Last Road Trip before wiiinnttttttteeeeeerrrr..... Nov 2015

This week we had Remembrance day on Wednesday and the kids had a day off on Friday so we took Thursday off as well and decided to do a tiki tour round the mid west of Nova Scotia (bet its never been called THAT before!!).  After a few glasses of wine and invaluable advice from the lovely neighbours we settled on three nights away, stopping in Lunenburg, Kejimkujik and Annapolis Royal.

We packed the car on Wednesday morning and set off on the road less traveled, hugging the coast from Tanatallon round to Lunenburg.  We drove along the craggy windswept coast dotted with wee fishing villages - stacks of lobster pots and multicoloured boats lined up at the wharfs.


 First stop was a Remembrance Day service in some small town.  The wind was freezing and whistling through pretty much everything!  We listened to the national anthem, speeches that got blown away in the wind and the local songster singing 'White Cliffs Of Dover' and what sounded awfully like a Canadian take off of 'And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda' before the kids lost it a bit and we headed back to the car.  Was nice to stop and mark the day though.

We drove on, pausing at the Swiss Air Flight 111 memorial.  I have very vague memories of seeing the Peggy's Cove lighthouse during the TV coverage of the crash.  The kids enjoyed the time out of the car - even if it did take us longer to get geared up than we spent out of the car!

First real tourist stop was Chester - gorgeous little fishing village, wharves, fishing boats, cute houses and reflective water :)  Its a big holiday destination apparently and even in late Autumn I can see why.


Next stop was Mahone Bay - its amazing how these little settlements remind me so much of Iceland - particularly Siglufjordur with its flat-pack Norwegian houses in a variety of colours.  The colours are amazing - pink, yellow, bright blue, startling purple, nothing seems too bright or unreasonable for house paint.  Love it!  Mahone Bay seem to have an awful lot of churches too - five or six within stones throw as soon as you enter the town.  The bay is also home to Oak Island - which apparently is home to some treasure of some sort and a curse for anyone who tries to find it.  If you desperately need to know more the current owners are up to season three (at least) of a tv show following their search.  http://www.history.ca/the-curse-of-oak-island/  There you go :)

Our destination for the day was Lunenburg which is one of several UNESCO sites in Nova Scotia - it earned this recognition for being the best example of planned British colonial settlement in Canada.  It is a grid laid determinedly by the British over whatever shape the damned Canadian landscape happened to take.  As a result there are short super steep streets that must be a nightmare in winter and long rolling o'er hill down dale streets connecting them up.  The architecture is pretty awesome and the whole place is just gorgeous.

We went to see if the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic was open, but like pretty much everything else it had shut up for winter.  Wandered around the wharf for a bit slowly freezing then back into the car for a drive round to the golf course (which affords fabulous views of the town across the water).  The golf course was locked up (surprise!) so we took pictures from the gate, but didn't really do it justice.  Drove up to the Lunenburg Academy for a look at the now abandoned Victorian school that overlooks the town.  It is a historic place and quite an imposing building!  the kids took advantage of the playgrounds to burn off a bit of energy and I took a look around the old graveyard that borders the building.

The weather had improved marginally so we parked up in town and took a walk.  I took multitudes of photos of the colours and wonderful buildings.  The St John church was rebuilt in the last 15 years after it was 'ravished' (according to the plaque outside) by fire - amazing to see a building like that build in its original condition.  The UNESCO status probably a nightmare for planners in the county....

We took advantage of the log fire in the chalet that night!  Lovely and cozy :)  The kids did some leaf rubbings, taking it in turns to tear out into the freezing cold and find a leaf :)

Next day we packed up and headed for Keji.  We stopped for groceries and a look at an old navy hulk in Bridgewater.  Drove on thru the obligatory Nova Scotia forest and arrived at the national park just after lunch.  We stopped in at the visitors centre (closed) and had a bit of a drive around to get our bearings.  Saw a deer and her babe standing by the road on the way in :)

We had downloaded the park map the night before so headed up to a likely looking (and reasonable distance) walk out to Snake Lake.  Had the obligatory leaf war before marching off thru 3km of hardwoods, softwoods, wetlands and lake shore - the variety of habitat and scenery really kinda awesome!  The lakes are just stunning - I kept expecting to see a moose step out of the trees and take a drink :)

On the way back out we checked out the campgrounds for next time.  We stopped and looked at a teepee and threw rocks into the lake behind it.

