August 19, 2017:   Woke to the sound of construction equipment in the Walmart RV Park.  They were re-paving a portion of the parking lot, but fortunately we were parked on the other end.  Pneumatic hammers that break up pavement make a lot of noise at 7 AM!  Reminded us of a cool machine we saw the other day, as we went through a road construction zone.  It tore up the old asphalt, chipped and ground it up, re-processed it into new asphalt, and then laid it down!  What a cool idea - except eliminates a lot of work for dump trucks.  On the other hand, no need for an asphalt plant and sure cuts down on the amount of truck traffic in and out of the area.

Mike took Baxter for his morning "constitutional", we grabbed coffee and a bite to eat, and then read a little bit before leaving for Baddeck.  It is only about an hour and fifteen minute drive from Port Hawkesbury, and we didn't want to arrive at the campground too early, as our site might not have been available.  On the road at 11 AM, arrived at 12:15 -an uneventful drive with more marine views.  Stopped at an interesting roadside monument to a Scottish explorer from the 1300's (yes, that's the 14th century!) who is purported to have spent a year in this area exploring.  There is a society dedicated to proving that he was actually here, as there are some "historians" that are trying to discredit the claims.  Amazing to think someone from that long ago actually came here and spent an entire year in the area before returning to Scotland!  There is a strong Scottish heritage and influence in this area, which is evidenced by many, many Scottish place names.  

Got the motor home all set up at the Bras D'or Campground (on Lake Bras D'or), jumped in the Jeep and headed into Baddeck to check out the information center and plan our next 5 days here.  Visited with two very nice ladies at the information center and came away with lots of information on things to do and see.  We will do the east and west coasts of Cape Breton, a visit to Fort Louisburg, and a lobster feed for sure, and will see what else our adventures bring.  Mike is all happy because we found a local craft brewery that would fill one of his growlers with their beer, instead of making him buy yet another growler (we are up to 4 and running out of room in the motor home!).  He is now happy.  I am busy trying to drink a good portion of the wine we brought along, so we don't have to deal with it at US customs on the way back across the border.  It's a tough job, but someone has to do it!

We got back to the campground and did some laundry.  The motor home is very dirty and needs a good scrubbing, but we can't find any car washes that have facilities for RV's.  Most campgrounds are NOT willing to let you wash your rig, and ours is looking terrible.  It is starting to rain now, and we're seriously considering putting on our bathing suits and going out and scrubbing off the dirt once it starts raining harder!  I told the owner of the campground that's what we were considering, and he says to make sure we tell him if we do, because he wants pictures!  Crazy Americans!  They are transplants from Florida and we had a nice visit while I was waiting for the washers to finish.

It's a "clean out the fridge of leftovers" plan for dinner tonight, and then watching a few movies.  And of course maybe washing our "baby" in the rain!

Mike and Glennis

Things we learned:

• The rough roads yesterday beat the heck out of the motor home, and actually broke a bracket on the front grill and loosened a bunch of screws.  
• We will be stopping back by Red Bay, AL and the Tiffin factory on our way home to get the brackets repaired/replaced, along with some trim that was popped loose.  Wow!
• Baxter is a great ice breaker and conversation starter - lots of people ask about him. He really likes all the attention!  Mike thinks he needs to start his own blog???

August 18th:  Greetings from Cape Breton!  We crossed over on the Canso Causeway about 5:30, and are settled into the Walmart RV park at Port Hawkesbury.  We had a very rough and bumpy drive along the southern coast of Nova Scotia - the roads are terrible, even though it is marked on the maps as a scenic route!  Pounded the heck out of the motor home.  But we enjoyed the scenery and just went slow.  Will move on to Baddeck in the morning for several days.

Now, to catch up.  Tuesday, August 15th:  Up and on the road in the Jeep to Old Town Lunenburg, a UNESCO heritage site and an old fishing and ship building town.  Took the scenic route along the coast and drove through lots off scenic small towns.  Mahone Bay is a very pretty (but very "upscale" town that has really capitalized on the tourism industry - lots of beautifully restored old buildings. Loved the name of one of the restaurants!

