Waking up in L'Anse au Clair (southern Labrador) at 6am, I was about to have one of my favourite type of days.

I was up at that hour to catch the Labrador ferry, where I'd then land in St. Barbe Newfoundland, switch cars, then ride 4 hours back to the place where I live. With everything going to plan, I had 2 hours to finish up packing, before Isy scooped me up and we'd drive 2.5 hours south to Port-aux-Basques to sit in the ferry line and wait to board within the next 2 hours. From bed to boat, it was around 18 hours of travelling.

God I love logistics, the open road and the physical act of travelling.

We were down in the PAB because Isy needed to drive to her father's in Gatineau but didn't want to drive alone. Offering to pay for the ferry if I accompanied her and then drove her car the 16 hours back to North Sydney Nova Scotia from Gatineau, the conversation went a lot like that Seinfeld scene:

Jerry : "Kramer, you want to go down to the Bronx and help me take flyers off George's car?"
Kramer : [without hesitating] "Sure!"
Jerry : "Could've said just about anything, couldn't I?"

Isy's going to pay for my ticket off the island? Plus give me her car to drive back once we're 16 hours of distance and new possibilities into the mainland? Plus I get brownie points because I'm apparently doing her a "favour"? Yeah that right there is a no brainer!

Arriving in Port aux Basques, we needed somewhere to walk the dog & I figured the local mall was as good as anywhere. Pulling into the mall's weird driveway sandwiched between houses, I soon discovered that they had taken down their intimate, humble Grandview Cinema.

A Gulf News article reports that the demolition occurred in September of 2017, with the mayor saying it was no great loss since people stream and rent movies now. That "the need is not there anymore...it's just gone the way of the dodo."

Sadly, this article also states that the local businessman who fights to operate Stephenville's small town theatre, Brad Callahan, had actually approached mall management in hopes that he could purchase the building and fix it up, but when the mall only offered to rent out the building, Callahan wouldn't commit to fixing up a building that he was renting.

It's a bit sad that the mayor didn't instead see this as a lost opportunity to offer something to stormbound passengers and bored teenagers.

Driving over to the ferry terminal and getting our tickets, this was the first time I had been on the ferry with Isy's dog. Handing our ID's over at the ticket booth, the lady said she'd get us on the boat in a spot where we'd be the first off.

Whoa! This dog was paying dividends!

You see, you have two options for bringing a dog or cat on the ferry: bring them up to the room of cages with the other stressed pets; or leave your animal in your car. Neither option allows your pet to use the washroom during the 7.5-hour crossing that swells to 9 hours with boarding and disembarkation - so your little guy usually needs to use the washroom pretty bad after a stressful night of being left alone, seeing as you're also not allowed back to your vehicle once you leave it to go to the lounge or your cabin.

(N.b.: We have since been stuck in all kinds of random spots on the boat with the dog. It isn't standard practice to put the pet people up front like that. We just got lucky this time.)

We eventually landed in Nova Scotia, ecstatic that we were the first to get off the boat and wouldn't have to worry about boobs sleeping through the 3 docking announcements, or ferrymen and their strange logic for disembarkation.

About an hour from the boat, there was a warm breakfast spot in Baddeck that my friend Kim had recommended multiple times by now. The usual problem with this place was that I was in a hurry to cover distance and try to get to something unfamiliar as I raced through Cape Breton and the area around New Glasgow.

We had similar distance to cover today, but Isy wanted real breakfast and thought Kim's recommendation sounded nice. So we finally stopped at the Yellow Cello, which was pretty good, even as I was stressed about having important places to be.

A critical stop would come in Oxford Nova Scotia, after skipping over the skatepark-free towns of Port Hawkesbury, Pictou and Antigonish; along with the subpar skatepark towns of Trenton and New Glasgow.

(Antigonish has since built a park and Pictou is currently at about 40% of their funding goal.)

Even though I was only 20 minutes from the impressive Amherst skatepark, I wanted to mix it up and ride something new today.

Oxford was funky. I liked the street-like transition of the quarters and the grindable handrail fence all around the park. This was definitely a park made by a fabrication company and not a skatepark company, which might lead people to dislike the bank-like quarter pipes, but it was fine for a hour's break just off of the Trans-Canada Highway.

Another critical stop, if we weren't going to Truro because I don't like their skatepark, was Dieppe's Taco Bell.

There's something wrong with that Dieppe Taco Bell though, and probably me as well, because somewhere around Sussex, Isy would get nauseous and I got upset that she would come back to Newfoundland with tales of getting nauseous from Taco Bell.

As it turns out, women don't care for their partners putting the reputation of Taco Bell over their own well-being. Quite the discovery.

We actually ate our Taco Bell outside Moncton's new QMJHL rink and then drove through Saint John and into Maine, which somehow took enough time to leave us grabbing dinner around sunset.

This was at a snack bar I've driven past numerous times on this road (Airline Road, aka. Maine State Route 9).

We had a campground reservation in Clifton Maine and it was not the type of place we envisioned. As we were arriving later than most, I found the office vacant and no instructions for what to do. So I looked at the campground map and noticed a few sparse "tent" sites way at the back.

Passing about 75 RVs and many that looked like permanent structures, we reached the back of the campground and found a few other tenters. In the end, it was quiet and pleasant, but this part of Maine is rural enough that there isn't a big need to come jam into a campground like this. It was a lesson learned and we'd change it up in the future.