We were just heading off when we spotted a porcupine lumbering along the road.  He wasn't the best looking specimen - didn't have many quills at all on his back half and wasn't moving too fast at all - but we'll take him as a check off on the list! Better than roadkill raccoons anyway...

Our accommodation for the night was a wilderness retreat and it was just gorgeous.  The chalets were snugged back into the trees over looking the river and they had built a boardwalk along the rivers edge connecting the chalets and the main complex.    We walked the boardwalk before it got too dark, then holed up in the chalet with another log fire.  Unfortunately the fire was too good and the chalet too small - we nearly cooked!

It rained over night and the river was misty in the morning.  I got out to take some pictures, walking the boardwalk in the light rain was probably the highlight of my trip :)

Next day we tidied up and packed the car between rainstorms and avoiding the squirrel that was obviously relocating his nut stash from one side of the drive to the other :)   Fortunately the rain stopped as we were heading out, treating us to some stunning views of the sun cutting thru the trees.  We headed back into the park and did a couple more walks - a little nature walk to test the weather that had closed in again, and up to Mill Falls where I would have expected to see a bear fishing for salmon....

We reluctantly left the park and headed up to Annpolis Royal where we visited the (only? largest? I
forget) tidal power plant in Canada before heading into town and finding a playground.  After a bit of a play we walked up along the coast to Fort Anne. I couldn't keep up with quite who built in and who it repelled, but it seems most famous for repelling the French, who were at some point later all deported out of the area for not swearing to abide by the English Crown.  The history of the place seems riddled with French/English/Mi'kmaq hostilities... I think it is really only safe to say the English came out of it all on top.  We walked back thru town and headed out to our accommodation for the night which of course is world famous in Canada for its pygmy goats and onsite rabbits.  Kept the kids entertained anyway!

Saturday we packed up and headed off for New Ross.  The wind and rain were back so we were not sure if we were just heading home or not!  Matt had planned us a circuitous route through the back roads which was interesting - unbelievable how much junk people out there collect around their houses and sort of stuff into the trees that fringe their houses... 


Our target was Ross Farm, and it wasn't raining when we got there, so we put on ALL our warm gear and braved the cold.  It was really interesting - house dating 1817 barely changed inside, complete with period dressed lady doing needlework by the window.  She gave us freshly baked biscuits and told us about the house.  In the hall I found some sleigh bells that made my day!  They sound just like you would imagine Christmas in the snow to sound - magic!  We spent a while standing in the workshop (near the fire!) talking to a period dressed bloke about the farm and surrounding area.  He introduced us to their cattle and horse which was pretty awesome too.  After checking out the old machinery we headed out to out first family diner experience (baloney on pizza bleeeuuurgghh!!!) then home to sort piles of washing and collapse!












Was an awesome time to go and see the country - will have to go back in the spring/summer to see it all green!

No raccoon but the porcupine almost made up for that :)  Would have for certain if he had quills....

Thanksgiving in Cape Breton - Oct 2015

A long weekend!  Hurray!  After a bit of last minute panic accommodation booking we headed off in the trusty steed for Cape Breton and the Cabot Trail.

Cape Breton is an island off the top of Nova Scotia mainland - doesn't look it tho :)  Is connected by a causeway which bizarrely has a lock to get boats through... weird with sea either side!  Am sure someone can explain that to me...  When they opened the causeway they were supposed to have 100 pipers pipe across it in celebration (very celtic up that way :) ) but local legend has it that one piper flatly refused to cross is protest of the causeway opening up his beloved island to anyone who had a wheels :)

The weather forecast wasn't great for the long weekend, and we had our fingers crossed that they were wrong!  It was overcast and a bit spittery when we drove up on Friday night.  We stopped for the night just out of Baddeck, with the intention of going sailing on the Bras d'Ors Lakes in the morning.

The morning turned out to be..well..  not so conducive to sailing!  We peered out our window into the misty rain and decided to go to the museum instead - in the hope that the weather would clear a little and we'd be able to see some of the undoubtedly gorgeous scenery.  We drove into Baddeck, and after visiting the visitors center, made our way to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum.  I must admit the only thing I knew about Mr Bell was his grand 'apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically'.  The museum was great and I was surprised to find a man with a great love of triangles and flying who loved his family (wife in particular) very much  who happened to invent the telephone!  The kids had a great time on the AGB treasure hunt and earned themselves a boomerang (or frisbee depending on which way you throw it) to go and throw around in the wind :)  By the time we had made it back to the car, it was lunchtime and the sky had cleared quite a bit!  We drove down into the town and had our lunch in the car (freeeezing wind blowing).  We braved a walk down the pier and along the boardwalk then piled back into the car out of the cold and on our way!

