In case you might have been worried about us falling (or driving) off the face of the earth, rest assured that we’re alive and well and presently in the city of Moncton in New Brunswick.

We left Louisbourg on Cape Breton on Wednesday morning for Pictou in mid-Nova Scotia, intent on timing things well for the 4pm ferry to Prince Edward Island. We stopped off at Harbor Quilt Company, a quilting store and gallery outside of Antigonish, and then had lunch at Gabrieau’s Bistro in downtown Antigonish.

Gabrieau’s had an interesting looking menu, but the we found the service to be pretty terrible. Our waitress mis-heard a couple of our orders, and when asked about it, explained what she thought she heard and then left without offering to correct things. She was also quite slow and difficult to flag down. The food that we ended up with was also underwhelming. The spicy Thai beef salad used deli-style roast beef, which gave it an odd flavor. The Caesar dressing lacked any real flavor. The Asian baby back ribs and vegetable and chicken stifado were better though. And the two different cheesecakes we had were a disappointment too. We did note that a table with a different waitress appeared to have had a much better experience, but that was little comfort to us, and a different waitress would not have improved the food at all anyhow. So, if you’re tempted by Gabrieau’s when in Antigonish, contemplate your alternatives first.

One of the issues with the service at the restaurant was that we were now getting concerned about making the ferry, as time was starting to get a bit tight. Turns out to have not been an issue at all because I misread the ferry schedule, and the ferry left at 2:45pm (which we had, by then, missed), with the next one at 6pm.

To burn time, we ended up taking a leisurely stroll through picturesque Pictou (with the only thing marring the pretty harborside being a factory of some sort across the bay) and then had some tea before heading to the ferry terminal.

At the ferry terminal, while waiting for the ferry to arrive, we came across another rather distinct wild creature - a real, live fox. Turns out this fox has become an opportunistic feeder and waits for ferry travelers to toss it food scraps. The fox provided us with about 20 minutes of entertainment before it scooted away with the arrival of the ferry.

An hour and a half later we were driving off the ferry in Wood’s Island, on Prince Edward Island on our way to the island’s largest city, Charlottetown, and also the most unique and attractive of all the various accommodations we have had so far on this trip.

We had booked two nights at The Great George, which is a collection of suites and buildings spread out over a block or two. The main reception area looks and feels just like one might picture a club room at a posh British gentleman’s club. The staff at the hotel was excellent and efficient, and within a short time had directed us to our lodging - a standalone house called The Dorchester.

The Dorchester was a two story house with two large bedrooms and excellently appointed bathrooms upstairs, along with a den, a living room (with fold out sofa), a kitchen, and another bathroom (this one with a washer and dryer) on the main floor. And all at a price cheaper than some single rooms we had stayed in so far. And the king size bed (one of the few we have encountered in the Canadian Maritimes) was perfect in terms of comfort - nice and firm without being hard.

Should you ever visit Charlottetown, The Great George is where you have to stay.

We arrived pretty late - around 8pm - but the front desk staff was able to suggest a couple of restaurants for dinner, and we settled on Sims Corner Steakhouse and Oyster House. Nice ambiance, but very spotty service. The food itself was quite good, with excellent appetizers and decent main courses. A particular favorite were the extremely fresh and plump PEI mussels. I also had some local oysters, and Canadian rib eye. Linda and I also enjoyed a very good Margaux with our meal. The food is definitely worth a trip to Sims, but be aware the service may be lacking a bit in terms of efficiency (and we’re used to island-time service back on Bonaire, and this was worse).

Our next day was spent driving around the center of Prince Edward Island in search of Anne of Green Gables and other diversions.

First, let me say that PEI (as Prince Edward Island is known) is beautiful and pastoral - outside the city the buildings are far apart with large fields separating them, lots of the fields used as farm land, with sprinkles of cows and horses here and there.

However, being the middle of October, we found just about every retail store and accommodation we drove by closed until next May or so. It appears that the main season for any sort of activity runs May through September - five months. The rest of the year things just close down and hibernate. The same applies to places like Cape Breton, as we noticed this past week.

We did find one shop open - Rustico Bay Wool Sweater Company, where the owner, the aptly named Kathy Winter, was also getting ready to close down for the season. Kathy was among the few people we had encountered on our trip who had heard of our home island of Bonaire. We ended up getting Bas a set of very soft and warm Alpaca wool gloves and being offered a couple of nice PEI apples (which tasted like Cortlands) on our way out.

We managed to find the PEI Information Center in Cavendish barely open - brochures were being boxed up in anticipation of closing down the center for the season this weekend. We did get some good advice on things still left to see, and then headed to the nearby park to explore some fabulous sand dunes.

Cavendish is one of the places where Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of the Anne of Green Gables (and numerous other books featuring strong female heroines), lived for a good bit of her early life, and many of the settings in her books, as well as the characters, were drawn from her own experiences and observations on PEI in the Cavendish area.

What we found fascinating was how much of the local tourism industry had evolved around a fictional teenage girl from a book published in 1908. In addition to the house used as the model for Green Gables, the birthplace of Lucy Maud Montgomery, and a couple of museums, a vast number of commercial enterprises had all hopped on the Anne bandwagon. We saw Anne of Green Gables chocolates being promoted, the Kindred Spirits Inn (using an oft repeated phrase from the Anne books), and several amusement and theme parks all based on the characters and stories of the various Anne of Green Gables books.

