Tuesday, June 2, 2015

On the way to Lunenberg, NS

It started raining the night we got to Annapolis Royal - not real hard but in light bands and, you know how it goes. We thought it might bring on a T storm and move on but no, well, then it was some type of front and move on, but no. On Sunday we visited the village in the rain, it was raining when we unhooked the power on Monday and it rained the entire day as we drove around the southern tip (may be eastern, I'm not sure which) of NS and then up to Lunenburg, which as much as we could see, in the rain, looks like a wonderful old historic town to do some exploring.

Here was the game plan - we could take Rt 8 over the hills to the other coast in a couple of hours or we could drive around on the coast  on the country road and visit all the little French villages on the way to Yarmouth. Have lunch and then the coast becomes a lot like that of Maine with the main road inland and lots of roads out to the different peninsulas.


As you can see by the picture we chose the French villages thinking that we might be able to stop at a local Cafe for breakfast. No such luck. These villages were so small that most didn't even have a market or gas station, much less a diner. But they did have churches, I mean big churches. This is Eglise Saint-Bernard in the town of St. Bernard. Sign said built in 1919 - 1942, not sure what those dates mean. Hard to tell but that is all stone.


As soon as you leave one village you are in another village with mostly houses on either side of the road, most nicely painted, manicured lawns and hardly any landscaping, This is Musee Saint-Marie Church, built in 1905 and is all wood shingled. Can you tell it's been raining?


Last of the big churches - this is St. Alphonse Church, built in 1921, in the town of what else - Alponse. All of these towns an/or villages had a sign and above the name was the word Clare, which we think may have been the county, and a French flag with a star in the corner. They are very proud of their French ancestry and some homes even had French flags (with the star) in their front yards.





























We did visit this lighthouse at Cape St. Mary on a hill overlooking this neat looking harbor. The light appears to be operating although the area was pretty bare and the structure is in need of some TVC. The lobster season just ended in Canada as the season started on May 25th in Maine. These are some of the boats that fish out in Georges Bank as opposed to the Gran Bank which is farther north. It's still a long way off shore.


Here are two happy faces after driving 3 hours in the rain and not stopping for breakfast. We're in Yarmouth at Tim Horton's which about as popular as Duncan Donut's are in New England. We had just finished driving the 325 km Evangeline Scenic Travelway without seeing either Wordsworth or Evangeline and next we're driving the 339 km Lighthouse Scenic Route. Because of the time, rain and distance that we had left to drive we didn't see much of Yarmouth,


This is us on a cable ferry across a fairly narrow river. The boat is only 5 years old and still looked new. It operates 24 hours a day and at night if you are on one side and the ferry is on the other side there is a bell to ring and the ferry will come over to get you. During the crossing the first mate gave me a quick tour below to look at the operating mechanism.


We didn't see any lighthouse but did pass some beautiful harbors filled with fishing boats. Many of the boats had white hulls but some  were painted blue, red, black or green - very colorful. Most of the docks that we saw were built out of wood pilings or beams but this one struck us as very unusual, using big rounds boulders.

We arrived in Lunenburg and after asking direction we found the very attractive campground operated by the Town. It's on the top of Blockhouse Hill next to the Board of Trade (Chamber of Commerce) building. It's still raining, it's still windy and the temperature is between 4 and 8 degrees Celsius - you figure it out. The old town is within walking distance but who wants to walk around in the rain and wind, not us or Shadow. So we're here until the rain stops. We've got everything we need including a couple of TV channels that we can check on the weather in the Canadian Maritime Provinces.



































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