Rover and Dover Adventures

8/4 Moosebrook State Park, NH to Half Moon Pond State Park, VT Today we would transition from the White Mountains and into the Green!  Sebastian helped Amy pack up camp while Robinson and I caught and examined tadpoles.   We decided that we really liked Moosebrook so we got bumper stickers and Amy got some "Moose Smooch" coffee before we headed west. As we headed out, we realized that our drive was taking us past the "Presidential" mountains that are all part of the Appalachian Trail.  While it would be amazing to hike just one of them, we just didn't leave the time in this vacation for it so we had to admire them from afar.  Unfortunately, the forest fires of Canada were creating a lot of smoke and so we were left with a white haze in the air all day.   As we headed west, we had a good distance of non-interstate roads.  In fact, on three separate occasions, the roads we were taking were unpaved.  Now that was unexpected!  However, becau...

8/3 - Bangor, ME to Moosebrook State Park, NH Everyone slept through night and we woke up to 56 deg. Man summer in the north is nuts!  Got ourselves moving, ate some breakfast and then explored the fishing pond. We counted about 20 frogs and a couple of giant bullfrogs. After counting and sharing the count with everyone, we hit the road.  I took the scenic route again which brought us across central Maine. We had a near miss situation where I swerved a bit to avoid the guy nearly running the stop sign and ran over a hunk of wood. Then we heard a noise and pulled over. Thankfully, this is what we found. Good job mud flap, have a Scooby snack.  After a brief stop for some milk, we proceeded to a rest area next to a river for lunch. Beautiful landscape and Robinson got to meet a corgi!  We snacked and continued on. From there on, we were officially in Honda Odyssey killing zone, AKA the mountains. Thankfully, Rover is fully equipped for situations like this and took us ...

8/2 - Mactaquac provincial park to Bangor, ME We woke up to a COOL morning (57 deg in August!) and so we were all a little slow to get out of our sleeping bags. But we got up and enjoyed cereals and leftover pasta for breakfast (not normal, but camping doesn't lend itself to normal). The boys then went and played on the swings while Amy and I packed up camp.  There were two routes offered by Google this morning and I took the slower, but less mileage route. As a result, we ended up on some very low travelled roads and we arrived at Vanceboro to come back in USA.  The crossing is so little used, it's only open 8-8 Eastern. The agent was actually waiting for us to arrive!  We went in, but forgot that we had eggs. Given the bird flu, apparently they are no longer allowed in so we sadly had to dispose of the eggs. Live and learn.  Now that we were back in the US and off a metered internet, the boys enjoyed some online electronics for the first time in a week.  Since...

8/1 - Smileys Provincial Park, NS to Mactaquac Provincial Park, NB For the second night in a row, we had rain through most of the night. Thankfully, last night was far lighter and we had some tree protection to slow down the drops. In fact, as I woke up in the middle of the night to pee (yeah, I'm old, what of it?), I tried to engrain the sound of the rain hitting the forest into my brain. It was so pleasant.  We all woke up and thankfully the rain stopped just as we were starting the day. I had wanted to get gas before hooking up the camper so we all drove into town to see if there were donuts. We struck out twice, but did find a bakery with some wonderful day old bread mini-loaves.  Since we couldn't find donuts in town, we hooked up the camper and started to head down the road and start on the longest transition for the trip (4.5:hrs). We momentarily considered taking the ferry which would have made it a 6+ hour trip, but then only 3 hours of it would be driving. It would h...