Lunenburg itself was packed to the gills (pun intended) with tourists, which is NOT our cup of tea, but we did find a beautiful old Anglican (related to Episcopalian!) church there - the 2nd oldest organized church in Canada, founded in the early 1700's.   It is a classic example of "carpenter gothic", with the architectural features all made of wood instead of stone and masonry.  It suffered a tragic fire the late 80's/early 90's and was almost completely destroyed.  However, as it was a National Heritage Site, there were very complete records about the construction, tons of documentation and pictures, etc., and they were able to rebuild the church!  There are, fortunately, a number of very talented woodworkers in Old Lunenberg, and you would never know the building is not hundreds of years old!  We had a nice visit with two young ladies who gave us a tour of the sanctuary - sure wish we would have been able to attend a worship service on a Sunday.  Altar guild members - be thankful we don't have a solid brass eagle/lectern - they have a man that comes in and polishes it, and it takes him a solid week to do it!  He does it every 3 months!

For those of you who are Tom Selleck fans of his Jesse Stone movies, the other highlight of our day was finding Jesse Stone's house, which is located on Stonehurst Cove just outside of Lunenberg.  We found it on our Google map and drove right to it - down a little old road literally carved out of and through the many large rocks in the area, to the very end of the road, and there was the bridge and the red house!  Had a nice visit with two ladies who are teachers from Ontario who summer in another house on the little island where the house is, and they took a picture for us!

Grabbed a bite to eat at the "Fish Shack" but were disappointed.  Glennis had poutine, which was just OK, and Mike had steamer clams, which had not been cleaned properly and were sandy.  But his beer was good, so he was happy.  And the "beeper" to let us know our meal was ready was a kick!

 

Back in the Jeep and back to Indian Harbor, with a stop at a wonderful bakery in Mahone Bay for some amazing ginger/molasses cookies.  

Made a quick side-trip to see Oak Island, of "Curse of Oak Island" fame.  Got there after the visitor center had closed, but took a picture of the causeway so we could say we were there!

Ice cream for dinner, another beautiful sunset,  a little reading, and to bed.

Wednesday, August 16th:  Lazy morning, a little house cleaning, then a trip to the SS Atlantic museum on Terrence Bay, a few kilometers east of Peggy's Cove.  It was a wonderful little provincial museum telling the story of a terrible shipwreck near there in the late 1800's.  Over 580 people lost there lives when a ship bound for New York from Ireland misidentified a lighthouse and crashed into the rocks at full speed.  All of the women and children on board perished except for one little three year old boy, as they were in the portion of the ship that sank first.   The priest at the local church organized rescue parties and the fishermen from all over the area responded to help rescue the survivors.  Unfortunately, the wreck was in winter and all of the boats had been stored away for the winter season.  The heroic efforts of the fishermen and local residents saved many lives that otherwise would have been lost, but this was the largest loss of life in a Canadian maritime accident until the sinking of the Titanic.  Many of the victims are buried in mass graves at the Protestant and Catholic cemeteries located nearby.  Such a sad story.

We stopped in Peggy's Cove on the way back to our campsite to grab pictures of the cove and the lighthouse.  The rocks around the lighthouse were literally CRAWLING with people - they looked like little black ants all over everywhere.  

We took pictures at the lighthouse, and headed back to the motorhome for another outstanding sunset, hot dogs, couscous salad, and AMAZING S'mores made from the ginger cookies, giant marshmallows and chocolate.  Wow - we were comatose from a sugar high after that one!

We were so fortunate to get a spot right on the beach when we arrived at King Neptune's Campground in Indian Harbor - the view is incredible!

Thursday, August 17th.  Lazy morning, got things organized to head for Cape Breton tomorrow, then were going to go to Peggy's Cove for some clam chowder for lunch.  When we got there, you couldn't even hardly drive into the place there were so many people, and definitely nowhere to park, so we just turned around and left.  Yikes!  Glad we got to enjoy it when it wasn't so crowded.  We went on down the road to West Dover to a wonderful little restaurant called Shaw's Landing.   We ate outside on the deck, overlooking a pretty little harbor.  We each had a cup of chowder (the size of a bowl) and we shared a toasted cheese/lobster sandwich made with home-made bread.  It was a totally delicious lunch!  The chowder was cream-based, loaded with scallops, lobster and chunks of cod, and the sandwich was just right - not too cheesy and lots of lobster.  We would definitely go there again!

