Autumn Journey 2010 ... day ten, the longest day

We left Prince Edward Island bright and early on Sunday, September 26th. We had a long drive ahead of us before we reached Quebec City, Quebec, our final Canadian destination. A final stop at the PEI Starbucks was in order before we crossed the Confederation Bridge into New Brunswick.

As soon as we crossed into New Brunswick, we noticed that the fall color had erupted since we were there just a week before. We oohed and aahed at every turn in the road as the sunlight danced upon the trees making the leaves brighten before hiding behind a cloud making the colors deeper, richer. We stopped to take pictures, each time thinking that stop held the "best view" only to find out there was an even better one just down the road. After taking 77 pictures (two or three per stop) of TREES, we decided that had to stop or we would never get to Quebec City.

OOH and AHH!

How many crayons are in your crayon box? I think women have the telescoping tower of 150 crayons while men have the basic box of eight crayons. I asked Richard to name the colors of the leaves we were looking at as we drove. "Red, orange, yellow, green" he said as he looked at me like I was crazy. "Be more descriptive... like 'mahogany'" I replied. He looked at me like I asked him to recite the Declaration of Independence in Swahili. Finally, after much encouragement, he came up with a few- "Caution Sign Yellow" and "Unripe Banana" and "Cinnamon Candy Red"...

How about fiery copper, crimson, pumpkin orange, goldenrod, ASU maroon and gold (yep, that was mine, not Richard's!), persimmon, ginger, spruce green, brick red, sage green, burnt sienna, chestnut, mango, mulberry, scarlet, sunset orange, ...

After exhausting the color topic we began talking about where we would want to live if we ever had to be placed in the Witness Protection Program. I thought someplace with seasons would be good. This led to a discussion of jobs we could do there... Richard could be a computer geek helping the elderly set up their computers and I could run a photography business. Oh wait, now it's not a secret.  Anyway, this passed an hour or two.

We finally came to Hartland, New Brunswick- the smallest town in New Brunswick with a population of a little over 900. The amazing thing about this town, which is situated on the St. John River, is that the citizens on both sides of the river formed the Hartland Bridge Company in 1899 for the express purpose of building a bridge across the river since it was taking the government too long to decide if they were going to build a bridge or not. The 1,282 foot long bridge is the longest covered bridge in the world and was completed in 1901. The bridge was purchased by the government of New Brunswick in 1906 and is still open to vehicle and pedestrian traffic today.

The Hartland Covered Bridge was a popular kissing bridge for many years since it is so long!

As we continued our drive along TransCanada 2 (New Brunswick) we noticed numerous signs warning us to be on the lookout for moose. Then we noticed the "moose fence" along both sides of the highway. Apparently this section of the highway has had many moose/vehicle collisions, often with deadly results for the vehicle occupants. The fence was constructed to keep the moose off the highway. Every so often we would see a gate for humans as well as a gate for the moose. Yes, seriously!

The moose gate is constructed so that the moose can easily go in if they find themselves outside the fence, but cannot get out from inside the fenced area. So we wondered- how do the moose get out?

At long last, after it got dark, we drove into Quebec City. Miles driven today- 600.7 miles. Moose spotted- ZERO!