Anyhow, after the dunes we visited the Anne of Green Gables Museum near Shining Water. The museum was actually a museum about Lucy Maud Montgomery, and situated in a house owned by relatives of hers where she had spent a fair bit of time during her younger years. In addition to furnishings and memorabilia actually mentioned in some of her books, we saw excerpts from her journals, signed first editions of her books, and photos and stories documenting Lucy Maud Montgomery’s life. Pretty interesting. We also learned that the book Anne of Green Gables at one point was required reading in Japanese schools, and thus the whole area, and the museum in particular, was a major Japanese tourist attraction.

Amusingly, we found that a not insignificant number of the tourists to the area believed Anne was a real person instead of the fictional character that she actually is. That said, Anne certainly seems to have a life, and following, of her own.

After the museum we continued our scenic drive, ultimately ending up in Summerside, another city, about an hour from Charlottetown. We were starving by the time we got there, but sadly had no idea where to look for a good restaurant (not having brought our Fodor’s or AAA guides with us, foolishly), and ended with experimenting with “Chinese and Canadian Cuisine” (the subtitle for every Chinese restaurant we had so far seen in Nova Scotia and PEI) at China Star Restaurant in the heart of a rather desolate Summerside. The food was not bad, but as we had ordered a couple of Szechuan dishes, we had hoped for more spice and flavor. A fine place to go if you’re hungry. By the way, the “Canadian Cuisine” thing is apparently something that is almost required if you’re serving foreign foods in this area, as we’ve learned, as it tells less adventurous diners that it’s “safe” to eat there - they can get their sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, fried fish and scallops, and french fries in addition to whatever else might be on the menu.

We continued our scenic route back to Charlottetown, with the sole highlight being a farm for miniature horses, several of which were out in the yard by the road. They were absolutely adorable, and quite friendly. Bas was convinced we should go buy one right then and there, but we explained that we only had four seats home, so if we got the small horse, he’d have to stay behind. He wisely decided this might not be the right time for a miniature horse after all.

I had a conference call to attend to when we returned, and we then attempted to do a little bit of shopping in the pretty historic part of Charlottetown, but our efforts were brought up short when it turned out that all the shops, with one exception, closed at 5pm, which is what time we had gone out. We did find one shop, Firehouse Studios, which was open a bit later though. Firehorse is a shop specializing in artistic glass - including fused glass, stained glass, and the like. Some beautiful work there. Plus they also have classes and supplies for making your own glass art. The person working the shop was kind enough to provide us some tips on how to fuse glass and we hope to be able to give it a try ourselves once we get the necessary materials and dust off our kiln.

For dinner we chose Lot 30, which we had been told was the best restaurant in Charlottetown. We left Bas behind at The Dorchester, well fed from leftovers from lunch, and Krystyana, Linda, and I headed for Lot 30. We found the menu interesting and tried to make sure to each order something different so we could do our own tasting. Our waiter was a bit slow and hesitant in responding to our questions, but much better than the one from the previous night at Sims. We enjoyed our appetizers immensely - I had foie gras with scallop and shredded beef, Krystyana had a turnip and apple soup, and Linda had fried local oysters (which were the best appetizer of the three).

But the main courses were a bit disappointing, perhaps in that each of our plates shared key accompaniments with one of the other main courses on the table. For example, my scallops had a vegetable medley which was identical to that for Linda’s duck, and mashed potatoes just like those with Krystyana’s pork belly. And the girls both had another type of vegetable in common as well. First, the flavors of the accompanying items, while possibly better suited to one of the dishes did not translate well to the other in terms of a flavor combined, and second, it seemed to be a bit, well, lazy, at least in terms of creativity. And it also didn’t quite mesh with the descriptions of the dishes on the menu. One area where service was excellent though was in food delivery, in that they always made sure that each person at a table got their course at exactly the same time. However, on the flip side, the food was delivered without explanation, which considering how the food was not as described in the menu, was a bit off-putting.

If Lot 30 was supposedly the best fine dining restaurant in Charlottetown then Charlottetown has a ways to go in terms of fine dining.

Our final day of our three day, three province experience, namely today, started very early, as we needed to drive for about two and a half hours to make it to the Joggins Fossil Institute in Joggins, Nova Scotia for a 10am walking tour. This involved, other than an early departure, driving a number of kilometers over the Confederation Bridge (which also charges a hefty toll of CA$41.50) into New Brunswick, and then back into Nova Scotia. So, in fact, we hit three provinces in about two hours.

The Joggins Fossil Institute consists of a newly built (opened April 2008) museum and research complex atop the cliffs in the village of Joggins. Joggins is a recently certified UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the location of the discovery of the world’s oldest reptile fossil, all the back from the Carboniferous Era around 350 million years ago.

Our tour turned out to be a private one simply because no one else showed up, so we had Brian Hebert, the Chief Interpreter of the Joggins Fossil Institute, all to ourselves for two whole hours. Brian walked up up and down about one kilometer of shoreline (it was low tide in the Bay of Fundy, which Joggins abuts), showing us examples of fossil trees, veins of coal, rock stratification and collapse, details about tidal erosion, and all sorts of other good things.

