Day 10 of our Canadian Maritime RV caravan kicked off our tour of Nova Scotia. We spent the first two days in Annapolis Royal and had lovely oceanview camping. Even in the rain, we had a fantastic tour of the Port Royal Habitation, a rebuilt French settlement built originally in 1605. It is amazing how these settlers lived and got along with the local first nations Mi'kmaq people who lived in these provinces. The bus then took us to Fort Anne which was later built by the British to protect the town of Annapolis Royal. A group lunch at the local family-owned German Bakery was delicious and we managed to escape without taking a bag of pastries "to go"!
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| Reconstructed Port Royal Habitation |
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| Jeffrey trying on his wooden shoes |
On our free day, we paired up with another RV couple and went into Digby to see the Admiral Digby Museum, stroll along the waterfront where the world's largest scallop fishing fleet calls home, and enjoy some of their catch for lunch. Most importantly, we learned how to pronounce scallop the Nova Scotia way -- sc-all-up.
Next was short RV driving day over to Lunenburg. We arrived early enough to dash over to the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic which was quite extensive. We got a nice tour guide intro and then explored it on our own. No surprise that one of the exhibits was dedicated to several huge storms that hit this area in the early 1900s and really decimated the local male population. Many of those fishermen were aboard doomed vessels with fathers, brothers, and other family members.
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| The harbor in Lunenburg with a recreation of a 100+ year old pre-steam engine fishing sloop |
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| Us having a whale of a good time |
Our next day was open and we used it to drive through quaint tourist town Mahone Bay and explore the short hike and have lunch at The Oven park. There are some interesting caves carved by the ocean into the cliffs here and resemble "ovens" (hence the name), though the surf and tide did not allow us to witness its famous blowhole and hear the 'Thunder' Cave.
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| The Ovens |
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| Us enjoying the hike on The Ovens coastal trail |
Days 15 through 18 of our trip were in the very-busy Halifax/Dartmouth area. July 1st is Canada Day so the campground and tourist spots were packed full with holiday vacationers. Two of our three days here were organized bus trips to try to get us to all of the local sights. We started with a visit to Fairview Cemetary -- famous for the many graves of Titanic victims. We continued this story by going to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic where we found extensive exhibits on the Titanic (because Halifax was the closest port to the sinking and helped recovery of bodies) as well as the 1917 Halifax harbor explosion (where a WW1 Belgian relief ship collided with a French munitions ship in the harbor and caused an explosion that killed 2000 and injured 9000). Boston sent trains of medical personnel and supplies to help the Halifax victims. To this day, Halifax sends a lovely huge Christmas tree to Boston every year as a thank you.
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| Titanic victim's graves in the Halifax Fairview cemetary |
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| Wonderful lighthouse on our harbor cruise |
We capped the afternoon with a lovely stroll along the waterfront boardwalk before all going on a scenic Halifax harbor cruise. While it was a full day, the next day was even more so. It was Canada Day so our morning visit to The Citadel National Historic Site was treated to a number of special military presentations by locals in costume -- from soldiers doing marching and gun drills to big artillery loading demonstrations. We then enjoyed a fantastic lunch at the nearby Prince George Hotel before the grand finale -- attending the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo Extravaganza. What a mouthful, but it lived up to its name! Two hours of wonderful performances by talented groups from all over the world, including our own US Marine marching band. Few of us left without shedding a tear or two as many of the musical parts were sweet dedications to military and other public-service organizations. Google it and you will find lots of Tattoo pictures online. Too hard to capture in its true live glory!
The final day in Halifax was a "free day" and, since we'd already visited Peggy's Cove from a cruise ship excurion years ago, we opted to sleep in, provision groceries, defrost the fridge and do a little laundry. No glamour, but necessary errands no matter where you live. Our final Nova Scotia stop before going to Newfoundland was to get us all positioned 250ish miles NE in North Sydney where the ferry will pick us up. This will get us up to Day 19 of the trip and that means 30 days still left ahead of us.
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| All of our RVs lined up for the ferry to Newfoundland. We are the one under the arrow. |
Regarding the "lifestyle" part of the trip, a few of us are still chasing motorhome issues. Thankfully our water pump misbehaviors have abated for now. It pumps just fine, but sometimes won't stop or, even when not in use, slowly fills our water tank (likely due to a faulty check valve). Our newest "what the heck" item occurred at the Dartmouth campground when our tire pressure monitoring system starting saying random tires on the rig and car were over 500 psi. This is clearly impossible and the readings returned to normal once we got back out on the road. After a call to the manufacturer, we learned that they had done a firmware update to new units back in 2015 and it turned out to conflict with older units (ours is 2012). Apparently we were parked near someone who had a newer system which caused ours to misbehave. They have promised to replace our system once our trip is over -- at their cost!
In a "not so great" moment, we had one of our slide topper awnings unfurl itself as we were crossing a bridge with high winds hitting us directly on the side. This happened to us years ago outside of Houston and we had a real snarl on our hands to undo. This time the awning neatly rolled itself back in without damage as soon as we got off the bridge, but we gave quite show to the RV that was traveling behind us! We have a way of pinning this awning if we expect these wind conditions (not convenient to do), but this occurance caught us by surprise.
Now on to Newfoundland!
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