On the south shore

After a great sleep we headed back to the coast; driving back through Wolfville and Kentville again. We stayed on the old highway until Digby enjoying the slower pace and seeing many older houses of the type we love.

At Annapolis Royal we toured the fort and read up on all the history from that place. Very interesting!

The fort and area changed hands between the French and the English numerous times over the centuries.

This is a photo of a photo showing the fort at its zenith.

We decided it was time to get on the fast road so we headed first to Yarmouth where I enjoyed scallops and a local beer at a harbour front restaurant. Caro is still fighting something so has little or no appetite.

We picked a B+B way off the beaten track at Clark's Harbour. It is the southern most point of Nova Scotia and is a fishing community. The price is only about 1/2 what hotels are charging in the tourist zone and we have a relatively expensive place near Lunenburg tomorrow so decided to economize today.The lady here told us of a nice beach called The Hawk so we went for a visit. Very nice with soft white sand and lots of it!

Another great day

Back to Nova Scotia

Caro has been feeling a bit sick every once in a while and last night she took a turn for the worse getting little sleep and feeling nauseous.

We decided to make it a day of driving back roads although at times I thought we should go straight to Halifax and do day trips from there depending on how Caro was feeling. Caro was feeling poorly at times and not so bad at others while we were driving today.

We drove the center part of Moncton which was nice and from there hit the 4 lane divided until we got back to Nova Scotia.

The first stop was a place I had never heard of but was mentioned as a UNESCO world site, called Joggins. Here is a beach that contains the worlds most important fossil site of the Carboniferous period ( 299-350 million years ago).Why I don't recall hearing of this place is beyond me. It is world famous (and is in fact mentioned by Charles Darwin in his "Origin of Species" book). Caro was feeling too sick to take a beach tour that was included in our museum entrance so she slept in the car and I went. OMG OMG there are fossils everywhere and while you can't take any home, you can pick them up and drop them off at the museum. The tour guide showed us a few and the first photo below is a plant that is still part of the beach cliff. It won't be long before it is part of the beach though!

The second photo needs some explaining. The two track marks on the flat part of the rock are of a millipede walking and are the right and left side of the same animal! I.E. it was about 6-8 inches wide and the guide says the animal would have been about 5-6 feet long!

This geologic era was pre-dinosaur and here at this very beach is the first fossil found of the earliest reptile ever discovered!

Joggins is quite a ways off the main road so we drove back to the highway and drove a bit before turning off to Springhill. I wanted to see if Anne Murray would wave at us but she wasn't around (ha ha).

We continued on highway 2 down towards the coast and then continued along the ocean until Truro. The road was slow going with towns and curves keeping us from getting anywhere quickly. I made the decision at Truro to discontinue the coastal route as it was mid afternoon already and I wanted to get to Kentville or Wolfville for the night. We took the 4 lane divided down to almost Halifax and then another 4 lane divided up to Wolfville in probably only 90 minutes. We drove into Wolfville (a small city containing Acadia university). This town was spectacular!!. Beautiful homes and large manicured gardens all well looked after. By now we started looking for places to stay in the area and everything was booked. It was extremely frustrating as it became obvious within about 30 minutes we were not going to get anything nearby. We decided to head back to Halifax but while on the way back Caro found a Super 8 in Windsor so we headed there. The price was $155 plus 15% tax and there were only two rooms left so we had to pay it otherwise it was back to Halifax (45 minutes) and I was tired and grumpy! We had supper at Timmies to help offset the hotel cost.

Check out the room though! It was perfect for us and a great way to finish our day!

Caro had a Jacuzzi bath and is feeling better than earlier so it looks like our trip around the southern part of the province is a go!

Bay of Fundy

After a good nights sleep we headed back towards the reversing falls to see what was happening. The tide was going out so we got to see the river flowing towards the ocean.

We were really impressed with St. John. A wonderful city to visit.
We headed up the highway and soon we were at the Fundy National Park. Our main reason to come here was to hike and did we ever accomplish that goal. Although we did a couple small hikes our main one was called Murrays Head.  It was a 4.5 km; half of it moderate and half of it difficult. Oh man they weren't kidding about the difficult part! We were so happy to FINALLY finish it. We were covered in sweat and drinking huge amounts of fluids.

