As we were standing and having our coffee and looking off to the Atlantic from our high bluff this morning, an eagle soared just overhead. Back and forth he soared. We took this as a good sign as today is also our son’s 45th birthday, happy birthday Jason. We made our plans to head to Moncton, New Brunswick where there is a casino where we heard we can have a free nights stay in their parking lot! We took a side trip down to Isle Madame, a quaint island with quaint towns..everything seems quaint up here. We were told that we needed to go to a particular coffee shop in Arichat, you know, the one across from the seafood place. And so we did, and they did have good coffee and lots and lots of local handmade stuff. They were selling hand turned wooden bowls and when I asked who the turner was I got, ‘Joe the bowl guy’ - I guess that about says it.
We found a store/business, RONA, a lumberyard hardware kind of place that also fills propane tanks. I figure since we have been doing a lot of cooking and running the furnace I had better get it filled as they is no way of knowing just how much propane is left in the tank. I pulled in across the street, in a gravel parking area that gave me plenty of room to maneuver, and walked across to the store when a huge tractor trailer pulled in and parked next to us and blocked our exit. ‘Don’t worry”, the clerk said “he’ll only be there for few minutes. I’ll send someone down to fill your tank in a minute, just go wait down there.” Within a few minutes the tractor trailer was unloading and the guy walked down to the propane filling place. I had pulled our little 11 pound tank and the guy said it felt full to him, which it did to me too. With all of our cooking and furnace running we had only used two pounds..I am amazed.
Must be some good efficiency in the furnace, but when it is running it sounds like it is just roaring and burning lots of propane..I was surprised. Leaving the island, we were back on the TransCanadian Highway once again and listening to our book as we rolled over the hilly terrain. We arrived in late afternoon at the casino in Moncton and decided not to stay in the parking lot..just couldn’t do it. We did however find the ‘Camper City’ campground just a couple of miles from the casino - so opted to stay there. The camp host was charming and we chatted quite a while.. he was not a fan of Canadian health care which took us by surprise - his biggest complaints were how much he actually had to pay out of pocket for so many things and that since it is a national healthcare system all of your records go into a central database which apparently just about anyone can have access to. Certainly it’s open to employers - talk about a loss of privacy, yikes. You learn something new every day.
When we got our camp set up we met our new neighbors in a cute little bubble like trailer. Don and Marilyn from Alberta. They have been on the road since August 1st, and today is September 26, so almost two months and they said that they will likely be home around October 15th. That is a good long trip. Their little trailer was built in Holland in 1976 and weighs only 800 pounds empty. I could stand up and walk around in it and it wasn’t much longer than Stella..awesome. We chatted on for quite a while, genuinely nice people. Carol and I jumped back in the car and found another Walmart, a 30 amp plug had gotten left behind in Battery Park, and then back to the Casino. We became ‘members’ so we could get the discount on the buffet. So for $6 each we had an all you can eat buffet. I had pork chops salad, potatoes and some corn on the cob and an unhealthy dessert of ice cream and cake. Carol had salmon and mussels and roast beef and salad and lots of good things, finishing up with an equally unhealthy dessert. After we had ‘all we could eat’ we headed into he casino proper walking around like a couple of lost kids at the county fair..we had not a clue what we were looking at or how any of the electronic gambling machines worked. Talk about naive. So we emboldened each other, went to the cashier and got some fives for the machines, nothing takes actual coins, they take bills and credit cards… We found a one cent machine and put in our $5 and played away, I got down to 15 cents and cashed out. We moved over to a 2 cent machine, big time now, and after spinning the wheels several times I was over $10 ahead! I cashed out. Now we were even, I had put two fives in the machines and had vouchers for ten dollars and fifteen cents! Ok, one more machine. Lights flashed and things whirred around and Carol and I just really couldn’t figure out what the rules of this thing was, but within few minutes we were over forty dollars ahead. I cashed out, and we called it a night. Our evening at the casino paid for supper and the campsite, but now we had a ’lot’ of Canadian dollars that we will need to spend before we cross the border tomorrow.
Back at the campground we settled in. It was a warm night in the mid seventies. We had the windows open and a nice breeze was blowing through. We watched the final episode of the series we had downloaded to the iPad and turned in. Then the breeze turned into a tempest and we rocked and rolled all night. It really blew and blew and several bands of torrential rain came through durning the night as well. Everything outside was soggy but we were warm and dry, a good night after all.
