Day 15 - 2025 East Coast Adventure - Turning Toward Home

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 have been cool, but we chose to drive. 

Since we still had a donut request from the boys, we set our first stop at a Tim Hortons along the way (they actually were the sponsor for the towns annual celebration which was this weekend!). Score, they had donuts!!!

We continued down the road and stopped in Moncton. First stop was for some groceries. We stopped at Atlantic Superstore (with a maple leaf logo) which is like Meijer for eastern Canada. The selection was overwhelming and so the stop took a bit longer than expected. The boys, as always, found fun in the store with Robinson doing his best Olaf impression and Sebastian imitating Shaq.


The next stop was also in Moncton - this time at the zoo!  I stayed in the car to work, but Amy and the boys said they had s great time and a fairly small zoo. They pet some goats and saw some interesting animals including a cow from Africa with 8 foot horns and a Rhea. 







After the zoo, we continued down the road towards camp. We went through Fredericton (New Brunswick capital) and over to the Mactaquac provincial park. The campground here is HUGE with almost 300 campsites. And, being a Friday night of summer, it was busy. The park is build on the edge of the reservoir on the St John river.  So it offered lake activities as well as some swimming from camp.  Robinson and Sebastian both waded in and reported that the water was, like PEI, surprisingly warm!

However, between the long drive and the extended stops, we didn't have much time to enjoy the park so we made some dinner and then did a quick walk (more dog pets for Robinson) to get our "dam picture".




After the walk, we returned back to camp and called it a night. While it was not an active day, I think we were all exhausted. 

Trip mileage - 2,550
# states - 12
# provinces - 3

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