Nackawic, patty-whack, give a dog an axe

The world's biggest axe in Nackawic, the world's smallest town (maybe)

Day 5: Quebec ~ St. Anne de Beaupré ~ Fredericton (728km)

Today we feasted on the best sights that western New Brunswick has to offer. More on that in a second, but don't get too excited.

We awoke to thick grey skies in Quebec and had a quick breakfast before hitting the road up the Beaupr‚ Coast. Our plan was to see the famous Montmorency falls and St. Anne de Beaupre Cathedral, but heavy rains put the pinch on that for the most part. We did see the falls twice, from the car on the highway as we zoomed passed them in the pouring rain. I've seen these falls before gushing water like Niagara Falls (they're actually 30m higher, the tallest in Quebec), but today they were pretty pathetic looking, so we didn't miss much by passing them by. Our stop in St. Anne de Beaupr‚ was similarly brief. A rainy dash into the cathedral, a nice look around, and then a rainy dash back to the car, with my $3 umbrella breaking and slicing part of my hand open along the way...nice.

Back through the city and onto the main highway, heading east. The rolling fields and farms hugging the St.Lawrence on our left would have made for a very nice highway drive had it not been for the pouring rain and the roughshod Quebec road surfaces. Fearing a bursted bladder, we stopped for lunch in Riviere de Loup, a tiny two bit down that for some reason seems to think it needs one way traffic on its quiet main street. As we parked, everyone seemed to be heading to and coming from Mike's, and so we did the same. It was a chain restaurant whose fare is Italian-slanted, aside for its big Yankee breakfasts. We opted for lunch and I made the mistake of ordering pasta, which came out bloated and soggy with uncooked meatballs. That's the last time for Mike's on this trip.

Things improved greatly heading into New Brunswick. At the border, Quebec's single lane second-rate roadway turned into a smooth, two-lane (in each direction) divided highway where the speed was soon bumped up to 110km/h, allowing us to fly along even faster than that.

And now what you've been waiting for: New Brunswick's gifts to its tourists. We had a lot of ground to cover, so if it wasn't close to the highway, it wasn't on our list.

First stop and pride of northeastern New Brunswick was Grand Falls, possibly the most inaptly named town in the Maritimes (but we haven't reached Newfoundland yet, so...) The 'grand falls' in the middle of the town were barely a trickle filtering through a vast expanse of craggy rock, although the plaque overlooking the falls assured us that in the spring the flow gushing over the falls is about 90% of what goes over Niagara Falls. I'll believe that when I see it. The story is that in the summer the majority of the river is diverted to the powerplant, and I'm sure the two bored-silly girls on duty at the empty information centre would do their best to try to convince you of that.

A hundred or so kilometres later we came upon Hartland, home to the world's longest covered bridge. No lying here - at 1282 feet, it is long, and only one lane with no traffic controls other than a stop sign at each end, so you've got to peer down the length of the bridge (tunnel) to see if anyone else is coming. Which we did...twice.

Finally, we had the cake-taker: an almost missable sight in an almost missable town on a bend in the St.John River. Nackawic is home to the world's largest axe, 20 metres of stainless steel which is stuck blade-in near the shore of the river. Getting out to take pictures, we were harrangued by two of the local yutes yelling "It's a really big axe" out of their car, which they had parked and were sitting in in the arena parking lot, obviously with nothing better to do on a Nackawic Saturday afternoon. Satisfied that it doesn't get any better than a giant axe, we hopped in the car and continued on to Fredericton, where we arrived after a dangerous empty-tank scare (670km without filling up).

En route we had booked a cheap motel across the river from the downtown core. It's a little strip motel run by a family of Indian descent (I think), and the young son who runs the front desk clearly wants to get the hell out of here. They moved from Toronto a year ago (after asking why they came from Toronto to Fredricton, I didn't want to ask why again after he told me it was to run the motel) and the kid couldn't say enough bad things about the city and New Brunswick in general. Oh well, he was entertaining, anyway.

So what to do in Fredericton? Well to our great fortune, this weekend happens to be the closing weekend of the FREX. Need I say more???