The Road Goes On…

Category: Trips

  • Halifax Day 2

    The girls and I had different agendas today. I spent the day assisting Brent on a shoot for a hair styling competition and Ruth and Pepsi visited Lunenburg, the Lighthouse Route and Peggy’s Cove.

    The photo shoot was a lot of fun – three models (black, blue and orange hair), one hair dresser and a make-up artist.

    While Martin was assisting in shooting the models, the girls (Pepsi and I) went for a great outing. Beautiful weather, a fast trip on Highway 103 to Lunenburg where I spent a couple of hours to get to know this historic town which was designated a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site in 1995.

    The town was established during Father Le Loutre’s War, four years after Halifax. The town was one of the first British attempts to settle Protestants especially from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands in Nova Scotia and, as a result, the (Catholic) Wabanaki Confederacy raided the community nine times in the early years of the settlement. I visited one of it’s oldest houses from 1753, now a museum which gives a great insight into the history. Fascinting how the news settlers found their new land, promised by the British King: Pick a card, any card from a deck of cards! On its back you find the number of your lot and you can find it on the map.

    Blue Nose II still under repair in Lunenburg and two new Schooners are almost finished by a small boat building shop called The Dory Shop.

     

    Then Pepsi and I took the Lighthouse Route back East, going by beautiful small towns, great beaches –no swimming unfortunately- and ended up in Peggy’s cove for a few shots and a wonderful ice cream since the day was very hot and sunny against all odds.

    Back in Halifax we met Martin at Brent’s Studio.

    At 7:30PM we met Trevor for ribs at the Boneheads BBQ on Barrington street. It was great to catch up again and share experiences of our travels in Atlantic Canada. After dinner we walked to a pub with great live Jazz music and had a round of drinks.

  • Halifax Day 1

    We toured the Marine Museum of the Atlantic and viewed a 3-D movie of the Titanic wreck as well as artifacts from the Titanic and displays on Halifax’s response to the disaster.  Among its many other exhibits, the museum has a display on the Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917 which destroyed the city and was the largest man-made explosion until the first test atomic bomb was detonated.

    Next we decided to head towards Pier 21 and stopped at the Choco Cafe for Real Belgian hot chocolate, chocolate mocha  and chocolate fondue. This was delicious and gave us the much needed energy to continue our trek of 4 or 5 city blocks as well as getting us out of the rain. By the time we had finished, the rain had stopped.

    We marched on to the farmer’s market where we bought a small wheel of extra old crumbly gouda for $25 and a small piece of blue cheese for around $10.

    The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 was next.  This museum is the site where 1.5 million immigrants came to Canada during the period between 1928 and 1971. It tells their stories and displays documents related to their journeys.

    An interesting quote from the museum: “A Canadian is an immigrant with seniority.”

    In the evening we met with Brent and his wife Megan for Indian food at Curry Village. Brent is a fashion photographer in Halifax and has been on three of our photography trips and has become a great friend and mentor. After dinner we toured Brent’s fabulous new studio and saw his huge collection of props and wardrobe.

  • Cheticamp to Halifax

    Today started with a house cleaning. Vacuuming, emptying, flushing and filling tanks, cleaning bathroom, etc.

    Our first stop was at the Inverness Mining Museum.  Inverness and the area around it had coal mines until the 1980s when it became uneconomical to continue the mining.  The museum tells the stories of the miners, the continual cutting of wages for the workers, the eventual unionization of the workers and the accidents that occurred at the mines.  One of the boys killed was only 12 years old.

    Our next stop was supposed to be a Whiskey Distillery, but we missed it.  The driver (Ruth) blames the navigator for spending too much time fiddling with the GPS and not paying attention.

    Speaking of fiddling, the next stop was the Celtic Music Interpretive Center in Judique which has exhibits on the different types of music. The more upbeat Reel was our favourite. There is also an 8 minute video fiddling lesson here along with 4 fiddles on the wall you can pick up to play along.  This must have scared all the cats in the neighbourhood as we worked through our E, A, D and G chords (we think). Many howls of laughter.

