Thursday, August 28, 2008

Day 58 - Sherbrooke Historic Village, Nova Scotia

The chickens and rooster get penned up at night and the door to their pen is not opened until about 7 in the morning. But as soon as the rooster is out he starts to crow, and the first time we heard him we had a laugh again as he was quite a bit hoarse and sounded like he needed some oiling or something. But it was most enjoyable to hear him and see all the chickens just walking around our campsite.

Unfortunately we again woke up to rain and fog this morning and during the night it had rained quite a bit as well. We had decided yesterday that we would stay another night here and take our time visiting the restored Historic Village of Sherbrooke (http://museum.gov.ns.ca/sv/tour.php), located on the St. Mary’s river. We waited till the afternoon as the weather was supposed to clear up and so it did: the rain stopped, although the sun never really came out.

We took our time walking through the village and visiting the various houses and shops. We got live demonstrations at the blacksmith, and the pottery and woodworking shops. I even got to try some of the tools from way back when. Also there were demonstrations in spinning, weaving, rug-hooking and knitting.

This village was established as early as 1655 and was first known as Fort Saint Marie. By 1815 the settlement became known as Sherbrooke in honour of Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, a former Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia. Initially it was a lumbering community, then prospered for 20 years in the late 1800’s with a gold strike nearby, and finally did well as a ship-building community. However, the wooden ships it produced were no longer in demand in the early 20th century as steel ships became the norm and the town’s economy slipped into decline. As citizens moved to other centres, a number of the buildings were abandoned with their contents left largely intact.

A visitor from Halifax in 1969 saw all this and recognized its potential as a restored heritage village. He stimulated local interest in commencing the restoration shortly afterwards to a typical Nova Scotian village from the 19th century. They now have 36 exhibit buildings and all but 2 are on the original foundations on which they were built. A few houses are still privately occupied by original residents but as these people either leave or die their buildings will become part of the museum as well. The overall effect of the village is like that of Heritage Park in Calgary, but it is more authentic and less commercial than that park, and more interesting to visit due to the live skill demonstrations here.

It was a most enjoyable afternoon for us and we would highly recommend this spot as a tourist destination for anyone visiting Nova Scotia. We hope you enjoy the pictures Leo took, which can be found here.

Day 57 - Travel to Sherbrooke, Nova Scotia

It was another beautiful day with the sun saying hello to us as we woke up on Cape Breton Island. We packed up the trailer and started on our first leg to Halifax. Normally it does not take that long to get to Halifax when you take the main highway but of course that would be boring and not take us along the southeast coastline of the province, so we took the slower and more scenic route. Our first stop was St. Peter’s Canal (http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/ns/stpeters/index_E.asp) where boats come through the locks from the ocean to the Bras d’Or Lakes and vice versa. There is not a lot of commercial traffic at these locks any longer, with it mainly being pleasure boats now, but we were lucky enough to see a couple of boats go through just as we were about to leave.

The locks here are bi-directional. There are double sets of gates at each end of the lock. Most locks only have doors that face in a single direction because the flow of water is always in the same direction. However, the Bras d’Or Lakes stay at approximately the same level. They are huge salt lakes, but their two very narrow connections with the ocean means that the tides can only minorly affect their water level. Consequently, the ocean side of the locks at one extreme has water 4 feet lower than the lakes and at the other extreme has water 4 feet higher. Thus the doors in the locks must have two sets on each end, one set each to withstand the water level difference in each direction.

On we then went to our planned next stop – Isle Madame – but when we started to look at the map for campsites we decided to skip the Isle Madame stop and went directly on our way to Sherbrooke. The scenic Marine route, along the southeast coastline, was very slow to drive, mainly because of its very rough condition but also because it was a very winding road. It was initially not a well-travelled road either so we did not meet a lot of traffic. When we got to a place called Isaacs Harbour we had a surprise as the road ended and we had to take a ferry to get to the other side of the inlet. Our GPS navigator had not told us about that until the last second. We were in luck, however, as the ferry was waiting at our side of the inlet and we were able to drive right on. It only took us 5 minutes to get across and on we went again until we got to the town of Sherbrooke.

We had some difficulty finding our campsite but once we did we had a good laugh as we got to set up our trailer amongst a flock of chickens who cluckingly roamed around free here. This was a first for us. We were a little worried as to what time the rooster would wake us up, but that we would not find out until the next morning. It was time to set up our trailer again and get a good night’s rest.

Pictures of today’s trip can be found here.

Day 56 - Saturday August 23, 2008 – Cabot Trail, Nova Scotia

Again we woke up to sunshine today just a beautiful day to do this most talked about Cabot Trail (http://www.cabottrail.com/history/).

Leo wanted to videotape the trip over the Cabot trail using his camera mounted to the van roof so he chose to drive it going from east to west and we therefore started off to the northeast in St. Anns. The beginning of the trail did not excite us very much but once we travelled to the northern tip and then cruised back down the Western part of the trail we became most impressed again. We got to see lots of nice scenery, and had a bacon and egg all-day breakfast for lunch on a patio in the shade at a very nice restaurant located in Meat Cove along a creek where the water gave us nice background music. Meat Cove is on a side trip and is the most northern community in Nova Scotia.

From here we had to go back south and take the western part of the trail. We decided not to take the boat tour to see whales as Leo again found the water too choppy to go out in a small boat (do you know what the word “chicken” means?), but we were lucky enough to see a pod of perhaps a dozen humpback whales spouting just offshore at Meat Cove. We were also able to see our favourite province Newfoundland in the distance from this point with the Long Mountains clearly discernable on this sunny day.

For me the best part of the trip occurred when a black bear decided to walk across the road just in front of our car. Unfortunately Leo could not stop quickly enough to take a picture of him before he disappeared in the woods again but we do hopefully have the road crossing on Leo’s video camera.

Pictures of the Cabot Trail can be found here.