Canada & Maine, part 2

We had to leave our Charlottetown AirBnB by 10am so we left right about then and headed to the ferry that would take us back to Nova Scotia.  It turned out we had 4 hours to kill because we were still in the non-peak season and the ferries were somewhat irregular.  While we waited we visited the beach, a very beautiful beach with a lighthouse.  Then we went to the nearby visitor’s center with a convenience store, a sweet shop, and a food truck that served some very interesting food!  We first visited the convenience store.  I bought some turkish beach towels and a bag for them because I thought we would need them at our next stop since the picture of our next AirBnB showed a nearby beach (turned out it was cool, foggy, and breezy the whole two days we were there so the beach was not tempting.)  Then Zina and I visited the sweet shop.  Zina found some candy corn.  She thinks candy corn is her special candy since her birthday is the week before Halloween.  We got just a bit of candy for each of the kids and I bought some of the homemade fudge.  Outside the candy shop an older lady was selling homemade sea glass jewelry.  Since we thought Myra had lost her little bag of earring (which we thankfully found later) we bought her some earrings and a ring for Zina, which we have already lost.  But, I felt like I should support the lady who was trying so hard to make a living!  We got lunch at the food truck. David and I had excellent Navajo Tacos, Will had some wings, and Myra had a fish taco.  As usual, there was nothing that Zina would eat.  Our ferry ride was short and pleasant.  We had another 2 hours of driving to get to our destination.  All of the scenery we have passed in our time in the maritime provinces has been spectacular.  Our AirBnB was certainly adequate but a tough place for David.  Their description had said it wouldn’t be good for th 6’5” person but I gave them the private message afterward that it was tough for a 6’2” person also!  We arrived a little after 6 and ran to the nearest grocery to get food for dinner.  The grocery store closed at 6 BUT there was a convenience store just a little further along that unbelievably had everything I needed to make the beef stroganoff!

We were now on Cape Breton Island.  Much to the delight of Zina our Airbnb had chickens who came to visit every morning! It was a little hard to decide what to do while we were there. The Fortress at Louisbourg was highly recommended by my friend, Tammy Wallen, who went there last year.  It turned out to be two hours from our AirBnB but I figured we would likely never have the opportunity to visit it again so I made everyone pile in the car and we drove to the Fortress.  It was a French Fortress and it only had it’s heyday for about 30 years from like 1717-1745.  It was entirely recreated based on like 750,000 documents that had been preserved from that period. The reason that it was rebuilt is that the coal mining industry on Cape Breton Island began struggling in the 1970s and the government thought a great way to employ the miners would be to rebuild the Fortress.  I think it was a great success.  They were able to rebuild on the original foundations.  We were hungry when we got there and they did have places to eat but they were not completely open yet.  We FINALLY found the bakery (they wanted the place to look completely historic so there were no signs), bought a loaf of bread, some cinnamon butter, and some cookies.  We ripped off bread chunks, spread them with butter and had some lunch.  It didn’t satisfy Will and David took him to the sit down restaurant while the girls and I looked at the exhibits.  At 3:30 we had a golf cart tour of the fortress.  Like Tammy, I wish we had had more time to explore and learn about the fort.  It was well fortified from the front but the British came around the back and took it over a couple of times.  We grabbed some egg noodles on our way back to the AirBnB and ate the stroganoff leftovers for dinner.  As I was climbing out of the car, I gouged the back of my calf on a piece of chrome that had peeled off the running board.  David had to bandage me up.  Then Zina insisted that I was not in any shape to get dinner on (I think it would have been fine!) so David had to get it ready.

We wanted to get on the road early on Thursday because we wanted to meet Ray when we passed back through Truro AND make it to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax.  We were able to meet Ray at a market for lunch.  He and David had a good talk.  I am glad he had that opportunity. 

Then we hurried to Halifax.  We ran into a brief rain squall that made driving difficult but we made it in time to have an hour in the museum.  The exhibits in the museum featured Titanic artifacts–Halifax was the nearest port–and a big exhibit about the Halifax explosion.  On December 6th, 1917 a ship carrying benzene to make explosives for WWI and a ship carrying relief supplies crashed into each other.  The crash caused a fire on the munitions ship and 20 minutes later the benzene caused a massive explosion that flattened the city near the harbor and killed 2000 people.  Some who survived were blinded because they had been watching the fire.  Our AirBnB was a fabulous, spacious city apartment above a cafe.  We were so comfortable for our one night there.  Emily Robison, who had lived in Dartmouth right next to Halifax, had told me I must try a donair.  We ordered from a pizza shop across the street and they had donairs.  It is like a gyro only with different sauce.  It was SO yummy.  No one but me would try it.  

