North by Northeast

Today was our last full day in the Atlantic Maritime Provinces! We started the morning at the Halifax Citadel located high above the downtown waterfront.  The former fort requires admission, but the grassy grounds around it and across the surrounding hillside are open to the public and can be accessed by anyone, and you can park at the base and walk up for great views of the city below and the waterfront. We headed out of town before noon to arrive back in St. John, New Brunswick before everything was closed up. We stopped here two weeks ago on our way up, but got in too late (and the weather was crappy) to be able to explore the city. Our hotel is right next to the St. John City Market inside a beautiful historic (1874) building so we got to check that out and grab some local treats. The weather this time around was not much better than the first time, and within an hour or so the fog had pretty much obscured everything. We still were able to walk around the Uptown old part of ...

The plan for today was to visit a string of towns on the south shore bays and coves west of Halifax. First up was Peggy's Cove where the most photographed lighthouse in Canada (and in the top 10 in the world, according to yachtingnews.com) is located. While I'm still partial to the Gay Head Light, this one lives up to the hype primarily because of the glacially smoothed rock formations that sit under and all around it. It didn't hurt that the weather was literally picture-perfect and we timed our arrival early in the morning to beat the crowds and tour buses. While there were a few dozen people climbing around the rocks, I was still able to get some good pictures. The glacial landscape around the lighthouse is quite different from what we've seen in other parts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and for the first time there were smooth erratics all along the coastline and the low hills nearby. In general, Peggy's Cove was spectacular, but the rocks were really the st...

Another day, another National Historic Site! Actually, we visted THREE of them today. We headed out from Halifax along the northwestern shore of Nova Scotia to Annapolis Royal and the sites of Port-Royal and Fort Anne , located across the Annapolis River from one another on an inlet of the Bay of Fundy. Port-Royal was a short-term fully enclosed habitation and trading site established by a small group of French men in 1605 as a test for a larger permanent settlement. While the exact site location still hasn't been identified, a detailed physical description and plan drawings were recorded by the cartographer Samuel de Champlain. Champlain came to Port-Royal after exploring the coast as far south as Cape Cod , and described the Annapolis River site as the best he had seen on the eastern seaboard. Hey, wait a minute- what's wrong with the Cape?? Champlain's accurate maps and (less accurate) descriptions of Cape Cod, including the locations of Wampanoag settlements, are still...

We left Sydney early this morning for the 4.5 hour drive to Halifax- the longest we've done since first arriving in Canada. We stopped in Truro for lunch (the "Hub of Nova Scotia"), named for the town in Cornwall, England as is the Truro on Cape Cod. I did have to look that up, but it makes sense to me. Major culture shock coming in to the urban jungle in Halifax! I didn't realize how isolated we've been for the past week and a half, spending all of our time in villages or very small towns. Driving into downtown Halifax felt like crossing the bridge into Manhattan. This is a city of half a million people with a downtown and some skyscrapers- if you use that word loosely. We're staying at a hotel one block from the waterfront (thank you JenMac hotel points) where there is a totally built out boardwalk with a zillion shops, restaurants, bars, food stands, and outdoor activity areas.   It was mobbed this afternoon, I assumed because it was a beautiful sunny after...

Today we drove along the western section of the Cabot Trail, which has a different physical and cultural feel than the eastern side. The western areas we drove through included the Acadian Margaree Valley and the town of Chéticamp and most of the road signs were in English and French. The east side is mostly forested with exposed rock along the shore, while the west side has lush green valleys with farms and huge open pastures.     I've been really struck by the fact that there are lots and lots and lots of homes right along the coastline (in every coastal town in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland) and every single one of them is a regular house. Most of them are one story, a few two, some modular, some with a front door that has no steps leading to it because it looks like people go in on the back where they park. No McMansions, no estates behind tall fences or a wall of trees, no landscaped grounds or security gates or no trespassing signs. These are houses with views that incl...

I had a feeling the overnight ferry ride from Newfoundland was going to be rough without a cabin, but it ended up being worse than I thought. While we were able to buy reserved reclining seats in a semi-darkened room, giant TV screens all over the place ran silent news and weather the whole time and there were at least five different people snoring (loudly!) at any given time. There was just no way to get comfortable and even with my earphones in the snorers won out. Also, note to self: don't eat fried chicken wings with hot, hot sauce right before you try to go to sleep in a ferry chair. Jen enjoying a deep and restful sleep The giant ferries take about 1.5 hours to load/unload the passenger cars- semis take even longer- and when we pulled on last night we were directed down a ramp into the lowest parking level. After that deck was full, the big metal plate closed and sealed us in, and more cars and trucks pulled in on the deck above us.  We knew that meant we'd be the last to...

Today was our last day on The Rock and we made the most of it by seeing more of Gros Morne National Park. We left Rocky Harbour and drove south around two beautiful glacial lakes to Woody Point on the south side of Bonne Bay. The main Park Visitor Center is there with great exhibits on the geology of the region, which is unique in North America. There was also a great exhibit space curated by local Mi'kmaq artists and historians. One of the coolest panels was a map all marked up with indigenous place names and locations where traditinal activities like berry picking happened in the past. The trail most recommended to Park visitors is at the Tablelands area so we drove the short distance and took the hour-long hike. This area is distinct in Gros Morne because it’s barren brown rock with a perfectly flat top and is totally unlike every other mountain in the park. It’s origin was a mystery until the 1960s, when a geology grad student figured out that the mineral that caused the bro...