Music – Page 3 – The Destinators

Penobscot Bay

We had plans to meet up with friends in Rockland and Islesboro, leaving us with a little free time to explore this bit of Maine on our own. I had never been to the Penobscot Bay area, and Doug hadn’t visited since his college days at Bates (in Lewiston, Maine). Researching places to hike, we found that the Camden/Rockland area on Penobscot Bay featured the kinds of hikes we most like – moderate climbs to higher elevation places with great views. We identified 3 hikes to do and found a nice, small campground convenient to all of them. And Penobscot Bay was quite convenient for meeting up with our friends.

Chicky Stoltz & the Charlie Nobles*

Chicky Stoltz is a friend and neighbor, a talented musician and multi-instrumentalist, and my first drum teacher. He grew up in Camden, ME and moved with his young family to the Mad River Valley about 15 years ago. In addition to playing with numerous bands and ensembles in Vermont, he remains active with his Maine bandmates, getting together a few times each year, including an annual residence on a sailing cruise that kicks off with an evening show (on shore) the night before departure. Chicky Stoltz & the Charlie Nobles were scheduled to play at Ada’s Kitchen in Rockland, about 20 minutes from our friends Dick and Susan’s home, and the timing was good. Color us there!

On the road to Andover, Maine

Walker always asks to be in the top photo, showing us that he can still do what he does best – relax on the couch. He hasn’t changed a bit since we last saw him in 2021 and first met him in 2016. And he still loves us.

BGU/Grand Rapids, MI

BGU Jam – Grand Rapids, MI (photo by Jon Miller)

Long before we started planning our Eastern Canada tour for this summer and fall, there was exactly one fixed point in the schedule, and that was a four-day blues jamming extravaganza in Grand Rapids, Michigan organized by our friend Tom (aka tommytubetone), that we could catch on the way home. Tom is no stranger to this blog, having hosted us twice when we were around Kalamazoo. Tom also jammed with me that time in Memphis as well as at various other times and places going back almost ten years by now.

This event was already being laid out when we swung by to see Tom in 2018, and it was well along in the planning stage when we stopped by again in 2019. And while it was disappointing to see all of those plans go into storage with COVID, much like a fine whiskey improves with age, when this bottle was finally opened we found there was pure magic inside.

Toronto, ON – again

Our loyal readers may recall we jammed with Iris last July while enroute to Toronto. It was so much fun, we had to do it again!

Quebec City, partie 3 – fermer le cercle

The first night of this trip, on June 10, was spent in Quebec City. After 100 days on the road covering 11,000 km/7,000 miles and 5 provinces, we’ve come full circle back to Quebec City. We’re quite proud of that circle! And now, the adventure portion of this trip is behind us. Ha! Not without one more quick visit to the city… ‘Je me souviens!’

Cape Breton Highlands National Park

The Cape Breton Highlands comprise a tall, slightly rounded, mountainous plateau on the northeastern end of Nova Scotia. It was formed by the same collision of continents that created the unique mountains in Gros Morne National Park as well as the Appalachian Mountains, back in the really old days. Although not insanely tall at the highest point on White Hill (533 metres/1750 feet), the plateau drops dramatically from the edges – about 350 metres/1150 feet – to the ocean below.

Argentia, NL

Our ferry (yes, they keep getting bigger…)

With the joy of our stay in Bonavista fresh in our hearts, the realization that our ferry reservations would take us away from Newfoundland in just a few days meant we needed to head toward the ferry dock in Argentia. We wanted to arrive there a few days early to take care of a few road necessities like long hot showers, laundry, cleaning the waste tanks, washing the rig, paying bills, updating the blog, why not another round of long hot showers, yadayada. We’d just head on over and maybe see a few sights along the way. We even agreed to a no photo rule, so we wouldn’t have to spend time sorting and processing – just do the drive and take it all in as it came. Yeah right…

Terra Nova National Park

Terra Nova National Park is situated on the northeast coast of Newfoundland. It encompasses 238 km/150 miles of shoreline, all of it within a north to south span of 45 km/30 miles and within 5 km/3 miles of the coast. It comprises islands, sounds, points, fjords, bogs, headlands, inlets, forests, ponds, fingers (of land), arms (of water), tickles (look it up), and straits. The park’s PR people share our penchant for superlatives… Brochures boast that Terra Nova is Canada’s easternmost National Park (yes, we’ve been to Pacific Rim National Park) and Newfoundland’s oldest, established in 1957 (Gros Morne was established in 1970). As with all National Parks, Terra Nova manages access to the beautiful parklands and its primary mission is conserving and restoring ecological integrity.

If Gros Morne is about the rocks, Terra Nova is about balancing the health of the forest that supports the critters that eat the lichen that grows on the rocks, the rocks down in the valley-o (oops, Newfoundland music…).

St John’s NL

At the southeastern corner of the island of Newfoundland, St John’s is the largest city in Newfoundland and Labrador. At this moment, about 530,000 people live in NL, and 212,000 of them (40%) live in the St John’s metro area. [By contrast, just 26,650 (5%) live in all of Labrador, though Labrador accounts for 72% of the land area of the province.] Anyway, statistics aside, we were eagerly anticipating our visit to the urban St John’s for several things we would find there: music, history, hiking, sightseeing… and a Sprinter service center.