There were some awesome views of the Bay of Fundy.
Our last hike in the Park was to a waterfall called Dickson's Waterfall. It was mostly on wooden steps to get around. We found the hike wonderful to do as the scenery in the little valley was really beautiful (lots of moss covered ground). The little brook was wonderful to listen to and it made its way down the valley to the sea (eventually)

After leaving the park we took scenic highway 915 up the coast. We stopped at Cape Enrage for a quick look.
From there it was a short drive to Hopewell Rocks. The tide was going out and while we were there it went out enough for us to walk out to the rocks. The photo below shows what it was like when we left. When we got there 30 minutes before only about one third of the area in the photo was exposed.

We took many pictures there but most of them are on the dark side.
Tonight we are in Moncton recovering from over 16 kms of hiking.

Wrong Way Roger

We left PI this morning  by going over Confederation Bridge. It was a nice sunny morning and the early morning temperature of about 23 degrees meant it was going to be a hot one!

We stopped at Cap Pele visitor information in New Brunswick and besides getting a road map we got nice info on where some good spots to go are. We bypassed Moncton and headed across country on the 4 lane divided to Fredericton, arriving about 1 P.M. We were driving the streets looking at old houses and buildings when I made a mistake at a very confusing intersection and started the wrong way down a three lane street! SHIIIIT!!! A quick flooring of the gas pedal and I careened towards the oncoming traffic for a few seconds before pulling hard right into a parking lot. Crises averted! Later on we happened to be at that same intersection and were first in line to turn left as before and I realized how I made the stupid mistake. The "do not enter" sign was completely blocked by the pillar of my door and the front windscreen. Lesson learned!

Fredericton held our interest for only an hour so after a quick lunch at McDonalds ( another lesson learned- no more McDonalds for us) we headed south on secondary highway 102 towards St. John. It would be very charitable to call it a highway as at times it was gravel but it sure was pretty countryside. It was a nice 90 minutes or so.

The first stop in St. John was at reversing falls (which also has a tourist info centre, which is great because we needed a city map). The falls were at a neutral point in their cycle and we saw a boat go out through them.

We picked a hotel near the harbour front and while a bit more expensive than we normally get, we had a free night from Hotels.com (not completely free but greatly subsidized as we had previously booked ten nights with them and had earned the reward).

We walked to the downtown,viewing the RCI ship in town, saw old houses that are typical of the Maritimes and finished off with a meal in the downtown pub area looking out over the ocean. Lovely time!

A walk back to the hotel; a quick hot tub and now relaxing in the room.

 The view of the ship from our room in now completely obscured by fog and the temperature which topped out for us today at 32 degrees (up north) is now at 20 degrees here.

We are getting slack in our hiking/walking. We only did 8.89 km today! Mind you we were 5 hours driving.

Monday continued

After leaving Green Gables we headed east to see some beach that we had missed yesterday.

We walked about a kilometre stretch. We saw a seal sunbathing on the shore. Speaking of animals I neglected to mention that when we were hiking the Skyline Trail on the Cabot Trail highway a few days ago we saw a cow moose and calf a few feet away from us in the bush. I also saw a garter snake.

The rest of  today was spent driving around the province. We headed west and when we drove through Kensington we saw the huge Cavendish Farms plant (the fries we get from Costco are from Cavendish Farms).

After going west on highway 2 for about an hour more we turned south and traveled the coastal highway back towards Summerside. The scenery wasn't as nice as the southeast side of the province. Summerside was kind of uninteresting although they do have a nice boardwalk. After a tasty supper at a 60's diner a few kilometres away we are now at our hotel in Bedeque (close to the Confederation bridge). Caro tells me we walked 11.4 kilometres today and 11.3 yesterday.

Caro of Green Gables

Today was a great day for Caro! It was nice for me too but very special for Caro as she remembers watching Anne of Green Gables on TV with Lisa "back in the day".

We slept in until 9 this morning. Caro is fighting a cold so she took some medicine to help her sleep. It worked for both of us it turned out.

First thing we did was go to Green Gables for a tour. We listened to a guide tell us the story of the house and the surrounding woods, and then we walked through the rooms which are full of period pieces. After we hiked the two trails at the house location that are prominent in Lucy Maud Montgomery's stories.

  

An hour later we were on our way

Sunday,or "Wrong Way Caro"

Last night we saw two raccoon babies outside our BnB. They were cute and cuddly looking but we didn't touch them.

In the morning as we came downstairs to have breakfast the conversation among the guests was about the two little raccoon babies up on the floor above us. They would have been brought there by their mother and it was interesting that she (the mom) had probably brought them in the front door and up the stairs. The innkeeper had never seen them up there before. So cute!

