Who wins...

...when you have an argument with yourself?

I think I just did! I've had a week-long trip to England planned for September for a long, long time now. I managed a couple of long weekends wandering in June, but I never managed to put together the plans for another week-long vacation. I think I've been arguing with myself for weeks! (Or is that months?)

My initial thoughts were for that vacation week to be in July, with a nice gap between that escape and my September trip. Plans never happened, and I pushed my vacation off to the first week in August. But wait - that was this past week, and I wasn't on vacation, was I? Nope, I was still working; I pushed off my vacation week again to be the week of August 18th. And that week is coming up really fast.

Vacations are supposed to be fun. And it is not supposed to be hard to plan them. But this year...

My problem wasn't a lack of places to go. It was a combination of my decision to stay (sort of) close to home - in the northeast corner of the United States or spilling over to the bordering provinces in Canada - and my coming up with too many ideas of where to go and what to do. That's a good problem to have, isn't it?

I started with the thought of getting my bike and me to North Station in Boston so I could hop aboard a train to Portland, Maine. I was going to head away from home along the coast for a bit, then I was going to turn to the south and west to head towards home. One of these days I'm going to do that trip, but it didn't feel right for now. I think my problem is that this is an area that I wander in on a somewhat regular basis, so it's not new territory for me. And I think I need something a little different.

My eyes turned to Quebec - to Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, a fjord and a lake - for a bike tour. That area still looks interesting to me, but the more I looked the more I suspected that riding around the lake would mean riding around the lake in the woods. That may or may not be true, but I'm not willing to take that chance. Don't get me wrong - woods can be beautiful - but I'd rather not be surrounded by trees for an entire trip. And it's a really long drive to get to what would be my tour jumping off point. Nope, not now. A visit to Quebec will wait for later.

Then this week I had a really wacky idea. Well, it's classified as wacky only because I'm stuffing this vacation into a week. My idea? I was going to take the train to Portland (accompanied by my bike), then take the ferry from Portland to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. And then - then I was going to ride around the edges of the Bay of Fundy, following the road through Nova Scotia, across the connecting land to New Brunswick, into Maine, and then all of the way back to home. That sounds like a great ride to me - but it would take much longer than a week. Nope, not now.

My eyes wandered over maps once again. Ah, that's it! New Brunswick! I want to wander along the section of the province tagged with the name Acadian Coastal Drive, from Bathurst east to the Acadian Peninsula, then to the south along the east coast, beaches, water views, and then... heading to the west along the Fundy coast. And you know me, I need to stop at Acadia National Park in Maine on my way home. Two Acadias!

My trip has morphed into riding and hiking, taking day trips as opposed to a bike tour. I'll be sandwiching some walking - along the beaches on the eastern shore of New Brunswick, at Hopewell Cape, and at Fundy National Park - with some riding - in the area around Bathurst, in the Acadian Peninsula, and in Acadia National Park (back in Maine). It's only a week away now...

And yes, I did win the argument!