A week behind in blog writing–

We have been vacationing too hard! No time for writing!

We left rainy, foggy Louisburg and headed south along the beautiful inland sea on Cape Breton Island called the “Bras d’Ore” – “arms of gold”–it was there that Alexander Graham Bell and other notables had their summer homes and is a truly stunning place. It rates a distant second on Cape Breton Island because of all the other scenic beauty, even though it would be a world-class destination if it was located almost anywhere else. The water is salty, though not fully so, as it is open to the sea at one end, and mankind has made a canal at the other end. (See picture) the water is incredibly clean, the hills green and the villages quite welcoming. No wonder the rich have been going here for a long time!

We crossed from Cape Breton to the main part of Nova Scotia and arrived a few hours later in Halifax, finding a campground in the city of Dartmouth just across the bay from Halifax proper. It turned out that the next day was Halifax Day, a kind of city birthday. We left Maggie to guard the trailer and headed down to catch the ferry across to Halifax, bumping into a parade featuring Canada's Mounties. The picture on the blog is a movie, if Kim is clever enough you should be able to click it and hear them playing. 

{This is Kim.....wow, nothing like reading your father's blog and receiving a challenge! I can do it.....}
Click the the picture below THEN click your back arrow button to return to the blog.

The city of Halifax is modern and bustling, with appropriate old city preservation areas. The biggest thing we-never-heard-of about Halifax was the explosion of a warship anchored in the harbor during WWI, when struck by a Norwegian freighter. The munitions onboard detonated and literally flattened most of the northern part of the city and all of the harbor–killing some 1700 people instantly and injuring thousands more in the middle of winter. This is a disaster that makes the San Francisco earthquake, and the Chicago fire pale by comparison. Aid came from all over, including rescue teams from Boston, and it was years before things began to return to normal. The explosion was heard some 100 miles away and glass was broken in houses 20 miles distant. This story is well portrayed in the excellent Maritime Museum.

Click the arrow on the picture below

We enjoyed the bustling waterfront, strolling musicians, modest crowds (large by Canadian standards) and even greeted Theodore the Tugboat, before entering the museum which had an extensive, well presented collection, two old ships of historical significance and a 1996 vintage, still-active, Canadian frigate tied-up alongside for Halifax days, and open to visitors.

Coming from a high-security environment where we wouldn't be allowed near warships, and where security perimeters on the water would be at least 1000 feet, it was quite notable to see small pleasure craft coming alongside, and lots of people lined up to tour the ship. We gave it a thorough inspection, tested the weapons control center (see picture), memorialized the anchor chain as art (see picture), and enjoyed some good fish, music and a nice day on the waterfront.

So many places to go, so little time!

Our scheduler (me) said that we had to head south for the UNESCO world heritage village of Lunenburg the next morning. The entire town has been declared a world-worthy historical site of life-the-way-it-was. The housing is Victorian, in various states of repair, all privately owned, and like walking through a museum. It has an active harbor with dory-building, old ship repair, modern shipbuilding, scallop and lobster fisheries, a great museum, a bunch of restaurants, many, many art and gift galleries, and some very talented musicians. (See several pictures). St. Peter's Church (picture) dates from the 1890s and is a masterpiece of wooden Gothic architecture both outside and in. Inside it reminded me of standing somewhere in Oxford, UK, in one of the old chapels done in wood, rather than stone. The remarkable thing is that the church burned to the ground in a terrible fire in the early 1990s. It has been painstakingly reconstructed to be identical to the original building, but of course everything is beautifully clean and new. The Victorian era elementary school is still in use, though it must be quite a fire hazard for young kids even with the sprinkler systems in place. School functions are to be moved to a modern building within the next few months and it's uncertain what will happen to the old Victorian structure (see picture).  Our first evening was still heavy rain and lightning so we chose to go to the old school where a jazz concert was being held–and it wasn't bad considering how far away they are from the main music centers.

The streets of Lunenburg are decorated with small metal sign replicas of all the different sea life in the area (see pictures) and it makes for interesting strolling. The waterfront had one of the tall ships, based in Lunenburg in port and I visited with a small company that I have been following for some time that makes small wooden skiffs and Dorys. If we ever live near the water again, I would like one of those. (picture)

We then headed across Nova Scotia (the middle of the peninsula is pretty much an empty and the boggy wilderness) and down through the fertile, agricultural Annapolis Valley to Sandy Cove on the Digby Peninsula (Bay of Fundy).  There we anchored the trailer at the 40 acre summer cottage farm of Carol and Tony Measham, old friends from World Bank days.  Kim still works with Tony (a consultant now) and always enjoys his guidance.

The Digby Peninsula is beautiful, as was the weather for a change, and for those for whom a 20 mile peninsula is insufficient isolation, there are two more islands, served by small ferries, just off the peninsula's tip–where year-round settlements of artistic recluses may reside. (Picture)

We hit the farmers market at Port Royale in the Annapolis Valley, named by the loyalists who immigrated to escape the 13 colony-revolutionaries in the 1770s. There we visited a number of historic sites most notable of which was “The Habitation”, at the tip of Port Royale.  Champlain discovered it in his voyages of 1603, and the king granted license to establish a colony there in 1604. (That's three years before Jamestown for you Virginian history buffs). The reconstructed fort is based on Champlain's Journal and drawings but there is no archaeological evidence of its exact location and they feel that it may have been in land which is  now under the edge of the sea due to erosion.

Inexplicably, the colonists were recalled after only two years, leaving the settlement in the care of the local Indian chief with whom they were very friendly. They returned only 18 months later and it has been a place of habitation ever since, but this brief absence of Europeans has caused the colonialists to the south, at Jamestown, to claim it as the first “permanent” settlement in North America! This really seems to be splitting hairs as the Indian chief did his job well and cared for the property so that the returning settlers had no trouble. Not so with the colonists to the south however! While the local settlers were out tending to essential chores in 1612 a ship from Virginia under the command of one General Argall, sailed into the bay attacked the settlement (undefended) and burned it to the ground making it impossible for the returning settlers to spend the winter there. They had to relocate to other settlements that had by then been established in the region.  I guess that secures the Jamestown claim to being the first!!

Alas, we had to leave with a 6 AM departure to catch the ferry from Digby over to St. John, New Brunswick. That voyage was done in total fog, and at the cost of $308, for 2 seniors, a car and trailer … but breakfast on board was good. That saved us about $160 in gasoline by my calculation and about eight–nine hours of driving to go up and around the Bay of Fundy. 

We arrived in the village of St. Martin's after an hours drive and set up camp about 50 feet from the Bay of Fundy where I have been watching the tide rise and fall some 33 feet twice a day. Betsy was installed at a luxurious country inn where her photography seminar is being held this week and she is enjoying a four-poster bed, a spacious room, with all of her meals prepared, and is having a great time learning lots of new approaches to photography. Maggie and I are installed at the campground – confined inside to do some work by the heavy rains of Monday, but at least I got the work done.