We had an interesting conversation at breakfast with a Canadian living in Australia. Her niece and nephew are participating in the Amazing Race Canada right now (on TV). The race is over but all lips are sealed!

We caught the ferry to PEI and once on shore we turned right and started driving the shoreline roads. Beautiful country! We came to Montague at lunchtime and their waterfront was so inviting we stopped for lunch!

The waitress there was really enthusiastic on how much there was to do in Charlottetown so we headed that way instead of driving more of the coast. We got to Charlottetown in no time and were soon walking the streets looking at all the old houses and buildings. After walking almost all the historic downtown streets and seeing the waterfront we knew there was nothing more for us to do there so we headed up towards Cavendish (only spent 2 hours in the city!).

The title for today's post is because Caro got us going in the wrong direction on highway 2 and didn't realize it for quite a while!. After a good laugh about it we headed up secondary highways to our final destination, passing through marvelous little towns and "typical" pastoral PEI scenes. It turned out to be a wonderful screw-up!

Our motel was great and after checking in we went to the beach for a bit.

After that it was lobster supper at a hugely successful lobster place nearby at New Glasgow. It is "the" place to go and while pretty expensive the food was extremely tasty and lots of it. Caro had lobster and I had scallops. Desert was unlimited so I had 2 pieces of coconut creme pie. I should also add that the waiter  gave us a big bucket of mussels (i.e. like about 4 litres or more)  as appetizers (and these were unlimited for those who wanted more). About an hour later we were on our way back to Cavendish extremely full!

A great day.

A whale of a day!

After a good nights sleep we slept in and while waiting for our noon whale watching tour we drove to a popular bakery to buy some breakfast/lunch goodies. Excellent baking!

Our tour to see pilot whales started right on time.I was at the front of the zodiac with Caro behind me. The zodiac was configured with a bench down the middle and another fellow was directly beside me and sitting up front with me (we were back to back). The captain stated that we could get wet (forewarning there!).

We sped across the ocean to a school of pilot whales and spent probably 30-40 minutes with them all around us!. There were big males,females with calves and juveniles. There were quite a few times that they were right beside us. It was really awesome

 I don't have a photo that does the whales justice because being in the front of the zodiac me and the other guy were getting deluged with water splashing over the front when waves hit us at certain angles. I was soaked so bad that I had water running done my legs after soaking through my pants. My glasses were covered in sea water and I had to put away my cell phone (my camera) because it was getting very wet. The ride back was seriously bumpy. The guy beside me hurt his back and both Caro and I were jarred at various times.

When we were back to shore we dried out as best we could (which wasn't that great) and headed down the highway on the three hour trip to Pictou. We picked this town because it is near the ferry to PEI. The accommodation is an old courthouse or something and really is fun to have a room that used to be an office. Hard wood floors and 12 or 14 foot celing

 Our room is the bottom left

First thing we did was shower and change then we went to a laundry mat to wash our salty and dirty clothes. We had a beer at a beer garden right on the ocean front.It was priceless to sit there and enjoy the ambiance.

We finished off the evening by eating at a recommended fish/chip burger joint near our place, and then walking some of the streets looking at all the old houses.

Caro is just going to have a bath in the jetbath in the room

The Cabot Trail

We had an absolutely amazing breakfast this morning at the Chapman BnB in North Sydney. The lady uses berries from her garden and her own clover honey (from her hive) and makes Gourmet food. It was delicious and Caro and I both agree this could be the best BnB we have ever stayed at.

We drove over to the Cabot Trail and started our day by hiking the "Middle Head" trail (about 4 kilometres return trip). This was a nice trail.

We kept driving up the trail going in towns along the way or stopping at view points. We especially like town of Neil's Harbour. The speed limit in the park is 80 kph and I doubt we went any faster than that at any time.

While stopped for a seafood chowder lunch at Ingonish we made reservations for our evening motel and for whale watching tomorrow.

Continuing along the Cabot trail we came to our next major hike which is called Skyline hike. We walked all the trails there (which totalled 9.2 kms). and enjoyed really awesome views of the highway and sea. Truthfully I think people can come just to this small area of the trail and get all those amazing photos that we all see in the travel brochures!

 Two almost identical photos except I changed the settings in the top one.

A better photo!

Tonight we are in Cheticamp on the west coast of the island. The motel owner told us of a very good seafood restaurant so we went there and had scallops and crab. MMM-good.

Today we walked 17.5  kilometres so we are quite bushed! A great day and we are looking forward to seeing whales tomorrow.

