performed around 4 to 5000 RPM. Climbing up and keeping this RPM meant hanging around 120 KM/h I felt like a jerk doing this and had to pass quite a few people to keep the RPM up. We burned through fuel like mad but we made excellent time. The Fit performed amazing and it’s engine had never been so clean.

Enter NB was kinda weird. We were both prepared with out Covid Vaccination forms already printed. We also printed our get into the province paperwork. What we did not know was if and when there would be a mandatory stop. We passed the Quebec/NB border without any obvious signs of stoppage. Google Maps showed traffic slowed a few more KM`s in. Yep. The province had wisely utilized a truck weigh station as a Covid check point. It was honestly a very non Canadian feeling to be mandatorily stopped. There were several official looking vehicles with lights flashing to add to the The queue was only a few cars thick and soon we were talking to a nice guy in a hot tiny booth. He asked us the typical questions regarding our paperwork and popped it into a computer. It would have been fun to say no but I had places to be. Minutes later we were zooming on the highway again. Very strange.

Silvia worked while we drove and luckily the cell data worked most of the time. Her most important meeting was delayed and we took a chance on the road rather than the planned Tim’s location in Edmonton. It actually worked out pretty good for most of her meeting. We only ran into issue in valleys where her voice would cut out. Fortunately her colleagues are pretty chilled about it and the meeting went well. I really pushed the Fit hard during the NB hill climbs. There are about 10 of them. The 4-5000 RPM trick worked great.

We pushed through with gas pit stops, grabbed a subway sandwich and stopped finally to eat and chill at a random cemetery just north of St. Andrews. The last few 50 Km’s towards St. Andrews are really chilled out and relaxing compared to the highway. Coming into St. Andrews for the first time revealed a nice slow paced Water Street with an intentional one way to minimize traffic. I was under the impression St. Andrews was a tiny village. It’s actually a very comfortable size. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Andrews,_New_Brunswick

We soon found Salty Towers and Jamie was quick to respond to a text we had arrived. https://www.saltytowers.net/ The Salty towers building is massive. I believe I heard at one time it had 17 rooms for accommodation. We had a nice room with an outside private bathroom. We soon met Deb Jamie’s partner and we headed out to explore. Silvia had been to the area years ago in High School so it was nice for her to return. St Andrews is a moderate sized peninsula https://goo.gl/maps/afduBboqCVGvVdRU9 and had plenty of land to explore. It was not long before we discovered very content deer hanging out here and there.

This is a deer friendly community and they come in all sizes. Restaurant’s in St. Andrews are plentiful. We wanted to share what we had with as many places as possible. The first place that fell into out lap was the Kennedy Inn http://kennedyinn.ca/ This was a pretty decent sized hotel as well. Dinner prices were great and it was nice to have some imported micro brewery beer. After dinner we walked down towards the market wharf to take some awesome cloud shots. That evening we saw on the news that NB would be going green on July 30th at midnight. Covid was slowly ending, oh my what a relief..

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