New Brunswick, Be in this place

Some people think a trip across Canada must be intolerable. “Driving, driving, driving!”Yes, some days are like that and these past 3 days certainly have been. The photos represent some of the surfside scenery that lies along the St. Lawrence River as well as on the Atlantic side of New Brunswick. It’s wonderful to smell the sea!

Since our days are filled with driving and we have some time to reflect, we had an idea. We have been talking about doing a blog spot on bathrooms; the provincial and federal campsite ones, plus the public and private restrooms. The categories are: showers, toilets, their overall cleanliness, quirks and comfort. This may sound like a crude topic to cover in a public blog but we will do our best to keep it clean – however, having said that, I would put off reading until lunch is well past digestion.

A day without a shower can influence comfort and a sense of well-being for the entire day. Something you should know about a camping adventure is the importance of a good shower to start or end the day. A good shower includes all these components: even water pressure, even and controlled temperature, a reasonably dry area outside of the shower stall where clothes can be hung without risk of getting wet, the floor should be clean, preferable tiled (concrete feels like nails on a chalk board), no coin showers, no co-ed showers, and it should smell nice – no sulphur, no rotten wood.

Over the years, and especially before I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease, I have had the interesting experience of being well-acquainted with toilets wherever I go. It’s the nature of CD. The first time we visited Europe together I took photos of every toilet in every hotel or pension where we stayed. I know it’s weird but I have this thing about good toilets. On the road, the toilet experience can be fair to traumatic. Usually Tim Horton’s are the best, gas stations are in the middle somewhere and rest stops are the worst. Again, a good toilet includes: cleanliness, it flushes, no padded seat (too hard to clean), decent toilet paper (not 1 ½ strips that resemble crepe paper and pull into ½ inch streamers when coming off the role), automatic flush is okay as long as the toilet doesn’t mistake itself for a shower and spray the stuff going down over the entire stall and user, the stall locks properly, and the seat fits the porcelain bowl and doesn’t slide off. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, however we have found that all of these preferences rarely exist in one instance.

So, when it comes to our experience with Canadian bathrooms, I could tell you the worst but I care too much about you to speak of such things. I could tell you about the best but you might think the details inappropriate so I will only say that we are becoming experts on a topic so common it hardly seems worth mentioning under normal circumstances.

PS We are guessing that the NB license plate means to say, “The place to be”.