Lindy, in her week or so of Canada research, had stumbled across the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax. Since it boasted a healthy exhibit on the Titanic, she knew I'd be game. We were pleasantly surprised too, in that it also had other well thought out exhibits on topics such as Nova Scotia shipwrecks, sailboats, goose boats, a viewable archive, and an awesome assortment of models, both contemporary and antique, of local vessels. It quickly proved itself to be one of the best museums I've ever visited outside of some of the "National" museums of Washington. If you're ever in Halifax, it's worth a couple hours of your time, especially if you're a transportation geek like me.
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| Carl in a reconstruction of a Titanic deck chair |
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| Displays of model ships in the museum |
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| Open/visible storage |
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| Goose blind boat for hunting in icebergs |
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| Tracking Atlantic hurricanes.... Irene is on the way! |
Upon returning to the public parking lot where we'd left our rig, we were greeted by another winged creature. This one, some form of local bird, took a special liking to the Skamper-ized Tacoma. We laughed about it's presence and were about to shoo it off when it hopped on the roof. As we tried to dig out the camera, it began to dine on the buffet of insects that had met their fate on the front of the camper, and by the time I was able to snap a shot, it expressed it's love for the Skamper by spreading its wings and hugging our truck, seriously, birds love us....
Lindy had identified the public gardens as a place she wanted to explore in the city so we hopped in the truck and wound our way up from the shore. As we hopped out and slid across the street we were greeted by a sign declaring pets to be prohibited. No worries, as this gave me an excuse not to have to stare at flowers for an hour, so I volunteered to be on dog-sitting detail and walk the dog around the outskirts of the park while she explored the gardens for a bit. We did run across each other once at the fence, we call this "Dog : Excluded".
Here are some other shots of the scenery that she managed to collect while in the gardens:
All in all, we really enjoyed our time in Halifax. It's a nice city and I can see why people would be proud to call it home, I would welcome the opportunity to return sometime in the not too distant future and spend more time exploring around.
As we departed Halifax we paused to plot our route. We knew we would eventually be making our way towards North Sydney, where the ferry departs to New Foundland, and Lindy had picked out some potential campsites on the eastern side of the mainland. We had already spent a lot of time following coastal routes, and the highway route would have taken us all the way back up to Truro, but there was a network of linking secondary roads right through the heart of the province, so we thought we'd give it a shot. As we departed the highway onto the first road, things were going pretty well. The road was nice and the views were good. A couple roads later after passing through the town of Dean, we found ourselves on a well-graded gravel road to Trafalgar. No, I'm not talking about some villain from the latest Harry Potter movie, it's a real "town". After miles of gravel roads through counties and game preserves, we'd decided we'd had enough of what I've declared the "Trans-Nova Scotia Overland Route" and headed south to rejoin the coastal roads. Much to our dismay, the paved roads paled in comparison to the smoothness of the gravel roads, and for the most part, had dis-jointed bits of pavement interrupted by an abundance of tall grass. These roads seemed to link what must have been logging communities of years gone by, but the inhabitants are all gone and hardly any cars now pass by them. Below is an assortment of what we saw for the entire trip.
Back on the coastal roads, things were mildly better. Every once and a while we did hit a fresh strip of pavement, and since the pup had been riding in the backseat for most of the day, it was nice to have opportunities to get him out. Point Bickerton gave us the opportunity to view yet another northern Atlantic light house, and the dog as always loved the green grass. This was turning into one of our longer driving days so we hit the road once more and tore through fishing village after fishing village, and just when things were rolling good, we see signs. "Road ends 500m? What do you mean the road ends?!??!!?" We had been seeing signs for "Country Harbour Ferry" for quite some time, and wondering: "Where does that go???". It turns out, it's just a ferry across the harbor so we could continue on the same route we'd been traveling. Luckily we had timed it pretty well by shear dumb luck, and had virtually no wait for the once an hour ferry. Things like this are still commonplace in these parts, even though in our region they've long since disappeared and been replaced by bridges.
Lindy had done a good job researching campsites, but at the last minute we switched up our plans to instead go to a town that had been mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide, Canso. It was described as a fishing village and the sight of a National Park and trail system. What she hadn't read were the two sentences describing the town's demise since the great northern cod stocks dried up in the early 90's and subsequent unemployment. We still found there to be a couple of campgrounds and eventually settled on the former Casno marina now known as Casno RV Park. These are the kind of days on the road we live for.
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