We drove up the east coast and headed firstly for Englishtown where you catch a ferry across the Harcourt and back onto the main road.  The kids were super excited about the 5 min ferry ride - Amelia's inaugural boat ride according to Alex!  The drive up to Ingonish was gorgeous - and gave us a hint of what was to come.

We stopped in Ingonish and visited the Cape Breton Highland National Park headquarters for information and a park pass.  The kids got a park explorer book - more stamps to collect!  I of course had to get back out of the car and run down to stamp the damn books with their first stamp once we realized this was the first point!  We did a little walk up the hill across the road form the info center.  I left Matt trying to cajole Amelia up the steps and caught up with the boys.  They asked where he was and I explained.  We were just taking bets on whether or not he would be carrying Amelia when they hove into view and she was indeed sitting high on his shoulders as pleased as punch :)

We drove on up into the park and installed ourselves in our log cabin - home for the next two nights!
  Was lovely and toasty.  The boys were going to take a bed each upstairs and Amelia was going to sleep on the couch (a bit nervous about her and narrow stairs in the dark!)  .After her bath she headed determinedly up the stairs and climbed into a bed with her books and blanket and sat there looking grouchy saying 'Melia's bed...'  We left her to it ;)  The boys shared the other bed!  We did keep an eye out for moose wandering round the chalets, but they must have been shy...

The weather had improved somewhat in the morning and we set off for Meat Cove at the top of the island.  Stopped off at some spectacular wild spots along the way, either just to enjoy the view, or to pick up a stamp for the kids.  We saw two bald eagles!  Fantastic!  Stopped in Neil's Harbour for a look at the lighthouse and cutsey colours fishing boats in the sheltered little harbour.

We followed the coastal road up to Smelt Brook, and on to Cabot's Landing (where the man himself is said to have stepped ashore)More fabulous wild scenery later we stopped at the roads end - Meat Cove.  It looked for a little while like we wouldn't get any good views because there was a campground on the edge of the cliff (no queens chain here folks!) but we found the access to the beach and had lunch on the rocks watching seals bobbing in the Bay.  Spent a bit of time exploring the bay and building our own rock sculpture before heading back to the car.  We spotted a boardwalk (kids love a good boardwalk) so did a bit of a walk up through the trees, heading back when we realised it was headed for the road out!

 

The autumn colours were just starting to turn and the hills were just gorgeous - a bit hard to photograph though - just doesn't do it justice!  We would drive past patches of vivid red/orange leaves, then a patch of yellow.   It will be stunning in a few weeks when the rest of the trees have turned.

We headed back to Ingonish, foregoing any more walks because the weather had packed in.  We did take a detour to Dingwall and visited the St Pauls Island Lighthouse.  The lighthouse used to be on St Pauls Island (I know - weird right?) and was taken to Halifax in the 80's.  The good people of
the St Pauls Island Historical Society launched a campaign to have it returned to Dingwall, which was done in 2010.  These folks are VERY proud of their lighthouse, and we were given an extremely detailed tour of the little museum and the lighthouse itself by a lovely enthusiastic local.  Kids enjoyed it :)  They estimate 350-400 ships were wrecked on the island with thousands of lives lost (graveyard of the gulf they call it...)

Paused at one last beach for a bit of a play before heading to a local pub for a turkey dinner for tea (Happy Thanksgiving everyone!).  We thought we might be treated to some Irish music (the Celtic Colours Music Festival was on)  but the dude played soft rock - even cracking into a bit of Crowded House as we left!

The next day was a reasonably big driving day and we'd planned to do a couple of walks, so we got away early, retracing our steps back up the coast and heading across to the other side of the island. We filled up with petrol and discovered (horrors!)  a potential petrol tank leak.  While Matt sorted that (good bloke to have around) we consulted our activity books and wrote poetry..

Lake by Alex

Lake
Clear, huge
fishing, diving, inspiring
makes me think about oceans
ocean.

Lake by Owen

Lake
great and big
fishing, boating, diving
great for fishing
ocean

Chair by Amelia

Chair
red, comfortable
sitting relaxing, sitting relaxing
warm and cozy
seat
(might have been a tad of coaching there ;))

They were very proud of them and read them to a couple of park wardens ( and anyone else who looked vaguely interested) :)


Stopped for a bush walk though big sugar gums to a reconstructed crofters cottage.  Was a bit of a shame we weren't later in the season.  The ground was covered in little maple trees which would have been just magical when they all changed colour!

