Canada: Campobello

My mom and I left the house around 8 am to head for Campobello, New Brunswick, Canada. We had to drive through Maine for about 7 hours. The one item from this part of the trip that sticks out is there was a blueberry-themed park on the way where we saw a picture of a blueberry character chasing a little kid. It was pretty creepy, but a running-joke throughout our trip.

Campobello is a small island that only has two access points. One is a ferry to another island in New Brunswick (where you have to take another ferry to mainland Canada) and the other is across a bridge to Lebec, Maine. Of course everyone now needs passports to enter the US and so even to get gas at the one station in Lebec (there are none on Campobello) you have to use your passport, enter the US, get your gas and then re-enter Canada. As far as I could tell there was nothing special about Lebec. It is just a small fishing village near beautiful Campobello. When you crossed into New Brunswick you entered Atlantic Time and lost an hour and when you were in Maine you are in Eastern Time.

I put gas in our Jeep in Lebec and then crossed the bridge to Canadian Customs. It was the first time my mom and I got to use our Canadian passports. The female border guard was nice and polite. She asked a few questions. One that I thought was a little dumb was when she asked how long we were staying in Canada. As Canadian citizens we can stay, live and work forever if we wanted to. Had we used our American Passports I would have understood the question, but that wasn’t the case here.

We stayed at the Campobello Whale Watch Motel (which I found online.) It was a regular motel with nothing special The owners (a husband and wife) were very excited to speak to people and when I went a few times to ask them a quick question I had to listen to their whole life story before I could get my answer and leave. We were only there one night so it wasn’t too bad. We saw a brochure in the room for an island tour and so booked it for the next day.

Campobello Island is where President Franklin Roosevelt and his family vacationed throughout his life. There’s a park (called Roosevelt Park) with the house that he stayed in – we didn’t make it there. The island is very beautiful (as I already mentioned)and I took lots of pictures.  There isn’t much else except for parks and water. They have one grocery store with the only ATM on the island  - which had run out of money by the time I got there, a handful of restaurants, a school, a post office, golf course and that’s about it. I was able to go to a Variety Store (which is like a General Store) and get the first Kinder Egg I have had in 2 years – I had to make sure to eat it before we re-entered the US the next day as they are illegal in the States. I also got some Canadian cash there. Apparently, in Canada all of their credit cards now have chips in them that are put into a reader when you buy stuff whereas American ones have to be swiped (I can’t tell you how often throughout the trip I was asked if there was a chip or if I was from the States because it didn’t have one.)

We had dinner at the golf course as the other restaurants were only seafood and it was good.  I know they say “pop” in Canada instead of “soda” but I had to continue using “soda” everywhere – the look on the people’s faces while they tried to figure out what I wanted was priceless and that continued throughout the trip.

The next day (my mom's birthday) we took a tour around the island in a van. Our guide was an old German man who came to Campobello with his wife via Norway and Alberta, Canada. He had a lot of knowledge about the little island and kept saying “willage” instead of “village.” I don’t think I have ever met a German who could say “village.” The tour was both interesting and fun. I learned a lot, but had a good time. We had lunch (sandwiches) on the tour and then he brought us back to the motel where we got into our car and left.

We used our American passports to enter the US. The female border guard was very nice and didn’t ask any dumb questions. We travelled through Maine to continue our trip around the Canadian Maritimes.  I wouldn't mind going back to Campobello.