7/7

We spent the night at the Red Cap Hotel, in West Pubnico.  They had a nice restaurant and we met two very friendly ladies.  Nancy was our waitress for dinner.  She reminded us of Deborah Rodgers and told us much about the local area, which is called Acadia due to the French Canadian population  She told us how during the French and Indian War, the British expelled the French, many of which later settled in Louisiana (the Cajuns), but that some of them remain in the Acadian region of Nova Scotia.  They have their own flag, and everyone must be very proud of their French heritage, because the all had Acadian flags flying.  Apparently, July 2 is Canada Day.  Need to look that one up to see if it is just a national pride day or a holiday for another historic reason.  For breakfast, our waitress was a lady with a daughter named Catrina.  She told us about the  local fishing industry and mentioned that Pubnico is the largest lobster fishing wharf east of Montreal.  We drove down to the wharf to see all of the fishing vessels at the docks.  We asked her advice on whether we should make the long drive to the far end of Nova Scotia to see Cape Breton Island or if we should head north once we reach Halifax and head back toward New Brunswick.  She told us Cape Breton is beautiful, but that with our time constraints, we might be best served by making the shorter loop and seeing the cliffs on the New Brunswick side of the Bay of Fundy.  Both ladies were so friendly and willing to share their thoughts.

The drive from Pubnico to Lunenburg was nice, with some pretty seascapes along the way, though if you stay on the larger highway (103), you see only large trees lining both sides of the highway.  When you venture off on highway 3, you see much more and pass through a number of small fishing villages.  It began to rain about mid-morning and continued for an hour or two,  a welcome sight for West Texas travelers, but it did prevent us from stopping for more than a quick photo op at a couple of beautiful beaches with waves crashing against some of the rocks….very pretty scenery.

Next, we stopped in Lunenburg and parked next to the Fisheries Museum to walk around for awhile looking at the boats and ships along the waterfront.  We went into a few small shops before heading out to Mahone Bay, where we took pictures of these three churches that are situated side by side along Edgewater Street.  The first is an Anglican, the second is Congregationalist , and the third is the Church of Canada.  The pics are on my phone, so I'll add those when I can.

After leaving Mahone Bay, we headed on to Halifax, which is the Metro area of Nova Scotia.

I have to admit we’ve been stumped by some of the road signs that we’ve seen along the way.  I need to do some basic research to see what they all mean.  It’s fun to make up explanations based on the images, but that’s not really useful when you’re looking for a bathroom….I mean “wash room”

In many ways, Halifax impressed me as your typical big city, with busy streets and claustrophobic downtown areas.  In fact, one street from the harbor, you could convince yourself that you were in San Antonio, Texas or another congested city center.  But we went down to the boardwalk that runs along the bay and spent some time in the Maritime Naval  Museum.   Since Halifax is a major seaport and naval base, the museum includes WWII battleships and early 1800s schooners that are docked along the boardwalk.  The museum wasn’t open yet, and since it was  Sunday, the pier wasn’t all that crowded, so we walked to the far end to a large indoor farmer’s market, which was very interesting and smelled of coffees, fresh vegetables, and baked goods from a French pastry shop inside.  Back at the Maritime Museum, we visited e exhibits, which included a history of the Halifax port and the area’s role in both the shipping trade and fishing industries, as well as the role of Nova Scotia in the major battles of different wars.  The was also an interesting exhibit on the 1917 explosion that destroyed much of the harbor area  and killed and wounded many sailors and civilians when a munitions ship collided with a cargo ship carrying loads of pure alcohol.  Another major exhibit chronicled the role that Halifax played after the Titanic sank in 1912.  Halifax was the nearest port, so several  ships were dispatched to aid in the search for survivors and to transport the dead back to Halifax, where many of them were buried.

7/7
We spent the night across the bay, at the Best Western in Dartmouth, which is really part of Halifax, or so it seems.  The hotel  was in an industrial complex, so on this Sunday evening it was much quieter and calmer than downtown Halifax.  We had an interesting escapade booking the room.  We needed to find a wifi hotspot, so after some meandering, loopity-looping, and head scratching, we found a McDonalds where we could get online and search for a hotel.  Unfortunately, my laptop battery died in the middle of booking the room, and the only plug in we could find was next to the entrance to the bathrooms.  So, we pulled a chair over to the bathroom door without totally blocking it, logged on really quickly and booked the room.  Ah…..such an adventure.  =)

Leaving Halifax the next day, had lunch at Murphey’s Fish and Chips in downtown Truro.  The fried Haddock was so fresh and nicely prepared that I even ate some, and the two waitresses that we talked to were very friendly and told us about the area and what we should try to see on our way.  We drove down the northern peninsula of Nova Scotia, on the opposite side of the Bay of Fundy, and saw some of the prettiest areas yet, especially the seaside cliffs at Cape D’Or.  It was a steep walk down to the lighthouse and cliff overlook, but well worth the effort.  The views were amazing where the extreme tidal variations have eroded the coast over the centuries and created an area with rip tides that run parallel to the shore. 

