New England pictures, part 2

[layla]

Old stone wall -- we saw lots of them, some abandoned and overgrown, others (like this one) evidently still in use.


We passed a lot of old Industrial Revolution factories and mills along the mountain rivers.


Coastal Maine is pretty much everything that coastal Maine is supposed to be ... and the rain had finally stopped!


Sister on the rocks! With the tide coming in, we thought it might be a good idea to take turns climbing around on the rocks while the other person stayed behind as a spotter and potential lifeguard...


Probably half the pictures I took were of the Maine coast. We hiked around Portland Head for a while (which is where these pictures were taken), then drove up to Freeport and found some wildlife reserves where we hiked and hiked and hiked some more.

We didn't really get enough of Maine, but we were running out of time so then we headed up straight north through Maine and right into Quebec.


This was so utterly bizarre as a business concept that I had to take a picture of it. The fact that it's in Quebec just adds to the strangeness. As far as I could tell it was just an ordinary cafe, though. (It's in the town of Joliette, north of Montreal, if you want to go check it out for yourself.)

I didn't get any pictures at all of Quebec City itself because I was trying not to die in its rush-hour traffic and tiny winding streets. I really want to go back and explore it someday, because it has one of the most lovely downtowns that I've ever seen in a North American city, but not in a car and not at 5 p.m.


Wetlands in Ontario along the St. Lawrence River.


Boat on the St. Lawrence River -- we ate lunch at a bar & grill that was right on the water, and this was taken from the dock attached to the restaurant.


I know it's terribly American of me, but the quote marks around "liberate" on this sign in Ontario totally cracked me up, especially considering that I'd just a few days prior been in Boston and been talking about the American Revolution there.


One more picture of the river. Notice the pattern here ... I take tons of pictures of rivers and trees, but towns and people seem to completely evade my lens.

And that's it! I ought to take some pictures of fall around here too -- the colors are in full swing and it's quite lovely outside.

Comments

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

They are rather odd-looking things, aren't they?

[acoustic-rob.livejournal.com]

Were you on the St. Lawrence Seaway at any point in your travels? When those huge ships enter the locks they're well below ground level, so all you see are the antennas and maybe the top of the superstructure poking over the top of the bank. But as they start raising the water level, it looks like an apartment building is slowly growing out of the ground! Then you start seeing the rest of the ship, moving in a direction (up!) that ships don't usually move...it's pretty impressive.

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

We saw a sign along the highway pointing to the locks, but we didn't actually see them. Sounds freaky thought! We were impressed enough by the phenomenally high bridges that you have to cross to get back to the U.S. side...

[sobelle.livejournal.com]

This last March I got to see the Miraflores locks in the Panama Canal Zone and it was certainly awesome... in the full meaning of the word...

The rest of Panama was impressive but I guess I'm enough of an engineering geek that I was mightily entertained when the speaker described the huge working gates of the locks as being the originals from when the canal was first built and still there because of the "miracle of maintenance"