Day 64 – Drive to Digby.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

After a night of rain we were lucky to get to pack up the trailer when it stopped for a while. Our next stop was the town of Digby. This is a town with a large fishing harbour, reputed locally to be the largest working harbour in Atlantic Canada. It supports the region`s largest scallop fishing fleet. The harbour lies on the Digby inlet, to the northeast of which the famous fruit-growing region of the Annapolis Valley begins. To the southwest there is a long and narrow peninsula known as the Digby Neck, which culminates in two islands in a chain, both of which can be reached by ferries. The last of the two is known as Brier Island and is famous for its whale tours because of the rich feeding ground the Bay of Fundy offers to the whales here. The tides produce a lot of upwelling over the stairstep bay bottom and this brings up great quantities of plankton which supports a food chain at the top of which feed the whales. It is here we plan to finally take our whale sight-seeing boat tour, if Leo does not chicken out again because “the winds are too strong”.

We had heard from other people a few days ago that the Digby Wharf Rat Rally for motorcycles was happening this weekend and that the town would be overflowing with bikers so we did not know how lucky we would be to find a camp spot, but there was room for us in the town campsite.

The drive from Yarmouth to Digby, part of the Evangeline Trail, is a very nice scenic tour and highly recommended. The area is Acadian with lots of nice scenery and small villages. One such village, known as Churchpoint in English and Pointe de L’Eglise in French, housed another beautiful church of which Leo took some pictures. It has a fantastic steeple which could have been the design for a Walt Disney church. The building is the largest and tallest wooden church in all the Americas apparently. We also took some other pictures along this route.

Once we had set up our trailer we walked downtown to experience the Wharf Rat Rally. And experience it we did. This was the 4th Annual Rally and is the largest gathering of bikers in Atlantic Canada. There were at least 1400 officially registered bikers and they estimated that about 2300 bikers in total had actually come to the town of Digby. It was quite an event with all these motorbikes everywhere and with the excessive noise they made!!! Our campground as well had many bikers staying in it and we were treated on several occasions with bikers showing off to their buddies how noisy their bikes could be. My sometimes friend Leo just can not understand why these bikers have to make so much noise, but fortunately he kept his mouth shut when he was around them. Perhaps that duct tape I used on his mouth made a difference.

In the evening we went to see the fireworks which closed off this event. I had a feeling that every one from Digby and surrounding area came to watch these as well. It was a very nice display but did not last very long (Leo would say this is because bikers have a short attention span). During the whole weekend all of the main street downtown was blocked for normal traffic and only motorbikes and pedestrians were allowed. (This street is called Water Street: in every Nova Scotia town the main street is called Water Street as this is a legal requirement as strongly enforced as hanging moose antlers on Newfoundland sheds.) I am sure there were at least 1500 bikes parked on this street when we first walked downtown. So you can imagine our surprise at this. Naturally there were lots of vendor stands with all kind of motorbike accessories for people to buy and with the latest in customized motorbikes to be seen as well.

Leo has tried to capture the Wharf Rat Rally and the fireworks for you which was quite a different experience for us. Pictures of these can be found here.