We spent the night at the Sunshine Inn in Parrsboro, which is also on the Bay of Fundy.  It was a nice roadside hotel owned by a couple that we assumed from the accent were French Canadian.  They made breakfast for us, with blueberry pancakes, sausage, and eggs.  They told us that they grow their own blueberries, so we asked if we could walk down to the field behind the hotel to see them.  We took the walk but couldn’t decide which plants were the blueberries, which were raspberries, and which were just native bushes and trees.  It was really quite comical, and Trina reminded me of the time that a family had car trouble near our house in Snyder and asked to borrow the phone.  A tumbleweed that had been gathering cotton from a nearby field had made its way to our front yard, and the woman told her kids, “Look guys!  I’ve never seen a real cotton bush up close before!”  I didn’t have the heart to expose her ignorance right there in front of her children, and thankfully the Nova Scotia couple didn’t mock our ignorance of blueberry vine/bushes/trees, or whatever they grow on. We’re enroute to Maine now, and are still in pursuit of the illusive blueberry bushes that the area is so famous for.  I’m sure they are right in front of our eyes and we’re just too dumb to see them.  (Forest for the trees, and all that nonsense)….

 We’ve discovered that they don’t have white gravy in this part of the world, and they even serve brown gravy with chicken strips, biscuits, and French fries. 

We left Nova Scotia the next day, and headed back toward New Brunswick.  We drove along the coast again, only this time, the Bay of Fundy was called the “chocolate river” because we were at the easternmost end of the bay, where the 17+ foot tidal range was most dramatic.  Areas that are full of water at high tide, around 5am and 5pm, were emptied muddy basins at low tide, around 11am and 11pm.  It is just so dramatic, and the wooden boats and fishing vessels what were floating peacefully at high tide are now mired in the mud, protruding out of the bay like beached whales.  We stopped to see the wonder of the Hopewell Rocks, which display the dramatic tidal shifts in an amazing cove, where the “flowerpot rocks” and “diamond rock” tower hundreds of feet above the beach, separated from the tall cliffs where the years of water erosion have cut away at the coastline.   At low tide, you can walk along the ocean floor, and watch as the sea comes back into the bay, and by high tide, they have everyone back up the four flights of steps leading down to the beach to view the same sight from the observation decks, where the areas that were filled with beach combers are now fully underwater.  An amazing sight.

About 30 more miles down the road, we stopped for the night at a cabin (challete) in the Fundy National Park.  This is a beautiful area, with 100+ foot tall pines, maples, and an assortment of other trees, and views of the dark blue waters of the Bay.  It’s amazing how, at high tide, the chocolate colored water shifts to such a beautiful shade of blue.

The next morning, we had biscuits and white gravy at the cabin and had a nice breakfast before heading out toward St. John, then on to the border crossing at St. Stephen/Calais.  We exchanged what we had left of Canadian money for good ol devaluated US cash, and crossed the border fairly quickly.

We headed on down route 1 on the coast of Maine, retracing our steps from the first leg of our trip to some degree.  We stopped for a quick lunch at a little diner near Dennysville called The Cobscook Bay Café.  It was a converted two car garage that had changed hands several times as a diner, and there was only one lady there running the whole place.  She was efficient, though, and everyone enjoyed their the  burgers, blts, and chicken salad wraps.  We all agreed to rank it well above the meal that we ate on the ferry from St. John to Digby on the second day of our trip.  That was a bit too much like overpriced cafeteria food, from the odd-shaped chicken nuggets to the Captains seafood platter, all of which we were sure were fried in the same grease.  I think we would all recommend the ferry ride, but not the lunch.  A sack lunch would have been much preferred if we had known in advance.

A few minutes after getting back on the road, we passed a sign for the Quoddy Head Bay lighthouse.  It was a 15 mile detour, but we thought it might be worth it, and it was.  The red and white striped lighthouse was probably the prettiest one that we saw to that point, with the beautiful dark blue waters of the Maine Bay in the background.  It is located near the town of Lubec, which is the easternmost town in the U.S.  It sits on the U.S. Canadian border with a bridge connecting it to Campobello Island, New Brunswick.  When we left the Cobscook Bay Café, we were about 98 miles from our destination in Bar Harbor, but when we left the lighthouse, an hour or so later, we found out we were more like 110 miles from Bar Harbor, meaning that we had backtracked considerably on our detour.  We were glad we did, though, because we would have missed this beautiful sight otherwise.

Well, we finally figured out what blueberry fields look like, and, wouldn’t you know it, we’ve been passing through them for days unawares.  They grow really close to the ground, so to us they looked like close cropped fields of weeds.  Now that we know, we’re seeing them everywhere, of course.  =)  In Nova Scotia, they told us they would be harvesting this year’s crop in 2-3 weeks, so we’re assuming (probably incorrectly) that the same is true here in Northern Maine.

I'll add more pics tonight..... =)