On to Canada Maritime Provinces -

We left NY City around noon on Thursday, Sept 30  and stayed overnight in Bangor, Maine.  Got up the next morning and drove to the Canadian border to get to Saint John, New Brunswick.

Entering Canada

We were held up for almost 3 hours at the border for them to check us out!  Seems we were supposed to have submitted some "tour" paperwork that nobody knew anything about.  They took one of our passengers aside and interviewed him and finally let us go, after unloading all our luggage and having the drug dog sniff them out.  Luckily we didn't have anything illegal in them and they let us go.     (Click photos to enlarge)

Reversing Falls

Market Place

We travelled to Saint John and spent the night.  The next morning we had a guide to show us about the area.  We went to "reversing falls" which was most interesting.  When the tide goes in and out the rivers will be pushed back.  He took us back the next morning when the tide was receding and going in another direction. We enjoyed going to the City Market Place which has been in existence for over 100 years. We had fun looking around. Cruise ships pull in port here and support the markets.  Tourism is the main industry in the ports.

Hopewell Rocks at Bay of
Fundy

 Our guide traveled with us all day.when we left Saint John and went to the Bay of Fundy to walk on the ocean floor at low tide.  High  tide makes the water rise to 48 ft.at the place we visited.    

Nell walking on ocean floor at Hopewell Rocks

Magnetic Hill at Moncton, NB

We left the Bay of Fundy and drove to Moncton, New Brunswick where we experienced Magnetic Hill.  You drive down a small hill, put your vehicle in park, and gravity pulls it back up the hill (an optical illusion that you cannot see up close).   Then we located a great restaurant for dinner.

I would go walking every morning and found tread mills at all the hotels.  I would go around 6 am and get in my 30 minutes of walking before going to eat breakfast.  I was usually the only person in the fitness room.

Moncton was the last town to visit in New Brunswick, before leaving the next morning to go to another province, Prince Edward Island, known locally as P.E.I.

We always ate breakfast at the hotels where we stayed and most times they were hot buffets. No grits but some great omelets and lots of fruit and rolls.  And of course cereal and juices.  And the Canadian bacon was so good.

There was always a sea of luggage in the lobby every morning around 7:30 a.m.  The men on the bus helped the driver load the luggage (51 bags).  We bought 2 new pieces of luggage for the trip to hold clothes for 15 days.  They were really packed, and heavy.  Glad we had handles and wheels on them.

September 28-29, NY City (Day 2 and 3)

We loaded all 51 suitcases on the bus (plus things we put overhead) and got started on the second leg of our trip around 8 a.m.  About an hour into the trip, the passenger who fell the night before and had stitches over her eye, became weak and fainted.  Fortunately we had a Dr. (a peditrician) on the trip and he quickly came to her aid and helped her lie down in the aisle of the bus, up front.  The driver got off the interstate and went to the parking lot of a CVS drugstore.  After a few minutes there, an ambulance was dispatched to come get Ann Davis and take her to Duke Univ. Hospital nearby to be checked out.

We waited around in the parking lot of a WalMart store (where we all went inside and shopped around to kill time) until we heard how she was doing.  They said she could not travel and kept her in the hospital for some tests.  Her sister Betty Hudson got their luggage off the bus and we helped her get checked in at a hotel near the hospital, and we went on without them.

We were headed for Bergen, NJ to spend the 2nd night - a long way from Greensboro, NC!  We stopped along the way for lunch and again for dinner, arriving at our hotel around 9 pm.  Our hotel was near the Lincoln Tunnel, where we would enter to get to Manhattan on Wed and Thurs.

We got up early on Wednesday, Sept 29, and were riding into NY city by 8 a.m. - along with thousands of other motorists going to work.  We met our step-on tour guide in mid-town Manhattan and he took us on a tour of several sites, including China Town, Harlem, the theater district, Wall Street, Central Park, and on to Ground Zero, where we got off the bus and went to the Merrill Lynch Building to view the construction taking place at Ground Zero.  Then we got back on the bus and went to Rockefeller Center to go to the Observation Deck (Top of the Rock) to view the city and have lunch.
Streets were very crowded after we left Rockefeller and headed toward the south end of Manhattan to the ship docks to get on the water taxi
to go to the Statue of Liberty.  We missed our boat by about 15 minutes and had to wait until the next morning to do that tour.

Our bus driver drove all around the island of Manhattan, showing us the various bridges, and the entire outer rim of the city.  We traveled through some areas we had seen earlier in the morning when we had our guide.
We had reservations for dinner at Heartland Brewery Chop Shop, not far from the Gershwin Theater where
we went to see the Broadway Play "Wicked" - which was very good by the way.

After the play, we got back on the bus and went back thru the Lincoln Tunnel to our hotel for another night there.  It was a  l-o-n-g  day but we saw so many things and it was exciting.

It was misting rain when we checked out of the hotel on Thursday, Sept. 30.  We headed back to Manhattan and out first thing to do was to go to the top of the Empire State Building.  We were the first tour group and went up to the top in heavy fog.  We went to the observation deck and could not see very far because of the dense fog.   After this we got back on the bus and went to the wharf to get on the water taxi (the one we missed the day before).  The misting rain continue and there were whitecaps on the big Hudson River.  I was glad the boat was big and heavy!  We crossed the river and went past Ellis Island which was "fogged in" on to the Statue of Liberty, which we cruised around the foundation and looked up at the large statue which was most impressive.

water taxi

After the ride on the Hudson River, we got back on our bus and headed north to Bangor,Maine to escape the rain that was moving into the area.  That night they had 10" of rain and flash flooding.

Our 15-day bus trip to New York, New England, Canada, Niagara Falls, PA

We're back home after a long road trip to places we have not been before.  It was a great trip, travelling with 50 others from our area.  All in the same bus!  I'm not sure I ever want to go on a bus trip for more than one day.

I am going to divide my blog into several parts, beginning with the first leg of the journey.  We met in the parking lot of First Baptist Church in Enterprise, AL on Monday morning, Sept. 27, 2010, around 7 a.m. to begin our journey north.  There were 51 passengers on the Southern Coach bus.

The bus arrived from Dothan around 7:30 a.m. and we started boarding soon after.  Jim and I each had a large suitcase and some carry-on bags and pillows (which we never used).  The seats on the bus were  very narrow and not much leg room.  We were seated in the upper 1/3 of the bus, surrounded with some people we know.  There were several from Elba making the trip.

We pulled out of the parking lot at 8:10 a.m. and headed north to Atlanta.  We stopped near Atlanta and bought lunch.  Then headed on to Archdale, NC (near Greensboro).  We stopped in Charlotte around 7 pm and ate dinner at a Shoney's restaurant.  Arrived in Archdale around 9 p.m.  My sisters Alice and Susan met us at the Fairfield Inn and we visited for awhile.

One of our passengers, Ann Davis, stumbled as she was walking to the hotel lobby, and fell and cut her head over her eye.  Had to call 911 and get her an ambulance to a nearby hospital to get stitches.  She work up the next day with a black eye, and ready to go on the trip. Her travelling partner was her sister Betty Hudson.

We had a good hot breakfast at the hotel and put our suitcases back on the bus to start the second day of our trip.

Continuing with Day 2 tomorrow.