    The original plan had been to drive along the eastern shore of Nova Scotia which the map shows as a scenic drive.  A bit more searching on the map showed we’d have to take another ferry so we decided to take the Trans-Canada Highway to Halifax.

    We’re staying at the Shubie Campground in Dartmouth, across the harbour from Halifax.

     

  • Ingonish to Cheticamp

    Today we started the day updating the blog and making rough plans for where we’d like to be for the remaining days of the trip.

    The driving today was relatively short with only about 100kms, but several stops at scenic lookouts along the way. Lunch was in Neil’s Harbour at the Chowder House for fish and chips and lobster club sandwich and seafood chowder. While having lunch we watched gannets diving into the water. What a sight!

    We resisted fudge and ice cream at the lighthouse shop and then continued on the Cabot Trail. On the way back to our car we saw a dog driving an RV.

    The road climbs and then descends the mountains (to about 500 meters) with lots of curves.  Amazing sights of mountains and oceans!

     

    There is a valley where a fault line runs and the shifts are clearly visible.

    There are more studios and galleries along this route and we stopped at Arts North which has beautiful unique cutting boards by Larch Wood, colorful silk scarves and hats, pottery, jewelry and other crafts by Cape Breton artists. This is definitely a great place to stop.

    Further down the coast we found another great lookout with a Parks Canada staff member talking about whales.

    We stopped at the Cheticamp campground for the night. This is a fairly large campground and has serviced and unserviced sites.

  • Channel-Port-aux-Basques to Ingonish

    At 5AM the ship’s PA system announced the cafe was open for breakfast and we had one more hour of sailing to go. We spent some time outside watching the sun rise and Nova Scotia shoreline getting closer and closer. Once the ferry docked we were off pretty quickly and headed for the Cabot Trail where we had one more unexpected ferry ride of about 100 meters at Englishtown.

     

    The Cabot Trail has a number of studios and galleries along the way but they weren’t open at 8AM so we stopped for breakfast at Little River Harbour where lobster fishermen had finished their season and were painting their boats and chatting with each other.

     

    After breakfast we backtracked to the studios and galleries – glass, woodworking, pottery and leather. The leather studio was particularly interesting and Martin got a leather bowl for storing coins on the dresser.

    We continued on the extremely scenic Cabot Trail to Cape Smokey where we had lunch and enjoyed the spectacular view of the ocean.

    We continued on to Ingonish Beach where we finally found an automotive propane dealer and filled the tank. We settled into a wonderful campground, walked the beach, had a quick swim and then did a one and a half hour ghost story telling hike with a Parks Canada guide. The stories gave a great insight into the lives of the people, both native and settlers who lived here.

  • Norris Point to Channel-Port-aux-Basques

    Emptied and filled tanks, showered and off we go towards Channel-Port-aux-Basques.

    We stopped briefly in Deer Lake where some fishermen were fishing in the river.

    Our next stop was in Corner Brook for some groceries and to search for a place that could refill our propane tank.  The tank is built into the Roadtrek and therefore needs a place licensed for automotive propane. We found the grocery prices surprisingly high, especially considering that Churchill Falls and Happy Valley-Goose Bay had been so reasonable. Lunch was at the Mamateek Restaurant and Pub. Fantastic view over the city and ocean.

    At the Channel-Port-aux-Basques we stopped to get a local area map along with a Nova Scotia guide and map. We then stopped at the museum that houses an astrolabe from the 1600s. Unfortunately our tour guide was clueless about most of the artifacts at the museum and other than telling us a little bit about the trains there we didn’t get much out of that visit. Newfoundland no longer has any trains since the 1980s with trucks having taken over.

    Since we still had about 5 hours before the ferry left, we headed out to the Rose Blanche lighthouse. This was an amazing drive in the fog ending at the lighthouse which was built from local granite in 1871 and which was in operation until the 1940s. A fog horn added an eerie sense to the place.