While it was freezing out (at least for us thin blooded types), with high winds causing a biting chill factor, we braved it out and by the end of our tour were able to find all sorts of interesting fossils of our own in the limestone debris littering the beach below the museum. Unfortunately we didn’t find anything unique enough for the museum to want to put in its depository of fossils. Brian was an excellent and enthusiastic guide, and, as it turns out, one of the most prolific discovers of new and unique fossils in the area. He had recently found the only fossil of a scorpion ever seen in the Joggins area, for example.

After warming up a bit with hot Chai and coffee after the tour, we finished exploring the museum, “donated” to the gift shop for a number of new books, and then made our way back into New Brunswick and the Schnitzel Haus in Aulac, right across the border from Nova Scotia. We had a good hearty German lunch (with pretty reasonable service, for a change), and then made our way to the city of Moncton and the Crowne Plaza hotel here.

There was no clearly marked entrance to the hotel, at least not for bringing in luggage, so we ended having to call the hotel from a nearby parking lot for assistance with our growing pile of luggage. Our room was nice and big enough for all of us to sleep in, but we’re not impressed with the rest of the hotel. The corridors outside our room reek of cigarette smoke (apparently because the rooms themselves are supposed to be smoke free with fines for those who light up in them), and the hotel is located in a kind of grungy part of town, just a block away from a nicer section with lots of restaurants.

As Krystyana is still tired of seafood, we opted for a Thai-Vietnamese restaurant, Vien Dong, on Main Street. I found the food pretty good, but Linda wasn’t thrilled with her soup or any of the rest of the dishes we ordered, commenting that this was basically repackaged Chinese food - she may have been right to an extent.

Service again was quite slow though, but this time possibly because the restaurant was quite busy and there was only one waiter. We also found the beverage options (at least the ones on our menus) rather limited. The portions were huge compared to what we had experienced so far in the Canadian Maritimes. If you’re desperate for Thai food in Moncton, Vien Dong would not be a bad choice in any event.

We got back to our room and started planning our next day, which involves trying to go experience the Magnetic Hill, see the Hopewell Rocks, and then make our way to St. Andrews, near the Maine border.

Today was a bit less eventful for us than yesterday. No moose or whale sightings, although we did see an old fashioned musket fired.

We departed mid-morning from Baddeck for the village of Louisbourg, on the east coast of Cape Breton. We tried to stop at a fossil museum in Sydney Mines (a small town in Cape Breton), but as with a growing number of attractions on Cape Breton, it had closed recently for the winter.

We arrived at the Point of View Suites in Louisbourg around 10am, and were a bit surprised to find it was also an RV park. But in fact, there was a large building on a small cliff at the back of the property, overlooking the harbor of Louisbourg, and in that building was our suite. The managers of the property actually upgraded us from one large suite into two connecting smaller suites so that we could each (kids and adults) have our own space. That was something we really appreciated. One reason they were probably so generous was that the property is closing down in a few days for the winter season (when tourism is pretty much dead in most of Cape Breton). In any case, the rooms are spacious, and the kitchens appear well provisioned. But bring your own shampoo and soap, as what they provide is good for only one or two showers.

After dropping off our bags in our room we headed up to the Fortress of Louisbourg. The Fortress, run by the Canada Parks Service, is a recreation of a part of the fortress that was once located on the same grounds during the early and middle part of the 1700s, owned and controlled by the French (except for a three year period where the British ran it). The Fortress of Louisbourg was twice besieged and attacked by the British, and both times the French surrendered after about six weeks, due in part to running out of supplies because of British blockades, and also because the British brought many times more soldiers than there were inhabitants of the fortress. Surrender was an easier out than dying from starvation or being shot. After the second capture, the British pretty much destroyed Louisbourg, and it took a government project in the 1960s to attempt to rebuild aboutt 20% of the buildings that had once stood on the fortress grounds, and make the Fortress of Louisbourg a historic attraction.

Most of the people at the fortress are in period costume, playing the part of a person from circa 1744, but were kind enough to explain differences between that time and the present when asked. We learned an incredible amount about the daily lives of merchants, nobility, servants, and soldiers during the times of the Fortress. We also learned that we would not liked to have lived there during that time as the people endured what we would consider enormous hardships - ranging from very bad winters and poor health care to extremely difficult working conditions, among others.

We also enjoyed an 18th century lunch of soup, cod, and carrots, including a single, versatile eating utensil - a spoon with a curved tip on the handle which could be used to cut and pierce ones food. It was all very tasty.

We had gone to the Fortress of Louisbourg with minimal expectations, and left overwhelmed with new knowledge and information, and thirsting for more. And that’s taking into account that only a fraction of the various buildings were open and staffed because it’s low season here (and the fortress closes down on Saturday for the winter season too - just like everything else). During the summer months, the Fortress of Louisbourg is a hive of nearly non-stop activities, and it’s estimated that it would take at least 18 hours to see and do everything there is to do (not including spending time talking with the in-period docent/actors).

If you have any interest at all in history as well as how people lived and survived in the 18th century, then the Fortress of Louisbourg is a must.

