O Canada!

These signs are everywhere in Maine and Canada

DAY EIGHT

My first day in Canada was a pretty awesome experience. Jim and I left Portland at 7 am on a mission to the US/Canada border. Northern Maine is a really unique and beautiful place, and as we moved inland the scenery changed rapidly from that of the more populated northeast to more rugged terrain with much more hardy vegetation like fir and spruce trees. As we passed through all the small villages, we started seeing road signs with pictures of moose, snowmobiles, and quad bikes, a sure sign we were getting closer to Canada. Right before the border I was lucky enough to spot a couple of moose drinking in a roadside ditch, so we did a u-turn back to a small rest area where I spotted another moose just hidden in the trees (you can check him out on the video below). All of a sudden the two moose in the ditch ran out onto the road in front of an SUV which only just stopped in time to avoid hitting them. If you hit a moose you're surely going to total your car and will probably be lucky to survive yourself when the moose comes flying through the windshield. The two moose disappeared into the woods as we watched the young male we had spotted in the rest area. Then the first two (a young mother with a calf as it turned out) emerged from the forest right behind us! It was a really cool experience to see such massive wild animals from about 10 metres away, and the young male especially just wasn't scared of us at all.

Passing through the border into Canada was a different story. The border police took what seemed an immediate disliking to us. They searched our entire car and then we had to be interviewed by an immigration officer. He was Sargeant Hardout and definitely had no sense of humour. He wasn't very satisfied with the idea that we were conducting biological research and demanded to see proof of an "invatation" or "permit" to conduct our research in Canada, as well as wanting details of exactly where we were going and exactly what we were going to do. We of course didn't have any of these as we had been told we didn't need them, so we were becoming very worried that we were heading back to Maine to help out Ganesh! Luckily Jim was able to give Sargeant Hardout the name of a co-collaborator from a university in Quebec (who he had never met or actually talked to), who the officer promptly rung to confirm whether or not we were up to no good. Luckily the Canadian scientist put in the good word for us and we were finally allowed to pass through into Canada after an hour long ordeal. Once in Canada, we could take in the awesome scenery and countryside, from meadows filled with dandelions, lakes surrounded by forest, rolling mountains, rocky cliffs, and no people for miles and miles. It really makes a change from the flat boring roads of the southeast that's for sure.

Typical landscape on the way to Hebertville

On our drive through Canada I soon found that my French is not up to scratch (despite living with a French roommate last semester), as I tried to order McDonalds for lunch. Luckily most French-Canadians can speak English fairly well! Our single Phragmites site for the day was a native one, all the way up in a small, isolated town called Hebertville. The plants themselves were only about 50 cm tall (compared to most which can be over 4 metres), which made for a very fast survey as they tends to be very little in the way of insects on such young plants. It's probably going to be like this for all of the sites in Canada so we should be finished in about three days and back in Maine in time to spend a day at Acadia National Park! It was 30 degrees even all the way up near Hebertville, but on the way back from our site we spotted a few patches of snow, and it's almost the middle of summer! Finally we made it back to our hotel just out of Quebec city, after about 11 hours in total on the road.

DAY NINE

Saint Lawrence River bank

It was a dreary day in Canada, drizzling or raining pretty much all day, but not too bad to work in. We had three sites to do, two situated beside the Saint Lawrence River and one beside a lake in a valley not far away. Because we ended up in Canada before there is any good Phragmites growth, the work has become ridiculously easy. Instead of taking three of us up to two hours to do a site, Jim and I blasted out each of the three sites in around 45 minutes. Other than that the day was pretty uneventful as we made our way to Campbelltown, New Brunswick, driving alongside the picturesque Matapédia River for some of the way. Getting back through the US border is certainly going to be an exercise!

DAY TEN
Getting through the US border actually went very smoothly! It only took about 20 minutes and a few questions about what stuff we were bringing back in (dried leaf material and insects in ethanol) to get through the border. Before that we had finished each of our two sites in around 30 minutes each and the rest of the day was spent uneventfully driving back to Portland to meet back up with Ganesh.

Our exotic Phragmites patch just out of Campbelltown - just dead flower stems

Lots of Canadian hay