The next morning I was pretty excited that we would be driving right into the heart of Bangor Maine at the corner of Main Street and the US-2, where I'd only went around or briefly through Bangor previously.

With all of its old stone and brick buildings, a hearty river flowing through downtown, and its classic storefronts, this definitely left me wanting to explore more of Maine's 3rd largest city in the future.

It's a good thing Isy loved where I brought her for breakfast then, because now she's always carrying on about stopping in Bangor whenever we're within a 5-hour drive.

Here at The Grind House, the thing they may be best known for is their breakfast sandwich that's made with candied bacon, egg, cheese, and of course, a local Gosselin's donut instead of your standard english muffin or 12-grain bagel. It was pretty damn good, especially when you make it healthy with the yogourt side.

If you're unfamiliar with me you might be wondering why I didn't take the much simpler, GPS-approved, Trans-Canada Highway right to Gatineau from North Sydney Nova Scotia, but I wanted to go through America and if I'm going to go through new cities, then I want to see a few things.

As always, I checked for nearby lighthouses. In Maine, the lighthouses are slightly more dense in the south, but the discrepancy seems greater because many of the northern lighthouses are either on private property or offshore islands. When you add in that I've already seen West Quoddy Head up by New Brunswick & Bass Harbor Head in Acadia National Park, then I'm not usually far enough south in Maine to get any new lighthouses.

Except today, where I noticed a new lighthouse only an hour south of Bangor!

So we cruised in nearly the opposite direction of Gatineau, heading past handsome homes, on roads I longed to bike and past rentals I wished to rent. We were down into that part of Maine where I want to spend more time and at the end of the road was Castine: a gorgeous, seaside, quintessential Maine town with lobster rolls, ice cream stands, and towering, immaculate wood homes.

As I parked the car, I didn't realize how hot it was as we set off to walk around. The heat would become apparent pretty quick as sunscreen-laced sweat dripped into my eyes and the dog panted away, creating worry in whether we would make it to our destination in the end.

After about 45 minutes, Isy offered "this ends at a lighthouse, doesn't it? This has been long enough, okay where's the lighthouse?"

I laughed at her being able to see right through me, but also tried to keep up the surprise and play it cool as if we were just wandering around. Thankfully she saw right through my lies, but knew we needed to keep it moving towards our reward.

Following the war of 1812, Castine grew along with the postwar economy, as this town was a county seat, lumbering port, trading center, and center for shipbuilding. Ships would set off for the Grand Banks off of Newfoundland, then return to trade or store their catch here in Castine. It was also important to Maine's great lumbering industry, as wood and wood products would come here and leave by sea (or get used in some of the opulent homes being built by those gaining great wealth in Castine).

The Dyce Head Lighthouse was built in 1828 to help ships find their way west up the Penobscot River, or east into Castine's harbour. The lighthouse was named for the Dyce Family who previously owned this plot of land, and not for the Detroit rapper.

Originally built of rubblestone, the lighthouse was renovated and encased in concrete over the years, until it was made obsolete by the construction of a buoy in the seas below, along with a skeleton tower on shore.

The Town of Castine was always interested in the light & took possession of it and the keepers house on June 18th, 1956. The town worked to shore up and restore the lighthouse to its rubblestone exterior, while also renting out the keepers house in order to raise renovation funds and likely keep an eye on the grounds. One of these renters was artist Nancy Carr, who lived at Dyce Head for over 40 years.

2007 would bring a strange twist of fate when a wind storm blew down the skeleton tower that had replaced the lighthouse in 1937. The town then petitioned the Coast Guard to reactivate the lighthouse instead of building a new skeleton tower, and the lighthouse was then back in action in 2008.

Heading back to the car, it took some time because a dog who lives in Newfoundland oddly wasn't used to 30°C/85°F heat before the humidex.

Dang thing kept wanting to lay down and rest in the shadows, haha.

Afterwards we went right back up the eastern side of Penobscot Bay until we reached Orland and headed west towards New Hampshire.

Along the way, the GPS brought us through Livermore Falls and I was infatuated with the town. Isy asked why I liked it so much in comparison to the other towns and that gave me pause both that day, and every travelling or recap day since.

Where I like hilly, concise, blue collar towns that look like they belong in some Mark Wahlberg film about Boston, that's not what makes everyone's heart flutter. There's a point and usefulness in explaining why you like a place versus simply assuming that everyone must love places like Livermore Falls.

The school across the street had some rough banks and nice rails, but unfortunately I wasn't in the market for a 12-stair rail at the moment, lol.

I tried to think if I've ever seen this rail in a video, but even though we'd been driving for days, we still weren't that close to the population centres of New England. I figured these rails had to be hidden gems and not well known much further away than Augusta.

Next to Livermore Falls' paper mill stood Franchetti's Home Town Variety, prominently advertising their fresh dough pizza and Italian sandwiches. We weren't quite hungry yet, but I had to have an Italian sandwich from this great little authentic corner store.

(Across the street was the Scissor Wizard, which is such a great name for a business in Maine and/or Massachusetts. The Scizzah Wizid kehd! :D)

Since it was so hot, we decided to take our food down to a park next to the Androscoggin River, where Isy was a bit flustered by the religious revival, "we are saved" talk in a nearby gazebo, complete with people sitting with their heads down and a preacher on a microphone.

Anyway, the meatball sub was just so-so, but I still loved stopping at Franchetti's instead of the nearby Cumberland Farms chain.

I had to get this sub in me though, as it was just about time to do some hiking.

Continue to Part 2...