Our dinner was at the Lobster Kettle, one of the only two restaurants still open for the season in the village of Louisbourg. Linda and Krystyana had a fabulous snow crab dinner special while Bas and I enjoyed haddock and halibut - both quite good, and amazingly Bas enjoyed the fish. So far, on this trip, Bas has learned to like lobster and fish. We’re working on him for scallops, but he seems to have set his mind against them for the moment. In any event, we enjoyed our meal at the Lobster Kettle - both in terms of food quality and service - large difference from last night’s meal at the Lobster Galley in St. Ann’s Bay.

Tomorrow we leave Louisbourg for Pictou, where we will take a ferry to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. We’ll be spending a couple of nights there, and hope to visit Avonlea and the museum of Anne of Green Gables, among other things.

For followers of our writings who are also familiar with our home island of Bonaire in the Southern Caribbean, we discovered after dinner tonight that Tropical Storm Omar had formed near the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao) in the last day or so, and strong weather conditions have created very large swells and waves on the normally calm west side of Bonaire, damaging numerous piers and soaking some waterfront properties.

There are links here and here on BonaireTalk with more information.

Please note that most of the reports on BonaireTalk are independent observer reports or passed on from those on islands and that there is also a lot of speculation based on water drenched visuals. As we know from the past with large surge actions, until the surge subsides (sometime tomorrow afternoon hopefully), it will not be clear how much damage has actually occurred, and it won’t be clear for days how long any such damage will take to repair.

If you love Bonaire like we do, keep the island in your mind and think positive thoughts. For those concerned about our animals, we understand they are doing fine, albeit a bit shook up by the wind and rain.

To all of our friends and extended family on the island, we hope you are well and safe and dry.

This morning we had our earliest wake-up since we left Bonaire over a week ago – 6am, for an 7am departure from the resort. The reason for the early departure was that I had committed the family to a 9am whale watching expedition in Cheticamp, which was an 80 minute drive away.

We broke fast in the mini-van along the way, and managed to arrive in Cheticamp with time to spare, and checked in at Captain Zodiac’s, right on the waterfront. We and our five other fellow whale watchers were given these great big puffy red suits that made us look like (according to the kids) those astronaut chimps. I personally felt a bit like a red Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man (from Ghostbusters). But those suits, for all their lack of style, were incredibly warm and comfortable. That’s a good thing when you’re whipping through a rough ocean at forty miles per hour in chilly air. Which is precisely what we ended up doing.

For those not familiar with Zodiacs, they are a brand name for a rigid inflatable boat (RIB) and look somewhat like the fast craft that Navy Seals use to do beach landings. The benefit of using a Zodiac for whale watching is that they are small and highly maneuverable.

We spent over an hour bouncing around the ocean at high speed until we spotted several cetacean dorsal fins in the distance. As we approached, it was clear we had found pilot whales. Pilot whales are, species-wise, big brothers to porpoises, getting up to about 20 feet in length (at least based on the pilot whales we saw), with big melon-shaped heads.

The pod of pilot whales we encountered numbered approximately eight or nine, and were spread out over about a square kilometer of ocean near some cliffs a ways north of Cheticamp.

Most of the whales were hunting for food in pairs, but came across a trio of whales as well – a juvenile and two adults. It wasn’t clear if the adults were the parents or two large females (including the mother, no doubt), but it was great to see all three on the surface together, and then see them dive and then surface again, always with the juvenile between the two adults.

The whales got within a couple of feet of the Zodiac on numerous occasions, and it was great to hear them exhale through their blowholes and see their large sleek shapes glide smoothly through the water.

We were also able to hear the whales “speaking” while they were submerged. Unlike larger whales, and more like dolphins, their speech was high pitched – like a whistle.

After nearly a half hour with the whales it was time to head back to Cheticamp and the warmth of our mini-van heaters.

Until we had driven to Cheticamp, incidentally, we had thought that the western part of Cape Breton was all Gaelic in ancestry, but this morning we discovered that Cheticamp is in the heart of an Acadian section of Cape Breton. All road signs there are in English and French.

Anyhow, the plan was to spend the whole day driving the famous Cabot Trail, which Baddeck sits on, as does Cheticamp. We also had great hopes of wandering one of the main trails along the Cabot Trail and seeing a live, wild moose. Amazingly, we didn’t have to wander at all to see moose, however.

Shortly after we paid our park entry fee, we came upon a “moose-jam” – a traffic jam involving people gawking at moose. We joined the moose jam and discovered a pair of moose (or is it “meese”, as the plural of “goose” is “geese”?) - a large bull and a cow, peacefully grazing off the side of the Cabot Trail. Intent on shooting the moose (with our cameras), Krystyana and I got out of our mini-van and made our way over to the guard rail which separated the people from the moose in the wooded gully below. The moose were obscured by the brush and trees, but clearly identifiable as moose.

After a few minutes, the cow wandered up the hill side, grazed a bit and then looked around. At about the same time, Krystyana had started walking back to the mini-van, and the cow started following her, unbeknownst to Krystyana. There did not appear to be any danger to either of them, and Krystyana finally realized she had a companion trailing her when her brother started gesturing wildly from inside the mini-van. Krystyana slowly got inside as well, and the cow settled down behind the mini-van to snack on more vegetation.

