The most mysterious of all of the trips that my wife Sue and I took together was the only one for which she did all of the planning. My recollections of this bizarre experience have mostly been repressed. In 2023 I could remember the basic route that we took and a few of the experiences. I did not recall most of the names of places we visited or companies with which we interacted.

I do not even remember when this event occurred. I have assigned the date 2000, but it could be off, even by a year or more. If it was in 2000 we must have gone in the fall or late summer. Denise Bessette and I went to San Diego (described here) in January. This trip could not have been scheduled for the subsequent months in which I was very busy with work.

I hypothesized in 2023 that we planned to start on a Friday morning, stay for two nights in Nova Scotia and return on Sunday. Sue agreed with this, but we may very well be wrong.

Sue somehow won two free round-trip tickets on a regional airline that was based in Boston. My dim recollection is that it was called Executive Airlines¹ or something like that. We could fly to any destination that the company served. We had a certificate but no tickets; we had to fly stand-by. So, in effect, the airline gave away seats that would have been empty.

Sue wanted to fly to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I suspect that this desire stemmed from tales told by her grandmother, Molly Locke, whom Sue idolized, of her adventures in the maritime provinces.

We drove from Enfield to the Boston area. I have a feeling that we parked in Framingham and took the T to the airport. I am pretty sure that we did this once, and if it wasn’t for this adventure, I cannot imagine when it would have been.

When we arrived at the airport we made our way to a room devoted to this airline. It wasn’t a ticket counter. I remember that we sat in plastic seats in a room and plotted our strategy. There were other people in the same situation, but it was not crowded. Sue had planned on flying to Halifax, Nova Scotia, but the flights on that day had no seats available. I remember being very upset by this development. If I had any inkling that it was a possibility, I would never have agreed to it. As I sat there helpless, I became more and more incensed. Sue tried to calm me down by telling me to relax because “we are on vacation.” I retorted that this was no vacation.

In the end Sue suggested that we fly to Presque Isle, ME—a destination that was apparently not in much demand that day. There we would rent a car, and drive to Nova Scotia. After we had spent a day painting the province red, we would drive back to Presque Isle and fly back to Boston. I considered it a close call between her suggestion and writing off the entire idea and thereby returning home to Enfield sadder but wiser.

Of course, I eventually capitulated, and we exchanged our certificate for tickets to Maine’s third-largest airport, which is located only a few miles from the Canadian border. The plane, as I remember it, was rather nice. I should actually say that I don’t remember anything good or bad about it. I think that it may have even been a jet. It had perhaps two dozen seats that were rather comfortable. The flight was short. I don’t think that anyone served as much as a beverage.

We landed at Presque Isle’s airport. It was by far the least impressive one that I had ever seen. I remember that the baggage claim was a chute that was less than ten feet wide and not even that long. We could see the workers take the few bags off the plane and plop them on the chute. The good thing was that there was very little danger of losing or misplacing a bag.

There was one car rental establishment. I don’t remember which company it was, but it may have been Avis, which had an office there in 2023. I remember that we had an option to rent a Volkswagen New Beetle, which had been introduced in 1998. I am pretty sure that we declined and settled on some kind of compact car.

I already knew that there was quite a bit of land between Maine and Nova Scotia. We discovered on the map that came with the rental car that it was mostly New Brunswick. We spent most of the rest of the day driving across one of Canada’s least famous provinces. I remember almost nothing but frustration about this experience. I do not remember if I drove, Sue drove, or we split it up. I have a feeling that I did the bulk of the driving because in those days some rental companies charged extra for a second driver. We must have stopped for lunch and/or supper somewhere, but I do not have any recollection of that. Likewise, I do not remember any of the cities or towns, although a few of the names seem familiar. The city of Saint John rings a bell, but it would have been out of our way to stop there.

We stayed overnight somewhere north of Halifax. It was a fairly rustic place with a view of the water. I remember something about Prince Edward Island, but from the map it does not seem as if we could ever have been in sight of it. Sue recalled us eating bay scallops from Prince Edward Island. I might have tried one, but people from Kansas—especially ones that grew up as Catholics—generally avoid marine insects. She thought that the water that I remembered was a tidal pool.

We visited Halifax on the second day. We spent some time at a fort or something similar with a view of the sea. The one vivid memory of the whole trip that I have retained is that we visited a room that had hundreds of butterflies. It may have been in the Museum of Natural History that listed a “butterfly house” among its attractions in 2023. This was the only time on the entire trip that I felt entertained or relaxed. Sue’s recollection of Halifax in 2023 was entirely different. She recalled only touring a garden.

That’s all that I remember. We drove back to Presque Isle. We flew to Boston. We took the T to Framingham. We drove from there to Enfield.

This was by far the worst mini-vacation that I ever took.

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1. I could not locate much information about this or any similar airline on the Internet. I am almost positive that it went out of business within a month or two of our epic trip. One website mentioned such a company in New England. The post is here. However, in the seventies that airline was sold to Air New England, which went out of business in 1981. So, I am probably wrong about the name.