Finding Here And There

Posting a few more pictures from our Nova Scotia trip including one of Big Dave himself, if I may speak of myself in third person. I rarely like any picture taken of myself but this one isn't so bad, especially since I'm sporting my Michigan sweatshirt and my Wolverines pulled out a thrilling victory against Indiana this past Saturday.


Also pictures of the Green Gables farm on Prince Edward Island that inspired the popular book Anne of Green Gables, and the iconic Bluenose II schooner, very famous among Canadians. It is a replica of Bluenose I which is featured on the Canadian dime.






One thing I don't miss from my trip is navigating unfamiliar roads and fighting all too familiar traffic. Boston area drivers are particularly infuriating. While driving I-495 near Boston late one night a driver sped up behind me, flicked on his high beams and laid on the horn. He wanted me to move over so he could continue doing 80 mph in a 65 mph zone.

That was it. I said to Wendy, "Let's get a hotel for the night." I'd prefer dealing with I-495 before Monday rush hour the next day. Though we rose early then and were on the road well before six, I-495 was already becoming busy at that pre-dawn hour. The crazies were out too. No sooner had I come down the on-ramp when a car careened across all three lanes of traffic, slamming into the guardrail in a shower of sparks.

Traffic immediately slowed, some drivers laying on their brakes so heavily that the smell of burning rubber was thick. We passed one car flipped onto its top. I don't know if anybody was hurt. We didn't stop. Within ten minues, the radio station carried a traffic report of an overturned car. Never did find out how it all came out. I told Wendy later that my experience driving go-carts during our annual trip to Silver Lake helped me to dodge the wreck, the other cars involved, as well as the debris in the road. Think NASCAR.

It's moments like that which convince my wife to avoid a turn behind the wheel. She prefers map duty. She did excellent there too, from the busy downtown of Halifax to the meandering coastal roads by Nova Scotia's southern shore, we hardly made a wrong turn. Observation: I think about half of Nova Scotians in the rural south do not own a dryer, judging my the amount of clothes I saw hanging on lines there.

Not to say that we always got where we were going successfully. Returning through extreme northern Maine, I wanted to get a picture of the famous Quoddy lighthouse, the one with the candy stripes that's been reproduced in so many calendars.

While at a visitor's center in St. Andrew's, New Brunswick, a guide pointed out the lighthouse on an area map. Of course, it wasn't easy
to get there. Long drive, winding local roads, and lots of small towns to go through. AND surprisingly we had to go through Canadian customs again as the lighthouse lay on Campobello Island which is under Canadian control.

Though we had cleared customs twice already, the border guard this time reprimanded Wendy for trying to enter the country without a valid passport. Holy cow! Wendy an illegal?

"Wendy, your passport isn't valid until you sign it," the matronly woman scolded good-naturedly.

But then, after driving an additional ten miles to the tip of Campobello Island, I discovered that this lighthouse was not the one I had expected to find there. Apparently, there's an East Quoddy Lighthouse and a West Quoddy Lighthouse. The guide's directions weren't quite accurate. She took us to the wrong freaking island!

Well, that's not totally accurate either, but I've always wanted to use that line from the movie Captain Ron in one of my blogs. I may not get another opportunity.

I took a picture of the lighthouse anyway, what I could see of it anyway. Couldn't get too close though because it sits on a small rocky outcrop in the Bay of Fundy, only accessible at low tide for an hour and a half each day. And we were already running late. Not even time to find the lighthouse on West Quoddy.

Well, that gives me an excuse to come out this way again some day (with a better map).