The Maritimes

We have been travelling through the Maritimes on our way home to Winnipeg. We are now in New Brunswick after spending time in PEI and Nova Scotia.

In Nova Scotia we spent a day driving up the coast from Lunenburg to Halifax. Lunenburg was very picturesque. We had a picnic lunch and saw Bluenose 2. We spent the night in Halifax and woke up to a foggy and misty morning. We strolled around downtown and saw the Public Gardens and Pier 21. Our tour guide at Pier 21, George Zwaagstra immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands in either 1951 or 1971 (Theo and I can't remember and are in disagreement). He landed in Halifax at Pier 21 and had some interesting stories to share.

We headed to PEI on September 3 taking the ferry from Caribou, NS to Wood Islands PEI. We spent two nights travelling along the Points East Coastal Drive. The highlight was Basin Head Beach and the Singing Sands. We didn't know what to expect from PEI. we were surprised to find so many sandy beaches and farms! Also, a lot of mosquitos! We both received plenty of bites and are not used to the itch after leaving in St. John's for so long!

Today we arrived in New Brunswick via the Confederation Bridge from PEI. We left Charlottetown bright and early and Theo May not have been fully awake because he failed to realize we were parked on a slope. He lifted off the cooler to load into the car and the luggage cart rolled down the hill with me chasing after it! Lucky it hit a curb rather than any parked cars.

We arrived at the Hopewell Rocks along the Bay of Fundy at 10 am this morning in time to see the high tide. The high tide today was 40.1 feet (the maximum high tide at Cape Hopewell is ~49 feet). We wandered around the park trails checking out the different sea stacks or flower pots are they are locally referred to. By 1 pm the tide was low enough to walk out on the ocean floor. It was insane to see how much the landscape had changed from high tide to low tide! Unfortunately we won't be able to share Theo's pictures until we can access our computer in Winnipeg.

All in all it has been a great trip so far! We plan to spend time exploring Fredericton before heading to Ottawa for a couple of days!

"That's it, back to Winnipeg!"

Cassandra and I have had a busy summer. We have had visitors almost every month and we decided it was time to move back west to the Great Plains of Canada. The moving truck picked up our stuff Friday morning and we said good bye to work and friends, it was sad to leave. We had an uncomfortable sleep on the floor then packed the car. We got a little stressed because we had more stuff than we thought. I had to go to the dump and value village one last time. We made it onto the Argentia ferry for our 16 hour boat ride and had a much more comfortable sleep in our cabin. Now we are in Nova Scotia and enjoying some of the sights with friends.

Our roof box blew open a bit on the way here but luckily we had a strap holding it down. Although it was probably too tight which let one of the latches loose to begin with. Nothing lost but we did change the strap orientation to hold the box closed in the other direction. We also stopped at the Alexander Graham Bell site in Baddeck. He was a very cool dude and did a lot more than help develop phones and teach the deaf. You can attribute hydrofoils and the first British flight to his name.

We are excited to be heading home but are going to enjoy the drive. We will be seeing many of you soon.

Theo