Driving to the USA from St John New Brunswick

Driving to the USA
We headed out from Saint John after finishing laundry. I had looked up a Laundromat on google, and it had said it was 1.6km, so I headed out at 7:15 to walk to the Laundromat, thinking I’d put it in the washer, walk back and get the car and move it to the dryer. But, it ended up being 2 miles, so it took me much longer than I thought (this happens pretty regularly for me but I haven’t seemed to learn a lesson). But, we did manage to get the laundry done.
We paid our toll for the third time because of getting lost one the way here and hoped we wouldn’t screw up this time because it was literally our last canadaian .50. I’m not sure what happens if you go to a toll and don’t have the money but I didn’t really want to find out. After leaving Saint John, the westward drive toward the border is through rolling hills of forests with occasional glimpses of water. It was sunny but with lots of clouds. The drive to the border was about 75 minutes. We made a slight detour trying to find a restroom and a place for Kesh to change out of his new pants which apparently are very uncomfortable when sitting in the car. Kesh says they “too tight” but this is so unlikely that I was wondering how they were bothering him.
Unfortunately, however, the road signs do not indicate how far off the path one has to go to find the stops that are indicated on the road signs. In the past, visitor centers have been a good place to use the restroom. So when we saw an exit with a visitor center sign, we pulled off only to discover the visitor center was 8 miles back the way we’d come. We did find a national park, however, and stopped there using their outhouses. The National Park has no services, no visitor center, just a view over the river and some interpretive signs.
When we reached the border, we stopped at the chocolate shop on the main street to the border crossing. It’s called something like Gagogne or something like that and I’d read about it. But the people inside weren’t friendly at all and the samples were gross. Kesh tried a mint they had out and whispered to all of us that it was hard as a rock and threw his away. The chocolate I tried was yucky with some strange taste in the caramel. So we left without purchasing anything.
The border line was pretty long but went quickly, and it probably only took us 15 minutes to get through. It goes right through the downtown though so it’s kind of a mess. You’ve got local traffic trying to get places, people trying to park or get out of street parking and all this border traffic coming through.
We were very glad to be back in the USA and the crossing was uneventful. Maine from the border to Ellsworth is almost entirely rural and it’s mostly backroads to Blue Hill. It’s beautiful driving through these areas though, with rolling hills, forests and expansive views.