Sackville
Where the hell is Sackville and why on earth did we go
there?
Well I saw a full page advertisement for the Sackville Fall
Fair in a newspaper. It had pretty pictures of smiling faces attending the
large looking farmers market, a Midway, numerous other displays and events.
Sounds so, well so, rural East Coast.
So we went.
The first clue that this may not be what the advertisement
was selling is when we checked with the local tourist information place, a
newer expansive building with a view of the Trans Canada Highway, and they told
us, nicely, not to bother with the local campground. It was shit. They owner
has “branched out” into car repair and auto wrecking. But we could park in
their parking lot after hours even if the sign says we cant. No one
would/should bother us. Us in little old, Rattletrap.
The second clue was when the nice lady a the tourist
information place mentioned the book sale at the local church. Not once but
twice. Like it was the highlight of the weekend.
This being Friday afternoon we went for a long walk into
town through their nationally recognised waterfowl refuge. Very nice. No
actually it was.
Town is small with a two block long main street. This was
the street noted in the Fall Fair advertisement as being the location of the
opening ceremonies, the dance hall, battle of he bands and the farmers market
on Saturday. We were starting to get a
bit concerned about the size and scope of this whole Fall Fair thing.
So nice dinner out at a very good local restaurant was followed
by “what do we do now”. So we went to see the opening ceremonies. Us and about
20 other people of whom 18 were related to the mayor. Reminded me of a scene
from the movie “Roxanne” where the mayor is giving the opening speech to the
township and introducing a cow as their mascot. Different location but same
amount of people. Hum.
I convinced Karen to go and see the local University
football game. We had to do something as we did not technically have a
campground site and besides without WIFI we did not have Netflix. It was this
or sit and talk to each other. Fuck that, lets go to a football game.
Well we had a blast. We froze our asses off (outside game
with a strong wind blowing), watched the fireworks from the grandstands and
cheered on the local team. After the game we headed back over to the tourist
information parking lot and waited for someone to kick us out. The RCMP came by
for a look just after we went to bed but obviously felt sorry for us because we
drove Rattletrap all the way from BC to New Brunswick. Anyone that crazy the
police officer did not want to confront without backup and they were probably
still at the University looking for a date after the football game.
Next day we went to the farmers market. We are not sure
where they got the crowds and all the vendors for the photo used in the
advertisement but lets just say it did not live up to our expectations. That
said the carrots we bought there were delicious.
Onto the actual fall fair. It was great. There were corn
mazes, tractor displays, old engines that were used to power farm equipment and
a loggers sport demonstration. Half the town turned out meaning it was busy but
not packed with people and enough to keep everything interesting. And for $10
we had the best pulled pork sandwiches we have ever had. We actually spent most
of the day before heading off to see the Bay of Fundy.
Oh and we didn’t make to the book sale. We ended up not
having time.
The moral to the story is that sometime you have to go out
of your way to find interesting, fun things to do. Sometimes they are not great
and splendorous like a Disney event but a bit more “down home”. Maybe we should
do this more often at home?