After lunch we went back to the motor home and collected Baxter, then headed to a parking area just east of Peggy's Cove for a hike out through the boulder fields.  There are huge boulders and little lakes scattered all through the area, left-overs from the receding glaciers.  Hiked to the top of a hill with a great view of the surrounding area, then back to the Jeep.  Grabbed a view more pictures in the area, then back to camp and got read to leave in the morning.  

We had planned on another of our molasses/ginger cookie S'mores, but Baxter had other ideas and ate all the cookies while we were having lunch!  (Glennis's bad for not putting them out of reach when we left).  Oh well, we substituted ice cream instead.

Friday, August 18th:  Up early, back to Peggy's Cove to get pictures of an amazing mural carved in granite that we couldn't get to on Wednesday or Thursday as there were too many people.  Much better at 7 AM! 

Baxter's tummy wasn't too excited about all the cookies he ate, so good we were in an out-of-the-way place and able to get things cleaned up good.   Out of the campground by 8:30 and headed for Cape Breton (see the start of this day). Got to take a funky little ferry across Isaac's Harbor - only held us, a Class C motorhome, and 2 cars!  We decided if it we sank it was women and dog's first, with Mike out the window last! 

Stopped in Guysborough at Rare Bird Alehouse for late lunch/early dinner (excellent fish and chips and beer!).   As previously noted, horrible roads, but good scenery.   After we settled in at Walmart RV park, grabbed a few groceries, and settled in for the night.  On to Baddeck tomorrow! 

Mike and Glennis

Things we learned:

• Little ferries and big motorhomes are a bit scary
• Roads less traveled make for interesting adventures
• Drivers here are REALLY scary -they just pull over and park on the roadway when they want to stop and look or take pictures!
• Baxter likes ginger/molasses cookies - Bad Baxter, Bad!
• Cell service in Canada sucks!
• You know you've been in Canada too long when you start wanting to end each sentence with "eh?"

.August 9, 2017:  Travel day from near Hopewell Rocks, New Brunswick to Truro, Nova Scotia.  Easy and uneventful drive, and checked into our new "home" for the next few days - the Scotia Pines Campground.  Nice facility, and one very nice and helpful receptionist.  The other one was crabby and not at all helpful, which was too bad.  We got the motor home situated and immediately headed off to check out the area of the location of the tidal bore (not boar, as auto-correct helpfully changed it to in my previous post, which I didn't catch until it was too late!).  Found the location after an argument with Google maps (kept losing the satellite connection and leaving us waiting for it to catch up with us), visited with a very helpful and informative lady at the Tidal Bore Information Center, and scoped out the "perfect spot" to view the bore tomorrow.  Headed to the area information center and got more info from a very helpful young man about other things to see and do in the area.  Back to the motor home and a planning session on what to do while we are here.  Also worked backwards with our schedule to figure out how long we could stay in Nova Scotia, and figured out we will have enough time to do a quick tour of PEI (Prince Edward Island) while we are here as well, which is exciting.  Called and made a reservation for a kayak trip on Friday at Advocate Harbor, and also made reservations for Baxter to stay at Buddy's K9 Flop House in nearby Spencers Island, while we were out kayaking (too long to leave him alone in the motor home). Simple dinner, a walk around the campground with Baxter, a little reading and off to bed.

August 10, 2017:  Up and on the road to visit the Shubenacadie Provincial Wildlife Park just east of Truro.  The wildlife there were native animals that had been injured or were unable to survive in the wildlife.  Got to see 2 moose, a young bull and a young cow, but still not "in the wild"!  Lots of birds, fishers, pine martens, marmots, feral horses that are indigenous to the islands off of Nova Scotia (believed to have been brought here in the 1700's by the early settlers), wolves, fox, river otters -- the list goes on...eagles, beavers, caribou, mink, cougar, black bears, skunk, baby ducks, emus & on...

