Salmon River B&B: The Couple that Saved Our Night

I don't have photos of Janet and George or any of the inn itself--but here's the beach on the property!

Before we left on our road trip, we played the ‘what are you most looking forward to?’ game.  My answer was always ‘the people we will meet along the way’.  And while we didn’t actually meet as many people as I’d hoped, the ones we did connect with often really were the best part of the day.

At the end of our overly long St. Martins day, we retired to the little third floor deck of the inn, overlooking the Bay of Fundy.  We took a bottle of wine up with us.  Maybe five minutes after we arrived, another couple appeared–bottle of wine in hand.  It seemed they had the exact same idea–relax out on the deck before dinner.

As we talked with them–Janet and George–we found that we had a lot more in common than a love of dry red wine.  They had both been teachers–they were now retired–and shared the same love of travel as we did (not surprising–after all, we were at an inn!)  They basically were ‘us in 25 years’–or, at least I hope we will be like them in 25 years.  They’d traveled much of the world and told us about those adventures (of course I was extremely jealous!)  They’d also found the same frustrations in teaching that we have encountered–and I shared my reasons for attempting to leave the profession so early on in my career.

We ended up having dinner together, which was a huge blessing in disguise.  You see, the restaurant at the inn was having some issues that night.  It ended up taking hours to eat dinner–no one even brought us our drinks for the first half hour or so that we were seated (and even then, they were six dollar two ounce glasses of cheap red wine.)  We’d have gone somewhere else…if there was anywhere else to go in St. Martins at 8pm!

Dear reader–you know me.  You saw how cranky I got in Paris when mealtimes didn’t work out well.  So you know that if it hadn’t been for this awesome couple–and the conversations we had that distracted and cheered me–I likely would have lost it and stomped off to bed without dinner.  But instead, we had a lovely evening and then walked out to the beach to watch the tide come in–even though it was almost fully dark by that point.  It was on the beach that my husband confessed to me that he was so grateful to Janet and George for ‘saving our dinner’.  They had no idea they’d done their good deed for the day!

I was right–the best part of the trip really was the people we met.