Meanwhile, the bull started to come up the gully’s slope as well, but stopped at the edge to graze as well, calm as could be even with a half dozen people within 20-30 feet of him (I made sure to put other gawkers between me and the bull moose, of course).

We ended up with over 10 minutes of moose time and some great photographs as a result. Our day was nearly complete – whales and moose. All we needed was a bear or beaver or other unusual creature to round things out.

After driving on we started encountering quite a bit of rain, but that did not prevent us from stopping at various look-out points to behold the vistas of fall foliage and dramatic terrain.

Lunch was at a small motel/restaurant in Pleasant Bay called the Midtrail Motel and Inn – it had been recommended to us by one of the people at Captain Zodiac’s. We had a simple but decent meal, including some great seafood chowder. And we got Bas to try the local version of poutine, a dish consisting of cheese melted over french fries and then topped with gravy. Not for the low-card oriented diner though.

The rest of the afternoon was spent visiting various art and craft shops along the Cabot Trail, a stop at the North Highlands Community Museum (where we watched movie footage from the 1950s about life at a nearby fishing village), and walking some trails in search of a beaver dam (never found one).

However, as the day wound down, we almost ran over a grouse (we believe it may have been a spruce grouse) as it waddled across the road in front of us, got scared by an oncoming car, and then flew up into the air just in time to avoid our windshield. We figured that the grouse would be the closest we’d get to an unusual critter trifecta today, hence its inclusion in the title of this blog. Alas, we did not get a picture of the bird as we were as startled by it as it was by us.

Dinner was at the Lobster Galley in St. Ann’s Bay. Linda and Krystyana enjoyed traditional Thanksgiving fare (Krystyana sans the carb-laden fixings) as it was Canada’s Thanksgiving Day today, while I had a seafood appetizer platter for two (for just me, as a main course). The main courses were pretty good, but the desserts were quite poor – we had an apple crisp and a three berry crisp, and both were gummy and lacking in flavor. And the whipped cream was either DreamWhip or something made with Cool-Whip. Weird texture there too. The lobster dishes some of the other folks had looked like they might have been a better choice, but we were all lobstered out.

Along our travels we realized that paying cash in U.S. dollars meant we were actually paying 10% more for things due to the current exchange rate, so we ended our evening by getting Canadian dollars from an ATM machine with our new Capital One Online Banking ATM cards – they are the only ones I have found so far which do not charge a hefty foreign transaction fee (which seemed to exceed 3% in some cases for our Citizens Bank checking account ATM cards, even when getting U.S. dollars abroad, like back on Bonaire). This change alone should save us a lot of money in the coming year.

Our plan tomorrow is to move up to Louisbourg and visit Fort Louisbourg for a tour of that old fortress. And on Wednesday we make our way to Prince Edward Island. So far we’ve been averaging over 250km per day on our mini-van. That’s a lot for a person like me, who generally hates to drive. But I’m managing.

Footnote: You may have noticed this post, unlike others from Nova Scotia, has pictures. They were necessary. The full trip on-line photo album is still planned, but may be a week away, at least.

The breakfast at the motel was pure carbs, so we dined en suite on the various cheeses and cold cuts we had picked up along the way for snacks. It was just about the best breakfast we had had so far on our journey (the breakfast at Cora’s in Halifax on Wednesday was the only one better).

The main reason we stopped for the night in Truro was so that we could observe the Truro Tidal Bore in action. The tidal bore is a rapid tidal change caused by tidal waters surging up a narrow channel, the Salmon River in this case, so instead of waiting for hours to see a difference in water levels due to the tide, you can see it in minutes. The tidal bore in Truro was schedule to occur at 10:21am in the morning, but we had been warned not to have huge expectations as many factors affected the rapidity with which the tidal waters would flow upriver. We hoped for a nice wall of water, but ultimately what we saw was the water rise about four feet in about ten minutes, without a lot of visual drama. It was pretty cool to be watching the water in the river serenely flow downstream and then all of a sudden realize the whole flow of the water had reversed course and was now rushing upstream. But it wasn’t breathtaking.

We headed north after the bore of the tidal bore, and as we left Truro, Linda spotted a bald eagle on a tree off the side of the road, so we got as close as we could and took pictures of our one major live wild animal find for the day (we saw lots of cool road kill – a deer, porcupines, skunks, an opossum, pets, etc., but Bas said dead animals didn’t count).

We stopped en route at Sugar Moon Farm, a nice log cabin structure in which you could have breakfast all day, featuring locally grown and made products, including maple syrup made right there at Sugar Moon. After a hearty early lunch of red fife wheat pancakes (healthier carbs than white flour by a long way), a frittata, home-made granola, and a variety of excellent sausages, the co-owner of Sugar Moon, Quita Gray, gave us a tour of the facilities as well as an orientation on how sugar maple sap is collected and processed. We learned that the local Indians first taught the European settlers how to harvest maple sap, and that Canada is now the world’s largest producer of maple syrup. We also discovered that collecting maple sap by buckets is a thing of the past (except for people with only a few trees), and that larger producers of maple syrup use plastic tubing to create a delivery network that brings the sap directly to the processing vats.