Spent a nice couple of hours looking and observing, and then headed for our "special spot" to watch the bore come in.  We saw a faint trail through the brush when we were there yesterday and followed it - at the end was an old bridge abutment right on the river, just perfect for the two of us, Baxter, and our lawn chairs. Note: 'old bridge' includes guard rails for barriers to keep cars from driving into the river. too high for Baxter to jump. Lucky for Baxter Mike can still dead lift 100 lbs over the rail & back so he could go too. We got there plenty early, to make sure no one else had "discovered" our spot, settled in, and were rewarded with the largest bore we have seen yet.  Again, pictures can't do it justice, but Google "Truro Tidal Bore" and you will see it.

Back into the Jeep, and headed for Burntcoat Head, which has the largest tidal change of anywhere on the Bay of Fundy.  Why Burncoat you may ask? Group of guys standing around the warming fire & one burned his coat or left it by the fire to dry & it was burnt the next morning or a simple translation of Indian to French & back to English... you pick.  Acutally, we don't really know where the name came from.  A nice drive through beautiful countryside, with lots of agricultural activity and wonderful views of the bay popping up as nice surprises along the way.  There is a replica of an earlier lighthouse at the head, and we checked out the view from the top.  Then down to the beach, which was partially covered by the incoming tide.  The water level changes by up to 57 feet, depending on the phase of the moon and the time of the year!  There was a nice little Provincial Park there, with nice interpretive signs to explain the history of the area.  Stood on the steps carved out the rock going down to the beach and got our feet wet in the Bay of Fundy again.

Dinner time was coming up and we were getting hungry, so we headed back towards Truro, and then over to Masstown, to check out the market and fish market we were told was a good place for seafood.  Went to the "fish boat" which was basically a fish and chips place, but had a large outside deck and wonderful fish.  A nice dinner of scallops and cod with chips, a little live music to enjoy and a fun visit with a lady from Vancouver, BC that we invited to share our table, as seating was limited.  She has a grandmother that lives on PEI (as in Prince Edward Island for those not up on Canadian geography and didn't see it above), so we got good tips about what to see and do while we were there. 

While we were waiting for our order, the singer for the band announced "if the people that own the red Jeep with Washington plates are in the audience, it appears your dog may need some assistance."  Yikes - another Stamon Adventure about to occur! Baxter was doing his usual "I'm not happy at being left alone" bark and when Mike went to check on him, he found two young women who were quite upset that he was "in obvious distress" (they didn't stop to think he might be barking because they were standing right next to the Jeep) and was "all cooped up" in the Jeep.  They also advised they had called the RCMP!  Turns out it is illegal to leave your dog in the car in Nova Scotia, which is information we never saw anywhere!  We had parked the car in a shady spot, left the windows partially open so he had plenty of fresh air, and he had lots of water and room.  Mike thanked them for their concern, moved the Jeep closer to where we were eating, and brought Baxter up onto the deck with us.  This whole adventure explains why Nova Scotia is such a dog friendly place-they are welcome almost anywhere, which had been quite surprising to us, and now we know why.  

Back to the motor home, and to bed, ready for our big adventure the next day.   We are also thankful we made reservations for Baxter! 

August 11:  Quick breakfast and headed for Advocate Harbor. Stopped at the campground office and Mike got the "not nice" clerk while checking to see if they could change $100 to Canadian.  She said "sure, $100 US FOR $100 Canadian".  The exchange rate is 23%, so he politely declined and left!  We will find a bank on our way to Advocate Harbor and make the exchange. 

On our way out, we were struck again by how each little village or area has at least one, and often two or more churches.  They are traditionally New England with big white spires.  It is obvious that faith was and is a very strong part of the people that live in this beautiful but also harsh land!

Also still amazed by seeing boats in marinas sitting on the bottom with no water in sight & tied so they wouldn't fall over while waiting for the water to raise back up over 40 to 50 feet or more at high tide. 

Arrived at Buddy's K9 Flop House - a wonderful spot, with a great lady named Taylor who took Baxter in hand and promptly made friends with him.  As we drove off, she was taking him for "walkies" around the property, so we were comfortable that he would have a great day with her and her husband.  

