Day 67, 68 and 70 - The last days in Nova Scotia

Day 67 – Drive from Digby to New Minas, Nova Scotia
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
After yesterday, and being in the wind and sun all afternoon, we had a most delightful sleep. It did not rain to wake us up and the wind did not blow overnight either.
We woke up to a dry morning so we first packed up and got ready to go to our next destination – the area around Kentville in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia. We took the major highway as when we pulled out of the campground in Digby the rain started to come down in buckets so it was no use taking any scenic routes this time as there would be nothing to see beyond the margins of the highway. For pretty well all the way it poured and poured. Leo had to put the windshield wipers on high and curtail his speed to 80 km/hr for much of the trip as the rain came down so heavily.

We arrived at our new campsite around 1 pm. It then stopped raining briefly so we quickly popped-up the tent-trailer, had some lunch and went off to do some sight-seeing to check out the area. First we went to a tourist information centre in the town of Wolfville. This is the site of Acadian University and has some fantastically large and beautiful homes belonging to the librarians at the University. (Just kidding Joanne! They likely belong to the administrators.)

From Wolfville we went to the National Historic Site of Grand Pre and the Acadian Historic Museum (http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/ns/grandpre/index_e.asp). This is a very interesting museum chronicling how the Acadians arrived here largely from France, developed very fertile agricultural lands by dyking saltwater marshes, only to be forcibly deported by the English military in the mid 18th century. However, they always maintained strong emotional ties to their homeland and many came back to this area years later from the many locations to which they were deported. Most had been sent to the American colonies, but some wound up in what would later become Louisiana, with yet others being sent back to France. More information on their history can be found here (http://www.grand-pre.com/indexportalen.html).

As I mentioned we drove through Wolfville (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfville,_Nova_Scotia or http://www.town.wolfville.ns.ca/) and if there is a house for sale here which we can afford we will buy it and move here. Wolfville is such a beautiful, pleasantly located town with those beautiful old houses and gardens. With the presence of the University lots of young people come to live in the town, something not noticeable in some of the other surrounding towns. I was told that Wolfville is also kept “non-commercial’ as much as possible in order to focus on its academic character so you will not find any of the big shopping malls or chain stores here. These malls and stores are all located at New Minas (http://www.newminas.com/Web/history.asp), just east of Wolfville, where you can find all of the big chains like Walmart, Superstore, Canadian Tire, Home Depot and more. There is quite a difference between these two towns and yet they are so close together.

We then did some driving around the area for Leo to find a spot where he could film the coming and the going of the huge tidewaters in the Bay of Fundy again. We found a good place at the small harbour known as Hall’s Harbour, so-called because it was originally the base of operations of an American pirate named Samuel Hall. Here we had some supper at a small Lobster restaurant contemplating a lobster feast at last, but we decided to just order fish and chips as we could not see ourselves picking out a live lobster and then having to eat the poor creature after it was boiled. So, sorry Joanne and Lynn but there was no lobster meal for us this holiday (although Leo did have a lobster subway sandwich in Charlottetown!). On our way back to our trailer it started to rain again and we got kind of lost as to where we had to go. Luckily Linda our GPS navigator guided us back to where our campsite was, otherwise we would still be driving around in circles trying to figure out where we were and where we had to go.

Pictures for today, not that many, can be found here.



Day 68 – New Minas, Nova Scotia
It rained during the night again and when we woke up it was still raining off and on. Today was Leo’s day to go to Halls Harbour to film the tides coming in and going out. I stayed around the campground to catch up on my wash and clean out the trailer a bit so it would last us the final 3 weeks of our holiday. The time sure has gone by fast but we have seen and experienced a lot. It has been a trip we will not forget for a long time.

The sun came out early in the morning and stayed with us for the rest of the day. It was a break from the rain which we desperately needed. There has simply been too much rain these last few weeks. But with tropical storm Hanna reportedly on her way to Nova Scotia I don’t know if we will keep having this wonderful sunshine for long. But we will take what we can get.

Leo had a successful day photographing and filming the tide change. He began filming at low tide, carried on to high tide, and then completed the cycle by filming until low tide again. After he set up his cameras a German film crew working on a travel film about Nova Scotia walked over and asked if he was indeed going to be making a time lapse movie of the tide change. When he replied that he was, they said they thought that was a great idea and decided they would do the same for the TV production on which they were working. But they could not get their camera to take a new picture every few seconds as they wanted to so they gave up the idea. However, Leo offered to send them a copy of his time lapse video and they indicated they would be very interested in seeing this and might well want to include it in their TV show. He will work on this as soon as he is home and then arrange for them to see a copy of it . We will see if it amounts to anything before I let Leo have his wish of selling the house and starting a new career making time lapse movies for German VOX television in all kinds of exotic locations around the world.

Tomorrow we move on again to Amherst, our last stop in Nova Scotia, and then on to New Brunswick.

Some of the picture’s Leo took as he was filming the tides can be found here. There are some general shots of Hall’s Harbour to begin. Then a series of images are presented which show the progression of the flood and ebb of the Fundy tide in this harbour. They show the same scene at half hour intervals with the image title indicating the hour of the day on which each was taken. The water level changes most rapidly at the midpoint between high and low tide. At this time it will change by 2.5 cm each minute along the coast here. You will notice this in the more dramatic changes which occur in the half hour images taken around this midpoint of the tidal cycle. It is to be noted as well that the most dramatic tides, known as spring tides, occur when the moon is full or new, with the least dramatic tides, known as neep tides, occurring when the moon is in the first or last quarter. These images were taken midway between a spring and neep tide. Had they been taken with a spring tide the contrast between high and low tides, already many meters on this day, would have been even more dramatic.



Day 69 – Drive from New Minas to Amherst, Nova Scotia

September 5, 2008

It was a night with no rain and sunshine awaiting us when we woke up. Something we have not had for a while.

Today we are moving on again closer to home and closer to leaving Nova Scotia behind us. We took a secondary highway today now that the weather was cooperating with us and we could finally see something of our surroundings again instead of rain and mist.
Our route took us along the Bay of Fundy on the Nova Scotia side, around the southern and northern shores of Cobequid Bay and on to almost the New Brunswick border. And our surroundings were just fabulous again: the beautiful old big houses, the gardens the people keep around these houses, the lay of the land, the rolling hills with trees and farm fields intermingled. The winding roads are such a pleasure to drive, they give you a new view around each corner to enjoy. All in all it is a most pleasurable drive to Amherst.

In Amherst we found ourselves a very nice camping just outside the city proper. We set up our trailer, had supper and decided to go to bed early to catch up on some of our lost sleep of the last few days.
The roads today were narrow and allowed little chance to pull off with our trailer in order to take a photograph, but Leo did take a few which can be found here.