St Andrews, NB

   The last 3 days we have been camped in a boondockers welcome driveway, near St Andrews, NB.  It couldn't be a better location;  a couple miles from a cute summer cottage town by the bay, a rail trail goes past a couple hundred feet away, and a nice flat spot with friendly hosts, everything we could want.
   On Tuesday, we left around 8 am from Moncton, stopped a couple times for wifi so Elliot could get the latest Star Wars trailer, and I wanted to hear news about Theranos.  (Theranos is a castle in the sky blood testing company; test blood with just a finger prick amount, in the doctors' office or at the drugstore, they have a deal with Walgreens so far sending out tests to their labs, not yet doing the tests in-situ.  But now maybe the story is unraveling or taking longer to work out at least.)  We also stopped at a home store for more weatherstripping.
    We arrived about 2 pm and got set up.  Carl and Cindy are very nice and we talked for a while.  I borrowed a ladder to climb up and reseal the wifi cable on the roof.
    We also rode the old railway trail toward town.  I say rail no-trail, because some of it is completed and very nice,  but it also continues through some private property where it is not improved and overgrown pretty well, but people climbing through keep it open.  It was a great ride, I thought, a lot of it was fun to bomb along single track.  But not all of us were happy about having to explore a little and pick through the woods a couple times, go around fences and some rough cobbly trail, etc.  It's sometimes hard to match up everyone's vision, but at least none of us are all too picky.  ;>)

    Pretty close to where we're staying the trail comes out to Bar road,  where there is a gravel bar exposed at low tide to Minister's Island.  The tide was just covering it when we got there.  We were able to go part way out, but the rest already had water over the road.  About 10 minutes before I could still see the whole way across from the trail up in the woods.

    We continued into town, which required going through some uphill roads, and more sections of hiking trails, great for rough mountain biking, but not everyone's cup of tea.  We made it into town eventually and explored around, and got some groceries at the respectably sized almost-super market.  St Andrews is very cute, a little touristy shopping on the main street by the water.  The ride home was a good 4-5 miles and some more uphill again.  In summer, it must be a little tight with all the people, sorry no rv's welcome right here.  There is a real nice campground out on the point though.

    On Wednesday,  back to the future day!  We biked the opposite way on the rail trail, north.  It is better maintained and used, and it goes to a lake that supplies drinking water for St. Andrews.  The railroad bed goes across the corner of the lake and along the side.  It continues on further, but there was a low spot covering the whole trail where it was cut through rock on both sides, forming a long pond with no easy way around.  We turned around and biked back, took the main road partway back to the Rossmount Inn.
     Up behind the Inn is a trail or carriage road that goes up to the top of the hill.  It was a nice little hike, very pretty with the leaves, and we could see all around;  the US over to the west, and down to St Andrews and Navy Island to the south,  and the infamous Hospital Island to the east (small island at about 12:30 in the picture).   The walk and ride back 'home' was most all downhill and was real easy.

     After lunch we went into town to do laundry, check out the library and look for seafood.  Nope, no fresh seafood.   Could have had mackerel though.   So chicken burgers for dinner then.  Alice stated that she prefers them to be called turkey burgers, because it sounds mean to eat chicken as a burger patty.  Really...  Who'd have thought.
     Next day, Thursday, we slept in again, I've been staying up too late playing on the computer.  Well, I was doing some work for a while, doing bookkeeping for the rentals expenses sorting through the receipts since April/May.  It will be easier keeping up with it instead of letting it go.
     After breakfast, Annie & Alice went into town with the truck.  Alice was happy about a shawl that she bought, Annie stocked up on organic peanut butter.  Organic since it's about all we eat for lunch, and the local store seems to be as good a price as we've seen with the exchange rate, as good as the dozen jars on sale from home. 
     Elliot & I took another ride in on the no-trail rail trail, and went over to Minister's Island, with the tide out we went across the bar and all around the island on the trails.  The main house is a pretty impressive cottage, just the bath house or any of the other outbuildings would be a great cottage or house.

   We had a later lunch and stayed cozy inside while it got colder and rainy outside.  And we had a survivor show for dinner!  Next morning we left for Annie's sister's house in Maine, back to the USSS!