When I knew that we would only have one day to experience Halifax I arranged to have a “Tour by Locals”.  We met our guide, Jay, at 9am on Friday morning.  We told him about our visit to the museum and he changed up the tour a bit to show sites related to the explosion and the Titanic.  We visited Fair Lawn Cemetery which has 121 victims of the Titanic disaster buried there.  He showed us the housing that replaced the destruction of the explosion.  Then we headed out to see some fishing villages and the famous Peggy’s Cove.  He told us a lot about the shipwreck of the Atlantic.  It was very similar to the Titanic, a passenger ship carrying 1000 passengers,many of them immigrants to New York.  It was also owned by the White Star line and departed from Southampton and Queenland, Ireland.  It was a very early steam ship though it had rigging because passengers were not very familiar with steam and the rigging was supposed to give them confidence. There was a coal strike and they had received lower quality coal plus the burned more battling storms.  By the time they were nearing Halifax, they were running out of coal so the captain decided that they had to make a stop in Halifax.  They were approaching at night and so were watching for the lighthouse at the entrance to the Halifax harbor.  The captain had instructed the officer on the bridge to awaken him if they had not seen the light by 3am.  The officer in charge of the bridge didn’t wake the captain AND didn’t take any depth soundings.  Both huge errors and the ship went aground near the fishing village of Lower Prospect.  A fisherman heard a hissing sound and discovered the wreck.  The fishing village rallied and did everything they could to rescue the passengers.  A hero from the ship had swum to the shore in freezing water with a rope that allowed passengers to use the rope to make it to shore.  Others were stranded on a rock about 25 meters from shore and were rescued by local fisherman. No women survived and only one child survived.  This was both a factor of where they were housed in the ship and their lack of physical strength.  Jay had told us that the little museum that had all this information was closed on Friday BUT, there were people in the museum when we got there and they were very happy to tell us the story and show us the artifacts.  The village was hugely heroic.  They didn’t have much but they took in all the survivors and cared for them with their meager resources, saving some 400 souls.  As I was getting ready to insert pictures, I remembered that a little dog adopted Zina in the museum and started giving her lots of kisses!  

We continued on to Peggy’s Cove, which is a picturesque place made for tourists.  Apparently it is not that great of a place to live because it is so rocky!  There are only 40 year round residents but all the cruise ships that stop in Halifax bring buses full of people to see the beauty.  Because of the unscheduled visit to the museum we were behind on our schedule but Jay was very relaxed about that and our tour just lasted an hour longer.  We grabbed a lobster roll in Peggy’s Cove and then headed back toward Halifax.  On the way, Jay decided we should meet some lobsters!  He stopped at a lobster dealer who was obviously a friend!  Dave and his wife introduced us to several lobsters of varying sizes.  Dave was a funny guy and we really enjoyed our visit.  He had regular lobsters ranging from 1.5 lbs to 3 lbs, he could tell how big they were just by looking at them.  I had no idea that lobsters have two different claws, one for crushing and the other for cutting.  And, they can be right or left handed!  He showed us how he put all the lobsters to sleep at night!  He said it takes him two hours.  Finally at the end of the visit he showed a 9 lb lobster, enormous!  He had kept him as a pet for about 6 months and was getting ready to return the 60 year old lobster to the sea.  It was such a great tour.  

We had a three hour drive to Yarmouth, another town where David served.  By the time we got there we were very hungry so went to The Dinner Plate, a recommended local restaurant.  Myra and I had scallops.  They were fried though Myra and I would have preferred them plain.  David had ribs, Will had fish and chips, and Zina had root beer.  Then we drove by the small church building (which was not there when David was there) and by the apartment where he lived.  David feels funny about not feeling places are familiar but he was last there over 40 years ago!  Our Airbnb was very functional for our one night but I would have been sad if we had had to stay there for longer.

Saturday morning we had to check into the ferry by 8am which was very tough for my late sleepers.  We made it and the ferry departed at 9:00.  The scheduled time was 9:30 but I guess all the people who were expected were on board and we left.  It did mess with our Dramamine schedule and Will suffered from the motion sickness of the trip.  The ferry was a very large catamaran so even though the sea was calm, the vessel rocked.  It was a 3.5 hour ride and suddenly we were back to our trailer by noon (with the hour time difference.)  We took it easy, did laundry and grocery shopping, and had waffles for dinner.  Zina made some friends and they made a club.  They rescued a dog which made Zina very happy.

Sunday we went to church at the Ellsworth, ME ward.  The ward was very welcoming, including sharing their Father’s Day pie celebration.  In the afternoon we had a reservation to drive the Cadillac Mountain road in Acadia National Park.  The views were truly spectacular.  Zina wanted to invite her “club” to have S’mores.  She had Myra make her an invitation and then the “club” wanted art lessons.  The only problem was that the girls already had plans and a ring leader so Zina’s participation in the club ended sadly.

On Monday we needed the oil changed in the truck.  We were late in getting an appointment but the local company said that if we dropped it off first thing in the morning and left it all day.  I had considered renting a car but in the end we decided to wash sheets and do other maintenance tasks.  We got the truck back in the mid afternoon so Myra and I headed out to get a pedicure.  Tuesday morning we got everything ready to go.  Then David and I went and got our 2nd dose of the shingles vaccine.  This was part of the plan because the only thing at our next stop was a visit to Joseph Smith’s birthplace.  We figured we could just take it easy for a couple of days.  You will have to wait a few days to hear how that turned out!