Thursday in Cape Breton

My chromebook would not connect to the internet at our BnB last night (the iphones could though-weird!)

Yesterday has a very good chance of being the high lite day of the trip! We started by driving through Sydney and after a quick drive to sight see this beautiful little city we headed up to Glace Bay to the Miner's Museum. We looked at the museum artifacts while waiting for our 11 AM mine tour. The tour was AMAZING!!!. The guide was a retired miner who was able to bring alive what it was like to work in the mines and how terrible the working conditions were and how awful the mine owners were! After that we went down into the mine and our guide explained all aspects of mining while we hunched over getting through the mine shafts. Creepy and fascinating at the same time.

After the tour we headed over to the Miner's museum Cafe and had a great lunch. All the locals were eating there too so we knew it would be good.

From there we drove to the Louisburg town and Fortress. We had about 2 hours there before it closed ar 5 and that turned out to be about the right amount of time. The french replica town has been much improved since the family was there in 1975 and it is now full of replica (but historically correct) buildings. We enjoyed the cannon shots! I got some video of that!

We drove back to North Sydney to get our new BnB . We had wanted this BnB the previous night but they were full so we had chosen another. The BnB has a fantastic reputation which is why we stayed in North Sydney a second night rather another town which might have been more convenient travel wise for us.
It was an 138 year old Victorian house and our room had a balcony which was wonderful to sit out and enjoy the evening, but not before we went back to Sydney to walk the harbour front walk and enjoy some fish and chips

We had a great sleep!

If Plan A doesn't pan out

....then plan B, and if that doesn't work go to plan C!

The original weather forecast for today was showers in the afternoon so we planned to leave Halifax,do Peggy's Cove and Lunenburg before the rains were scheduled to come and then head north. Plan A scratched due to drizzle/rain (icky) in the morning, so we switched to plan B. We started by going to the graveyard to see the Titanic gravestones. We made it there but didn't even get out of the vehicle because of the rain.

So plan B started with the idea that since the weather wasn't great we would just drive up the east coast of the province,taking our time enjoying what we could. As we crossed the big harbour bridge we realized we wouldn't be able to see much of anything on the coast route so we made a split second decision to change plans and drive on the inland highway up to Cape Breton Island and so we did!

Four hours later we were in a BnB in North Sydney.

We were here at 4 P.M. so we had plenty of time to walk the streets of this old coal mining town. Many of the houses appear to be old boarding houses and have an age and style similar to our BnB. Really nice,but I think tourism and some fishing must keep this town alive because the coal mining days are over.

The proprietor lady told us about a great bistro a block away that had great food and she was correct. Caro thinks it was one of the best meals we've had while travelling. We split a salmon/and sea food meal. Yummy

Tonight we are just being lazy around the room, enjoying internet and planning future vacation activities

13.8 km walking in Halifax

We were up and out the door  of our hotel (after our complimentary continental breakfast) at about 9:15

The next 3.5 hours were spent at the Citadel getting thoroughly engrossed in its' history, public tours and displays. Oh my!   We REALLY enjoyed everything there was to see and do there. The citadel tour was great,and a special display WW1 trench exhibit was engrossing.

In the afternoon we walked almost all the Halifax Harbour waterfront and ended up at the "Pier 21 Canadian Immigration Hall" which is dedicated to telling the story of immigration and eventual integration into Canada (both the good side and the bad). The museum had photos of about 1/3 of the ships that came into port with immigrants. I took a close up of one photo which is pertinent to Dad.

We continued to walk, and walk and by 4:30 we were lining up for our scheduled Harbour Hopper tour (a duck boat tour). It was interesting but truthfully not something I would do again. My ears still hurt due to the noise of the vehicle (not kidding at all-it was bad!)

After completing the tour we walked, and walked and then had our second meal of the day in a harbour front restaurant (different places). Very nice

Halifax has a beautiful harbour front and we spent many hours enjoying all it had to offer. We continued walking back to the hotel (did I mention we were walking a lot?) going down beautiful streets with wonderful houses intermixed with small shops and pubs/restaurants.

Tonight we are tired so have come back a little earlier than last night. 22,172 steps (13.8 kilometres) will do that.

On the east coast

After a smooth 4 and a half hour direct flight on Westjet we arrived in Halifax at 2:30 in the afternoon. The airport is fairly small and it took no time at all to retrieve our luggage,find the city bus stop, and be on our way towards downtown Halifax.

A short while later we had found our car rental location and were soon driving to the hotel. 

