''I can't believe I'm here with you girls,'' Mom said, suddenly. ``It's like a dream. I never thought I'd see this part of the world. I love it here.''

That inspired a rare quiet moment among us.

The next day, our northernmost stop -- in Sydney, Nova Scotia -- Rick and I took the ''heart of the island'' tour of the Bras d'Or Lakes and Highland Village, an authentic recreation of the various abodes enjoyed by the earliest settlers of the island.

Mother and Cindy took the shorter ''Spirit of the Fiddle'' tour, seeing how the famous locally made fiddles were crafted and played. Mom loves fiddle music and raved about the fiddlers' performance.

That night, tired of ship food, we sought a local restaurant for something several of us had never eaten -- whole lobsters. We slapped on our bibs and ordered four. The waitress showed us how to dismantle the iron-shelled crustaceans and, with much hilarity, we dived in. Good thing we had bibs! A good sense of humor helped, too.

WINNING WAYS

The next day, at sea again, Mom took her bucket of quarters back to the casino. While Rick and I spent a leisurely day of reading and napping, she was attacking the slots. When we went to fetch her for dinner, Cindy was waving wildly at us across the casino. We heard the steady ''ting, ting, ting'' of a slot machine.

Yep. Mom had won $1,000.

''I knew I'd win!'' she said with a grin. ''When I get home, I'm throwing myself a big birthday party, with a band and dancing and food, and I'm inviting 100 people.'' (And she did.)

We celebrated with champagne and beer in a nearby lounge before dinner.

At our last stop in Bar Harbor, Maine, we all took the ''Acadia National Park and Lobster Lunch'' tour. One of the most mind-blowing sights on the entire trip was here -- at a spot known as Thunder Hole, where the ocean explodes against a cave-pocked bit of rocky shoreline. Like most sightseers, we ventured close enough to get a little wet, but it was a thrilling shower.

Up Cadillac Mountain, we encountered heavy mist -- the first inclement weather on our trip -- and were denied the amazing views of Mount Desert Island. But the mist lifted once we returned to Bar Harbor to explore the shops and buy blueberry tea and other souvenirs.

Then: our lobster lunch.

''I'm getting good at this,'' Mom said, as she popped off a lobster claw -- and liberally sprayed juice and other debris all over my face, eyeglasses and hair.

Strangers sharing our table stared, stunned, til we all burst into laughter.

The next morning, we were greeted by a misty Boston skyline. A drizzly day marked our return, but we took a city trolley tour before we returned to our hotel to relax and reminisce about all the wonderful things we'd seen.

''There's something about Nova Scotia that's just so quaint and laid-back,'' Cindy said over dinner. ``It's like visiting places stuck in another time.''

''And we ate lobster, and we laughed a lot,'' I added.

We mused, silently, for a moment, savoring our impressions.

''And I won a thousand bucks!'' Mom said.

But the value of that time together, reliving old memories and creating new ones? Nothing to laugh at.

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