Maple sap, which is generally as clear as water (probably because it is over 95% water in the first place), is collected during March and April each year. At most, each sugar maple tree would have two taps, and each tap will typically output enough maple sap to produce one pint of maple syrup. The ratio of sap to syrup is about 40 to 1, so there’s a lot of water that needs to be evaporated to condense the sap to syrup. We learned a bunch of new things at Sugar Moon Farm we had not expected to be enriched with, so it was a truly worthwhile visit – never mind the great food as an added bonus.

Our next two stops were the Balmoral Grist Mill Museum and the Sutherland Steam Mill, both run as part of a network of Nova Scotia Provincial Museums.

At the Balmoral Grist Mill we had a docent explain the milling process as well as the history of the mill itself. We discovered that raw oats look nothing like what we expected – they are actually rather ovoid, seed-like things. We also found that buckwheat is not a wheat at all, but instead a relative of rhubarb, and during the milling process, the outer shell is removed entirely, making the inner endosperm (the part that is milled into flour) rather void of complex carbohydrates. Same for oats. The only flour which retains some of the complex carbs along with the refined (and really bad for you) carbs would be whole wheat flour, as that includes the bran (the outside casing) of the seed of the wheat. I will get into the whole issue of refined carbs and the diseases they help spur along in homo sapiens at a later date when I write up a review of Gary Taubes’ “Good Calories, Bad Calories” – a real eye opener which relates incredibly well to my personal dietary experiences.

Sorry, I digressed, again.

At the Sutherland Steam Mill we had another docent-guided tour. Here we learned about how steam-powered saw mills operated over a half century ago, with both insightful and witty commentary by our guide, Andrew. It’s pretty amazing how resourceful people can be with limited resources and not much oversight from the Occupational Safety & Health Administraton (OSHA).

Our final stop of the day prior to trucking on to Cape Breton was at The Pork Shop for some protein for the road (great German-style cold cuts).

We had a nearly three hour drive up to Baddeck (pronounced “Bad-ek”), in the Cape Breton area of Nova Scotia. Cape Breton has a strong Gaelic cultural background, and all the road signs are in both English and Gaelic. We surmise that the “Breton” refers to the “Bretons”, Celtic folk who settled in Brittany in France as well as Scotland and Ireland. And it’s no coincidence that just 25 minutes from Baddeck, in St. Ann’s Bay, is the Gaelic College of Celtic Arts & Crafts, nor that there is an annual Celtic Colours Festival here (going on right now).

When we got to our hotel in Baddeck, the Inverary Resort, we discovered that while we had connecting rooms, they each had only one bed, and not enough room to fit an extra bed in either room for our second child (since there’s no way a 13-year old girl will share a bed with her 11-year old brother). The front desk staff were very understanding, and managed to arrange an alternate room situation for us even though they were sold out last night. But we were still a bit grumpy from the experience and the long drive. And we got grumpier when we found we had to wait almost a half hour for a table at the resort’s Lakeside Café. However, once we got to having dinner, it completely wiped away all grumpiness. The food was just fantastic. My tomato seafood soup had the most perfectly cooked shrimp I can recall eating in a very long time, and the white wine garlic sauce for Bas’ mussels was devine, as were Krystyana’s local scallops. And Linda says her trout was also perfect – moist, slightly pink, and delightful. Only my pork chops did not meet this new standard the restaurant had set for itself, in that they were a tad dry. But their flavor was quite good. An excellent meal, and one which completely overcame our travel weariness-based unhappiness with the original room situation at the resort.

This morning we dined in the main dining room and had a passable breakfast (on the house, however, so that made it a little better) before venturing forth into Baddeck to go and do a week’s worth of laundry at the local laundromat.

We then spent a couple of hours at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site and Museum. We had at first wondered why this was located here in Baddeck, but it turns out he had a home in Baddeck, and did a lot of his research work here too.

It was endlessly fascinating, as we learned that while the invention of the telephone is what Bell is best known for, he also developed and invented countless other devices and technologies, and was involved with research in a variety of areas. For example, he co-invented the gramophone (cylindrical model) as an improvement over Edison’s recording/playback device as well as an operational high-speed hydrofoil. He also helped develop Canada’s airplane program.

Bell’s wife Mabel, whom he met as her teacher – he taught deaf children to speak using a special visual language system – was also a very strong and intelligent woman, and many of his successes can be credited to her support of his efforts, both emotionally and financially (she was the majority stockholder in Bell at the time).

Definitely visit this museum should you get to Baddeck.

We had a late lunch at the Telegraph House (where Bell apparently stayed before he had a home in Baddeck). They had good chicken wings, and a very nice turkey soup, but the other food was a bit disappointing – my seafood casserole was mostly mashed potatoes, and the peas served as my vegetable were canned peas.

The rest of the afternoon was spent driving up to St. Ann’s Bay to see the foliage and visit a few artisans’ shops.

We ended with a very nice dinner at Gisele’s across the street from the Inverary Resort. Great lamb (according to Linda), a nice prune stuffed chicken breast for Krystyana, and a turkey dinner for me (tomorrow is Canada’s Thanksgiving Day). Bas only had dessert, but enjoyed it greatly.

Tomorrow we’re due to drive the Cabot Trail, as well as go out on a Zodiac to find whales. It will be a very long day, as the Cabot Trail is nearly 200 miles long (and scenic and windy). We’re also hoping to finally spot some wild moose.

Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, is dead quiet now as it’s low season here, and we’re loving it. All the shops and restaurants are open, but quiet. There are no crowds. The only mild downside is that the weather is a little brisk, and the skies were overcast today (in contrast to the beautiful sunny skies yesterday), but it’s still pretty wonderful here.

We finished yesterday with dinner at the Tin Fish, which happens to be in our hotel, the Lunenburg Arms Hotel & Spa. The service at Tin Fish was charming and pleasant (thank you Sarah!), and our meal was excellent. And the hotel is really charming and well-located too. We have a very large room with two queen beds and a queen size sofa bed on the top floor of the quaint hotel. We could use a second bathroom, but otherwise things are great. The staff here is very friendly and helpful, and we’d recommend both the hotel and the restaurant.

This morning, we enjoyed a leisurely late breakfast at the Historic Grounds Coffee House, and then headed out to the weekly farmer’s market at the Lunenburg Community Center. We bought some cheese and some sugar free preserves and had some interesting conversations with some of the market stand operators and owners before driving about 20 minutes to visit Ovens National Park.

The “ovens” referred to in the name of the park are large caverns and caves carved out of the cliff side by the ocean over many thousands of years. Trails along the cliff’s edge take you down to some of the sea caves - either into them, or on a platform so you can view them. Amazing what nature can create. The rock formations and striations were pretty incredible too, with almost all colors of the rainbow represented during our hour long walk.

What was also nice, again because of low season, was that Ovens National Park was closed for the winter, but a sign at the gate suggested anyone willing to make a donation to the park and assume all risks for being in the park was welcome to come on in and wander about. So we did. We never saw another soul - at least not a human soul. We did see a number of local birds, but better yet, as we were leaving the park, a large female deer walked across the path, not more than 30 feet in front of us (sorry - too dumbfounded to take a picture in time). The combination of the might of the ocean with all the flora and fauna around us was exhilarating and we all had a bit more spring to our step as we left.

We drove back to Lunenburg for another nice meal, this one at The Grand Banker Seafood Bar & Grill, right along the waterfront (and about a block from our hotel). Best seafood chowder we’ve had so far, although the lack of broth with the mussels was a bit disappointing. There was also an excellent Acadian Cajun Seafood Stew - the Acadian inhabitants of Nova Scotia are the primogenitors of the Cajuns of Louisiana, and were kicked off their lands in Nova Scotia by the British in the Great Explusion of 1755, as we learned a few days ago. Back to the point - we would recommend the Grand Banker for a nice lunch or dinner.

The rest of our day was spent at the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, where we learned how to launch a newly built ship, how to properly design a lobster trap, the difference between Atlantic and Pacific salmon (the Atlantic salmon spawn multiple times, the Pacific ones only once), and countless other bits of useful and not-so-useful information and trivia about sailing, fishing, and Nova Scotian history. What impressed us - and no doubt this was again the benefit of being in Lunenburg during low season - was that there were docents readily available everywhere in the museum, and they all really knew their stuff. We spent perhaps 20 minutes with a gentleman of obvious Acadian background who showed us how to make a duck decoy and lobster trap buoys, and then regaled us with lobstering stories and history. The museum was an excellent way to spend a drizzly afternoon in Lunenburg. If you ever get to Lunenburg and have limited time on your hands, go to the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic - you won’t be disappointed (at least during low season).

We wandered around Lunenburg and viewed several of the various gift shops - all of which were interesting and somewhat quirky - no chain retail stores here before settling down at Magnolia’s Grill for dinner. The front desk staff at our hotel had recommend them, and we were not disappointed. Magnolia’s Grill is tiny - it has seven tables, and half the menu is scribbled on a large chalkboard on a wall in the main dining area. There were almost a half dozen soups of the day, along with another half dozen other dishes and a separate board featured several desserts for the day. We had three of their soups (a spicy peanut cream, tomato and cheddar, and French onion) and all were perfect. We added a shrimp stir-fry over brown rice (all ingredients cooked to perfection in terms of crispness, but not as flavorful as expected), some bacon wrapped shrimp with a phenomenal garlic aioli, and then finished things up with a pumpkin cheesecake and a chocolate peanut butter mousse cake. Oh, and Linda and I enjoyed a couple of their excellent martinis with our meal too. Great dinner and pretty reasonably priced. Very highly recommended.

After returning to our hotel, we put Bas to bed (actually, we need to start calling him Sebastian now, or so we’ve been informed), and went to the bar at the Tin Fish for some wine (for me) and coffee (Linda) and tea (Krystyana), sitting in front of the warm fireplace to work for a bit on our various tasks (e-mail for me, math schoolwork for Krystyana, day journal for Linda).

We’ve got an early start tomorrow as we head up to the Bay of Fundy, with plans to visit a look-out point, an artisanal cheese maker, a premium vineyard, and finally ending up in Truro so we can observe the Truro Tidal Bore on Saturday morning.

We were woken yesterday morning by the sounds of a bagpipe in the park across the street from our hotel. Seemed apropos in a place called New Scotland (Nova Scotia).

It was a beautiful day outside, and I pointed out to Bas the fact that fall foliage seemed to just be starting here in Halifax, and delighting in the fact that we had not missed the color change. Bas then pointed out to me that he had actually never been through fall foliage before. Kind of a sad thing to realize for a boy who was born in New Hampshire. However, we knew this was a deficiency in experience that we would be able to correct in the coming weeks.