There was still plenty of time to sightsee so we headed out walking the wonderful streets, full of brightly coloured houses built probably 80-100 years ago. 

The Halifax Citadel was only 15 minutes away and we got there  just before closing time (6 P.M.). This turned out to be a good thing because it turns out there is an entry charge but a National Park pass will get us in free so today we spend more time there (they did let us in for free as there were only 5 minutes until closing)

We were soon downtown walking the streets and thoroughly enjoying the experience. We stopped at a Scottish style pub to enjoy beer and home made potato chips before continuing on to the harbour front.

By now we were getting tired so we headed back to the hotel which was about  2 1/2 kilometres away. Next to the hotel was another pub (pubs are called "Public Houses") for a glass of wine and then to the room for a good nights sleep.

The internet is terrible in the room so I have to write this is a common room down the hallway.  

Hiking and Driving Part 2

Blogger is screwing up. Had to divide the days travel into two parts

Close to McBride I happened to notice something running through the high weeds/small bushes on the left ditch and made a very quick decision to hit the brakes "just in case". Good call by me, as a bear ran out onto the road and noticed me when he was half way across the road so he turned left and starting running down the middle of the road as I continued to slow right down. He then decided we must be dangerous so he high tailed it back the way he came! Exciting moments for sure

Close to Mount Robson on the western side we stopped at another hike location called RearGuard Falls. Very nice

Apparently only the biggest Chinook salmon can make it past these falls so this is pretty much the end of the salmon run (very close to the Alberta border actually).

A late lunch was at Mt. Robson and then we carried on to Jasper where we went to Pyramid Lake and walked around (a wedding was being held there at the time) and later Caro enjoyed Ribfest food at the 1st annual Jasper Ribfest.

We were home shortly before 9 PM.

Today is our 35th wedding anniversary. We had a wonderful day

Hiking and driving Part One

We left Prince George by 9 AM and after one hour of driving we noticed a sign saying that there was an Old Growth Forest hike immediately ahead. What a great stop that turned out to be as we did the best hike of the whole trip. The hike took about one hour and was in an old growth forest that had been saved from logging. It was just as fantastic as some of the hikes we have done on the coast in previous years. Photos below!

In Prince George

We woke up to drizzly rain in Prince Rupert and as we were checking out the hotel desk clerk asked what we were driving; HMMMM that doesn't sound good at all!! Turns out there was a hit and run in the hotel parking lot but a few panicky minutes later we confirmed the car wasn't ours. WHEW

Price Rupert looks very run down and unappealing so we decided to hit the road. Terrace looked nice as we drove through.

We stopped at Hazelton and toured the K'san replica historical native village. The tour guide was a native woman and the stuff they had there to show us was phenomenal. It was super interesting and worth going to (and also we both got in with a SENIORS discount!!!)

Unfortunately no photos were allowed in the buildings as the items are all on loan from local native families and are all considered sacred. Too bad because I could have easily taken a dozen photos.

We carried on kilometre after kilometre after kilometre until "finally" we got to Prince George. We are both exhausted tonight and looking forward to our air conditioned room with a king sized bed.

The ferry to Prince Rupert

Today was the day I have been waiting for- our 15 hour ferry ride from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert

We got to the ferry terminal at the 5:30 AM time as we were supposed to and then waited patiently to load and be on our way at 7:30 AM

We had booked reserved seats in the Aurora lounge at the front of the boat. It was great because any time anybody saw something in the water they would point, make a comment, and everybody then knew there was something to see (besides incredible mountain vistas!!)

We saw sea otters,dolphins and probably 6 or more humpback whales including one that breached beside the ferry (unfortunately we only saw the splash-too bad)

At some places the mountains were very close to us and even though the weather was overcast all day there was no rain until it was dark as we arrived in Prince Rupert. A wonderful day with beautiful scenery just as good as going to Alaska (but without the glaciers)

In Port Hardy

We left Campbell River about 9 o'clock and headed up the coastal highway towards our final destination of Port Hardy

We stopped in Woss to see Christine's house which she had left unlocked for us. We got to see her place and then after a few minutes we were on our way to Port MacNeil where we caught up to Christine at her work location and had lunch with her. A great meal, and it was fun to catch up with her again.

From there it was another 30  minutes or so driving and we arrived in Port Hardy.

Not too much to do here so we drove around the area, walked the malacon, ate supper at the Greek restaurant (good seafood chowder for me; Greek food for Caro) and generally lazed around. A very quiet day by our standards.