Since getting married six years ago, my wife and I have kept up a tradition of taking a “honeymoon” each year. Some have been a bit more exotic like our first trip to Boston or our actual honeymoon to Puerto Rico, and a few have been to make sure the tradition stayed alive. “Honeymoon in Regina”, even for a Riders game, just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

We decided to celebrate our sixth anniversary by heading back east to New Brunswick to spend a week with our family. With my wife’s family mostly in the southwest part of the province, and my mom and dad up in the northeast, we had to split up for a few days (not sounding too honeymoon-ish, is it?). Upon getting a good night’s sleep in Nackawic after landing in Fredericton on the first evening, I drove across the province to Beresford to meet up with my parents and their dog, Tia.

This is my third visit to see my parents since they moved to Beresford from Halifax, and now I’ve got a few favourite places to swing by on each trip. Dad and I stopped in at Four Rivers for a pint on one afternoon.

The beer here is exceptional, and it’s hard to have anything but love in your heart for a place where a dog can sit at the bar. Good boy!

There was a newly opened craft brewery in Bathurst that dad wanted to take me to. At 13 Barrels, on a spectacular June afternoon, they cracked open the barn doors to let in the view over the bay while we sampled a few of their beers.

As you can tell by this picture, Dad is really not having a great time at all…

On my final night in Bathurst/Beresford, we all went out for dinner to the Cast and Crew Gastropub which is becoming a fast tradition. Their clams and chips make me long to live close to the water again.

Here we are, post-dinner, before I headed back to pack up for the long drive back across the province the next morning.

About a four hour drive from Bathurst, I arrived at my wife’s parents’ camp on First Eel River Lake. Effectively in the middle of nowhere, it is one of my favourite places I have ever been, and this was the first time we had been here together since moving to Saskatoon more than three years ago.

This is the view from the screened in patio.

That patio has a beer fridge on it.

It is, quite obviously, a slice of heaven.

On the first night after I arrived, we spent the evening hanging out with my wife’s extended family in Canterbury. My wife’s aunt, while enjoying everyone’s company, was in the last stages of battling cancer. Sadly, she passed away in August only a few weeks after we visited.

At the camp, it is a tradition for my wife’s dad to barbeque steaks one night. It is always one of the best meals of the year, and, like every time we’ve visited, I was suffering from a meat coma for most of the rest of this evening.

Another tradition is the Yahtzee games played each night. There’s always lots of laughter and joking, and we without fail end up picking on my father-in-law who has a losing streak of statistically improbable magnitude.

I, on the other hand, won a few games, and my record for the highest score ever achieved at the camp was unchallenged for another year. My record 591 point game from 2007 will live another year with this reminder stuck to the side of the fridge for all to bear witness.

We spent the last night of the trip back in Nackawic to be closer for an early morning drive to the Fredericton airport for our return flight. No trip to Nackawic is complete without a picture in front of their famous roadside attraction… the world’s largest axe.

And on that rainy afternoon, somehow I convinced everyone to stop in at Nackawic’s craft brewery – Big Axe Brewery – for some sampling. Not a bad way to end honeymoon number seven!