The other new thing for Bas was that that until now he had always worn shoes with Velcro straps or which were just slip-ons. But for this trip, because we expected to do some hiking and simply climbing, we upgraded him to real hiking shoes with laces. So now he’s having to deal with also getting used to tying shoelaces – another new experience.

But the real trauma with Bas arose when he asked me what we were going to do for the day and I responded that I didn’t know. He was quite upset by my response. I asked him why, and his response was “Because you always know what we’re doing.”. Another sad truth for the day – I was raising a child that was just as anal retentive as I was. This spontaneous, unplanned travel thing will take more time to get used to for everyone.

When we first came up with the odd (for us) idea of going to the Canadian Maritimes without a particular agenda in mind, we were concerned that perhaps we might have selected a poor destination for this adventure and would not find enough to do, but as we speak to native Nova Scotians (the guide books refer to them as “Blue noses” but none of the Nova Scotians we spoke to would admit to that nickname), we are finding more and more interesting things to consume what little time we now appear to have here in Nova Scotia as well as in neighboring Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick.

We ended up with a late breakfast yesterday, then a climb up the hillside of the Halifax Citadel, an old military fortress which is also the highest point of Halifax. We learned quite a bit about the history of Halifax there, and also observed the firing of the noon cannon, a long standing tradition which was used to inform Haligonians (the name for those from Halifax) that it was exactly noon. Certainly one of the more interesting time-pieces we’ve come across.

We then wandered downhill towards the waterfront in the hopes of securing a lobstering tour at Murphy’s On The Water, but our hopes were not fulfilled as it appears to be too late in the season to enjoy such a tour. So we settled for a nice meal at Murphy’s Restaurant instead, enjoying our first bite of Nova Scotian seafood, including Digby scallops, a lobster, mussels, and a few other treats such as three different kinds of small whole potatoes – purple, red, and white. Service was pretty decent too. While the restaurant definitely seems to be mostly tourist oriented, we would recommend it to others looking for a nice seafood meal along the Halifax waterfront. And be sure to try the regional wines from the Jost winery and the sweet potato fries too.

After our leisurely lunch, we headed over to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, where, as Linda put it, “we found out all about history that we never knew existed” including lots of details about the ill-famed Titanic, as well as the Great Explosion of Halifax in 1917 (a ship laden with explosives blew up after a collision and the resulting explosion caused incredible damage and carnage), and the battles against French occupied Louisberg to the north in Cape Breton.

We wandering back to our hotel via streets filled with eclectic shopping opportunities for a couple hour break at our hotel before dinner at one of Halifax’s finest resaturants, Onyx. We didn’t know it was one of Halifax’s best restaurants when we made our reservation, but after dining there, we have to say that the service was top-notch – better than at many “fine dining” restaurants we have dined at elsewhere. The menu and our meals were also excellent. We enjoyed duck, tenderloin, lamb, and monkfish, as well as a variety of appetizers and even a baked apple with a flambé filling for dessert. Onyx is highly recommended by The Traveling Richters.

After a good night’s sleep we returned to our exploration of Halifax, with a visit to the Halifax Natural History Museum. Another excellent museum, featuring a diverse set of exhibits blending information about local fauna, dentistry (great exhibit for kids), results of archeology in old Acadian lands, and mineralogy, among other things.

We walked back to the harbor for lunch at McKelvie’s, another restaurant specializing in seafood. Again, we had excellent service and great food. The seafood chowder was creamy and flavorful, while the seafood salad was close to perfect. And in terms of spice, the Szechuan scallops were just right (using local Digby scallops, of course). Again, another recommended restaurant in Halifax.

After our meal, we spent the afternoon at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia looking at the works of Tom Forrestal as well as Nova Scotian folk art, Inuit art, some very odd photography, and pieces from the Gallery’s permanent collection. We also discovered that the Gallery has a nice cafe by the (in our opinion, unfortunate) name of Cheapside Cafe. Regardless of the name, the Cheapside Cafe has great ambiance, and a very nice selection of desserts and coffees, and apparently serves some mean sandwiches at lunchtime.

Our evening walk brought us to our final dinner in Halifax at Opa Greek Taverna where we enjoyed a leisurely meal consisting entirely of mezithes (appetizers and small plates) and a nice bottle of a Boutari reserva. And again, amazingly, we had excellent service. We don’t know if we just lucked out with the service at the restaurants we chose for our lunches and dinners here in Halifax, or if waitstaff in Halifax just has better training, but either way we’ve been very impressed by the attentiveness and knowledge of the waitstaff serving us. And the food quality has been very good too. Mind you, as a counterpoint, the breakfasts at our hotel (the Lord Nelson) have been merely ordinary, both in terms of the food (weird scrambled eggs) and service (a bit slow).

We finished our final evening in Halifax weary from all of our walking, but pleased with all that we learned and saw. And as a bonus, it appears we might have a rental mini-van at a very good rental price all the way to Bar Harbor and possibly even beyond.

Considering our lack of planning, things went pretty well the last couple of days. Hopefully Bas will learn from that. And maybe I will too…