On to Advocate Harbor and NovaShores Adventures for a 6-hour kayak tour!  As the saying goes, "it's not the end of the world but you can see it from there".  Got all geared up, got our safety lesson and instructions, and away we went.  Our guide, James, was a very entertaining and competent young man from, of all places, London, England.  His parents have a summer home at Advocate Harbor and he has been coming there for 14 years and just loves the area. The day was sunny, the seas were calm, and the scenery was totally amazing!  The kayak slipped through the water with little effort, and once we got our rhythm down and figured out how to coordinate steering, it was smooth sailing.  We got to paddle between huge sea stacks, into sea caves, and up to some huge rock cliffs.  Our group landed on a beach that was once the site of a ship building facility and small town, but is now completely deserted. We shared an amazing lunch prepared by the tour company, walked around and stretched our legs, and then back in the kayak and back to our drop site.  Helped get the kayaks up to the truck, got out of our gear, said our good byes and headed back to Buddy's to collect Baxter and then back to the motor home.  

              One of the kayakers got her paddle stuck here between the walls of the opening.

Baxter was excited to see us, and had been a perfect gentleman while we were gone.  We had a nice little visit with the owners (they run a German Shepherd rescue so "talked dogs" for a bit) and then headed back.  A long day, but one we will never forget!

August 12:  Lazy day - slept in, read, did laundry, cleaned up the inside of the motor home, took Baxter for a walk, more reading, and got everything ready to go in the morning.  Realized Glennis forgot to fill one of Baxter's prescriptions, and a Canadian pharmacy won't fill it without a script from a Canadian vet, so will have to find a Canadian vet in Halifax on Monday.  A quick call to the wonderful people at Buddy's Flop House got us the name of several vets in Halifax that should help us out.  It's always something!

August 13:  Headed for Peggy's Cove area.  Stopped at Costco in Halifax - what a zoo!  Lines at least 20 people long - glad we won't be doing that again!  On to Indian Harbor, on the south shore of Nova Scotia.  Scored an amazing campsite at King Neptune's Campground in Indian Harbor - right on the water!  The view from our front window is right out to the little harbor and the Atlantic.  Toured around Peggy's Cove a little bit, and visited the memorial for Swiss Air Flight 111, which crashed into the Atlantic just off  Peggy's Cove.  It was overcast when we first arrived, and then turned to heavy rain, which they really needed, as it has been a very dry summer so far.  What a beautiful area!

August 14:  Woke up to a "seagull serenade" at 6 AM this morning.  They were gathered eating "dollar fish" which are little fish that get caught up in the seaweed as the tide goes out.  What a racket!  Up and headed for Halifax for Baxter's vet appointment, so we can refill his prescription.  Located the vet's office a few hours early (wanted to be sure we could find it!), so went to see the Titanic Cemetery.  There were people from tour busses there, so we kind of listened in.  Very interesting.  Then grabbed a bite to eat and a growler of beer for Mike at a beer garden in downtown Halifax.  Saw the vet, got a prescription filled, and back to Peggy's Cove/Indian Harbor. Parts of the Tom Selleck/Jesse Stone movies has been filmed in this area - kept hoping to see him pop up somewhere, but no such luck!  Incredible sunset tonight as we were roasting hot dogs for dinner.

Oh yes - here are some fun highway signs for you!

Mike and Glennis

Things we learned:

• Don't leave your dog in the car in Nova Scotia - bad, bad, bad!
• Still not seeing Canadians who use their turn signals...thinking they must not have one on their cars.
• One gets the best travel information from others travelers. Baxter is great at seeking out friendly & informative tourists.
• We are mastering the art of what Canadian highway signs mean...merging trucks, merging school buses, what a 'hidden drive way' is, bridge ices before road...
• Getting better at converting k/h to m/h.
• Tide will be up to your neck in 27 min on an incoming tide. Tidal change can be up to 57'.
• The land around the Bay of Fundy actually shifts a little when the tide comes in - several billion tons of water come in on each tide!