     

    We returned to Channel-Port-aux-Basques at 8:30PM and the ferry loading began at 9:30PM for the 11:30PM crossing.  The amount of cars, campers, motorcycles and trucks that fit in this ferry’s four vehicle decks is amazing.

     

    We were on a cabin wait list but didn’t get one so we spent the 6 hours sleeping in the reclining seats on the 7th deck.

     

     

  • Arches Provincial Park and Norris Point

    Woke up and picked some wild strawberries.  Yummy.  We checked the weather report and it said that the weather would be rainy and windy so we decided to drive south to Corner Brook but made a lunch stop at Arches Provincial Park (pictured above).  By then the weather had improved so we thought it might be nice to stay for a day in Gros Morne after all.  We checked into the Norris Point KOA, did laundry and checked into sea kayaking options.  Alas, nothing left for that day and tomorrow looks windy and rainy again.

    There was an organic vegetable farm across the street which had 2-3 cucumbers and some wilted lettuce and two munching rabbits out front. Decided not to purchase anything.

    A couple we’d met at Battle Harbour was also at the campground.

  • Battle Harbour to Newfoundland

    Breakfast was at 8am and Pepsi made a lot of new friends with at least 5 of the children that were staying overnight simultaneously giving her belly rubs!

    The ferry left the island at 9am and we were back in Mary’s Harbour at 10am and headed off on the last 87 kms of the Trans Labrador Highway. The highway was better than we expected with only some rough spots.

    Once we reached Red Bay we stopped at the Whaler’s Inn for lunch. We decided to head to Blanc Sablon to catch the ferry to Newfoundland and stopped at Dot’s Bakery along the way for some bread, croissants and cinnamon buns.

    We took the 6pm ferry and found a nice lookout by the coast to overnight.

    The sunset was terrific.

     

  • Mary’s Harbour to Battle Harbour

    We left Pepsi and the Roadtrek at the school parking lot and started walking to the Battle Harbour ferry dock and one of the locals stopped and offered us a ride.  At the ferry dock we were told that dogs were permitted on the ferry and Battle Harbour premises and could even spend the night in two of the houses there.  I walked back to the RV and picked Pepsi up, along with some food for her and then walked back to the ferry dock.  The ferry ride was about an hour and Battle Harbour was beautiful.

       

    We ate a cod lunch and then did a tour of the site, led by a woman who had grown up there and added some personal history to the tour. At the end of the tour Ruth and I decided we would spend the night there and we stayed in the Isaac Smith house. This house has a kitchen with wood burning stove, three bedrooms and can sleep at least 6 people.

    Catherine, the general manager of the site, gave us some pointers of where exactly where the sun would set and we wandered off to take pictures.  At 6:30 we had dinner and then headed out again for some sunset pictures.

    There was a large iceberg in the bay.

    This was truly a highlight of our trip so far.

     

  • Happy Valley-Goose Bay to Mary’s Harbour

    Visited Drumdancer Arts and Crafts and bought Woman of Labrador book, the story of Elizabeth Goudie’s life as a trapper’s wife in the early 1900s. We also sampled toutons with partridgeberry jam. Next was Slippers ‘n Things where Pepsi got a Labrador dog kerchief and then Herb Brown’s Birches Galley to see native art work. Herb has a fine collection of pieces in his home/gallery including some in blue-eyed granite. There was a beautiful 400lb bear there for $35,000 that Herb said he would personally deliver if we bought it.

    We left Happy Valley-Goose Bay at around 1PM for a 480 km gravel highway trip to Mary’s Harbour. Most of the highway wasn’t all that bad although it did get progressively worse once past the Cartwright Junction. Along the way we saw two cars that must have been in accidents and had been stripped of everything of value, leaving only the bare frame.

    Besides lunch and dinner we also stopped to help a pickup truck driver who had had his second flat of the day in the same tire.

    The last 50 kms were so bad that we were only able to move at 30 km/h. We both laughed out loud when we saw the “bump in 100m ahead” sign.  As if it could really get worse.  It did.  The town of Mary’s Harbour has some pretty bad roads and we finally inched into the school parking lot for the night at 11PM.