New Brunswick Road Trip - Virginia to Alma, NB Days 1-2

Entering Alma, New Brunswick from Fundy National Park

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This is the 2nd post in a series for this trip. You can view links to the other posts at the bottom of this one.

The drive from southwestern Virginia to New Brunswick, Canada, is no easy feat. An optimistic Google map will proclaim the drive to be 18 hours in length, but that estimate is built for the travel of future bots; real humans have to stop to eat, use the bathroom, caffeinate, and replenish the gas in their cars. Oh, and there will definitely be traffic, perhaps some passing rainstorms to slow traffic. There is a border crossing where every question feels like a trick and a trap and an honest answer to the questions will gain you a free pass to a (friendly but time-eating) secondary screening (true story, more below).

In real life this drive took us about 24 hours, split over two days, because humans also need to sleep.

We picked Lexington, Massachusetts as our stopping point for the first night. As a history buff, I was ridiculously optimistic that we’d be able to do or see something in the Lexington/Concord area. Maybe Louisa May Alcott’s home, Orchard House, or the cemetery where several noteworthy Transcendentalists are buried, or Walden Pond which Thoreau put on history’s map, or visit the site famous for the “shot heard ‘round the world” where the American Revolutionary War began.

But no.

Hoping otherwise was folly. Even though we had gotten on the road early - though not as early as we’d hoped - at 8am, it was after 9pm by the time we pulled into the parking lot of the Element Lexington hotel. To put salt on the wound, there was a hiking path directly across from the hotel that was part of the military battle park. On the up side, it started pouring rain in the morning before we left so that totally put out of my mind trying to sneak in any activities, which we truly didn’t have time for.

In that first day, we traveled through seven states: Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. In the second day, we would add New Hampshire and Maine to the list and travel the entire length of Maine, which is much larger than most people give it credit for!

We got on the road around 8:30am the second day, knowing that in addition to the long drive ahead, we would also change time zones and lose an hour. We did not want to arrive after dark in a small town in New Brunswick and try to find our Airbnb in the dark. Good thing, too, because finding it in the dimming light was a tad tricky.

In the distance, a sign for Maine is visible when not much else is in this soupy fog!

Basically the entire second day was dreary and rainy. We took a (longer) route through Maine to enjoy some pretty country roads instead of only the major interstates. We had hopes of seeing the coastal views but the day quickly declared it would be gray and rainy and by the afternoon a thick fog had moved in.

The closest thing we got to a real moose.

At the border crossing into Canada, we handed over our newly minted passports to replace our expired ones. After explaining what we had in the car and then answering a slew of questions, we were asked if we had any sort of pepper spray in a long list of weaponry. “Well, we have bear spray.” The agent wasn’t sure whether that was allowed, and so we got a secondary screening where we had to pull over, bring our two small canisters of bear spray into the building that successfully mimicked an old fashioned train station, and hand them over. Luckily, the spray literally has a picture of a bear on the side so it is clear what it is intended for. While I didn’t look at the clock, I’d bet we were in there for 15 minutes chatting with the agents. The one dealing with us ne’er do wells asked a few more screening questions but otherwise seemed to have a lot to type into his computer. I think they were bored – it was a slow day in the isolated border station of Calais.

In any case, the stop provided us the chance to stretch our legs before continuing on for several more hours in a stretch of road where we had the thickest fog of the day and some hearty rain. We stopped in the relatively large city of St. John to grab a bite to eat. While there, we picked up some breakfast food at a grocery store so we would be set for the morning.

Fundy National Park at the end of a long 2-day drive.

The final part of our drive into Alma, a small town on the Bay of Fundy, and directly adjacent to Fundy National Park, was a drive through a large segment of the verdant park. We drove into the small, adorable town of Alma and turned off to the side street that was our destination. By the time we arrived, it was dusk, and we had timed everything perfectly to unpack the car and get settled in for the evening. Our Airbnb host had left us a pitcher of water with orange and lime slices and a few delicious biscuits, a pleasant surprise for a late night snack! We enjoyed our three nights staying at this AirBnb and would recommend it to others.