On the road again

Well, now I'm back in Wolfville, at least for the night. I've been gone for a couple of days, in case anyone noticed (I doubt that anyone did). I think I mentioned before that my Mom was coming to visit. She arrived at 5:22am on Tuesday morning. I was actually awake when she got here because I'd been so excited about her visiting. It is a tradition for my Mom and I to spend at least a week during the summer touring the Maritimes. This year, since I live here, it is just that much easier. Because of the early beginning, we spent Tuesday here in Wolfville, making plans for the rest of the trip. I have pictures from that day, but I'll post them last since they are just of Wolfville. I've decided to post the pictures from our vacation in installments so that my blog will have lots of pictures on it for the next little while. I'll explain the ones below in a second.

On Wednesday we were well-rested and we headed out on the road. It was a short driving day as we just headed out to New Glasgow, since we still hadn't fully planned our trip and NG is nicely located for the places we thought we'd visit. Since we were in his neck of the woods, Zenon very nicely took us out for dinner for Chinese food. He also convinced us to visit Cape Breton Island because he said that it is very beautiful. This was not the first time that we'd heard this, so we decided to take his advice.

Accordingly, Thursday we drove from New Glasgow to Cape Breton Island. The pictures below come from following the Cabot Trail, and are taken (I think - we couldn't remember for sure where we were afterwards when we took them) just outside the town of Chéticamp on the nortwestern side of the island. There was a neat store there that we stopped at and Mom bought me a very cute flower pot, and then we saw this lookoff on our way out of town and took some pictures. As you can see, we added another to the collection of pictures of Heidi Looking Cold (this is a name that I coined after the pictures I posted from last September - if you want another look at them they're in the December archives and I look very cold in them). It wasn't actually that cold that day, but the wind off the water was chilly.

The Cabot Trail was amazingly gorgeous, especially where it went through the provincial park. I have lots of pictures from there which I'll post gradually over the next few days. We spent Thursday night in St. Ann's at a hotel with an amazing view, which you'll see eventually too. Friday was crappy weather, rainy and cold (13 degrees on July 1st!!!) on Cape Breton Island. We changed our plans slightly and went to the historical site at Louisbourg. I learned lots. It was neat. It's funny, because I remember as a kid my Dad would make us go to pioneer villages and do these different educational things on our vacations, and of course as a kid you'd much rather go to Ontario Place or Canada's Wonderland than a pioneer village. However, now I love educational vacations. I guess my Dad's plan worked. Anyway, Louisbourg was neat because the people were all dressed up like it was 1744, though Mom and I thought we'd like it more than we did. I think that the weather factored into our so-so opinion. I have some pictures from there that will be posted later as well.

Friday night we headed back to the mainland where it was much warmer, though still cold for July 1st. We stayed in New Glasgow again at the same place as we had before. I realized that I've spent the last 3 Canada Days in Nova Scotia, which I think is funny because I usually live in Ontario. Today we came back to Wolfville because we were sick of wearing the same clothes (I'd only packed one pair of pants for the journey, and I'd been wearing them everyday) and so here we are. We went to New Minas to do some errands this afternoon. I now own a hula hoop. I am horrible at hula-hooping, but I am determined to get better. It is my latest scheme for making exercise fun, because looking like an ass while trying to spin a piece of plastic around my hips sounds like much more fun than doing stomach crunches. I may post pictures of my progress later.

Tomorrow Mom and I are thinking about doing a day trip to Peggy's Cove and/or Lunenberg, and then hopefully hitting the beach on either Monday and/or Tuesday, weather permitting. Keep your eyes peeled for more pictures of the beautiful Nova Scotia countryside and coast which will be coming later.