CAMPOBELLO, New Brunswick, Canada -- In the midst of the so-called Great Recession, remembering FDR is instructive. And so it was that we took a long road trip last week with a stop at Campobello, Roosevelt’s summer home, on an island just off the coast of Maine.
It’s part of Canada, actually, and accessible by a bridge which is a border crossing, and by ferry from New Brunswick.
The border crossing is advertised in a brochure as ‘friendly,’ and it was, mostly, though an agent pawed through our mini-van looking briefly for who knows what. More on crossing into Canada and back below.
Campobello is beautiful and definitely worth seeing. The gardens are breathtaking, and the large ‘cottage’ where Roosevelt summered as a child and young adult is intact and provides great insight into lifestyles of the past.
Campobello is also the place where Roosevelt contracted polio. He was carried off the island in a stretcher, and rarely visited there afterward.
We stayed at a funky bed and breakfast on the island. In fact on this trip we stayed at several different bed and breakfast inns. They varied greatly in style. Some had friendly dogs, one had a parrot, two advertised free internet access that didn‘t work or work well. But all were fun and acceptable. With great breakfasts.
In many ways this was an off the grid trip, with long drives on two lane blacktops. We drove through rural Maine, on US Route 1, a disgrace of a road that badly needs stimulus money for repairs.
We drove through rural New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. Some of the two-lanes were excellent roads, others were horrible. The towns we saw followed this pattern.
These are historic communities, most with substantial 19th century homes and buildings. Some towns have gone the extra mile to promote and beautify their communities with flowers and renovated buildings. Other town are shabby, with shuttered, even falling down homes and buildings. We wondered about the differences. Is it local leadership? Community wealth?
The star community of the trip was Bar Harbor, Maine -- the ultimate resort town with dozens of great shops, inns and restaurants downtown, all within walking distance.
Bar Harbor is a distinctive upper middle class destination, full of designer dogs accompanying beautiful people of all ages. It sounds expensive but it wasn‘t any more expensive than most vacation spots or Chicago.
Our innkeeper there said business is off by 30 percent or so, and people are being more careful about spending their money. They’re ordering fewer desserts in restaurants, seeking the cheaper rooms in the inns, buying less expensive souvenirs, he said the merchants have noticed.
Business looked great to us. The town was packed during this high season in Maine, and everyone seemed to be having a lovely time dining outdoors and strolling the streets.
Then there’s Canada. We crossed the border into Canada after a line of almost an hour at the border.
What an ordeal, and we were not even searched, though people we met in the various inns had some horror stories to tell about searches and delays coming and going both ways. You want to cross the border, you take your chances.
Canada, though, is terrific -- great roads, lovely towns. Shows what happens to nations that don’t waste resources on war. Their money goes into infrastructure and health care.
This was a fun vacation, mainly an off the grid venture into the US, which just now, during the Great Recession, is filled with contrasts.
-- Elaine Hopkins
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