As for Phillipsburg, I would go when there is at least one cruise ship in as there will be more activity and stores will be open. Things to do include shopping, eating, and just hanging out. We like Holland House, and Blue Bitch bar but there are many. Front street has the more upscale stores and many jewelry stores, Back street has more bargain type stores, there is also a market.

Parking should not be hard to find that time of year, we usually find something on back street but there is a pay lot near the center of town and free lots closer to the salt pond which is a few blocks away from front street.

For Perch Lite I would use the butterfly farm road then take first left and left again at the old Club O entrance, Perch Lite will be on your right, hard to miss.

US dollars are still best bet for us, we do however use CC as well, to avoid extra charges we have a US bank account that we transfer money into whenever our dollar spikes a bit using Knightsbridge then use a BMO US MasterCard that gets automatically paid from our us bank account. The BMO card cost $35 per year but fee is waved if more than 1k is spent, this avoids the foreign currency exchange fee. Pineapple Pete used to take CDN cash at 1.2 which was nice and we have done that in the past.

We were there in January for three weeks and enjoyed so much we are also planning to return in July.

Hope this helps, have a great time.