We stopped at the top (and multiple stops on the way up) to take in the ancient gneiss landscape and the wild coast.  Didn't see any whales!  We did a little high altitude bog walk, keeping an eye out for moose (plenty of sign of them, just none of the folks themselves) and carnivorous plants.  Kids loved the boardwalk and the scenery was just fantastic.  The pitcher plants were pretty awesome too!

Drove on the the iconic skyline trail, where we had lunch and decided to walk in a little way - no intention of doing the whole thing so didn't take food, water or the damn buggy we dragged the whole way and didn't use....  You have to walk up a gravel road for a bit, which probably would have been enough, but the track looked just gorgeous so we headed down the track a bit..  Not too far down we came upon a group of people with their cameras poised peering into the undergrowth.  We snuck up and there was a moose!  well.. the back end of a moose pushing its way into the trees.  Its pushed out of sight and most people moved on.  It had freaked Amelia out, so we were just giving her a bit of a cuddle when the moose backed out of wherever it had gone and we got a great look at it before it crashed off in the other direction.  A female, so no antlers, but still a very formidable looking beast! Exciting!

Mooses butt

Long story short we ended up doing the whole walk.  The kids were amazing.  Amelia and latterly Owen did require a bit of piggybacking, but the whole walk was 7.5km so that's to be expected!  The views out on the end were just amazing.  Well worth it...  Needless to say when we got back to the car we ate pretty much everything in sight!

Drove on down the mountain and down into Cheticamp on the other side of the national park.  Stopped at the visitors center for the kids to get their final stamp and their special gift for completing the challenge.    All well stoked with their purple dog tags we headed down the coast to Troy for the night.

Got ourselves installed, ordered pizza and enjoyed the fabulous sunset.  I went for a walk down the hill and watched a pod of dolphins playing in the harbour.  Matt took the boys down for a look while I waited for the pizza - just beautiful!

Next day we drove into Port Hawkesbury and a very nervous me sat my drivers license.  Passed with flying colours (17 points off compared with the 42 Matt accrued ;) ) and headed for home.  a most fabulous way to end a most fabulous holiday!

Starting to think raccoons are a imaginary though....

Last of September....

Our local oracle (the lovely neighbours) told us that at this time of year people go apple picking in the valley.  This sounded straight forward enough, and when in Rome we went apple picking :)  There are several big farms that seem to be set up just for this time of year.  The one we visited was Noggin Corner Farm Market. we did check it out before we left, so were looking forward to corn mazes, duck races, kettle popcorn and a good old game of washers along with the obligatory cart ride to the apple fields.


I've never done a corn maze before and was quite prepared to get completely and utterly lost.  We paid our entrance fee and were handed a (very handy!) map and pointed to the start of the small maze and the flag pick up point for the big maze (wave your flag when you get lost and they will come look for you).  The excitement levels when we headed into the small maze were astronomical.


The kids had a treasure hunt to complete - 6 animal stamps - and paper clutched in hand went tearing off into the maze all gungho.  Needless to say we needed some of Matt's fabulous directional abilities to get us to all 6 letter boxes and back out again!

We collected our flag and headed into the big maze..  I'm glad we took the buggy, I'm sure we would have lost Amelia without it!  It took ages to complete the maze - after an hour or so we had given up completely on trying to find our way around and were relying on Matt with the map to get us to the next checkpoint!  Enthusiasm had waned considerably by the time we got out! Great fun though - would have been interesting to know just how far we walked...

We refueled and the kids played on the great tyre stack and the culvert piping slides (slightly corrugated which made the slide a bit uncomfortable but surprisingly fast!  Owen and Amelia enjoyed the washers game (throwing big washers into a box - a bit like horseshoes I guess...) and everyone had a great time playing with the water pumps at the duck race :)  After we had climbed every hay bale and pumped every pump we gathered up our gear and headed for the apples.

We were all packed into a big wooden trailer and driven out to huge apple orchards where we were just advised to 'pick what you want'.  We tried a few but ended up with a bag largely containing royal gala!  The kids were getting a bit scratchy so we picked quickly and headed back.  The tractor took us past the pumpkin fields - Halloween pumpkins purely for decoration of course!  People were lugging them around in big wheelbarrows :)

Good wholesome family fun!  No animals - unless you count the pumpkins :)