stellarton

Sunday 14th June
Down for breakie at 7.30 am in the swish hotel. The night’s accommodation included a full breakfast, hot and cold. After breakie we packed the car and set sail for Bangor Maine. It was going to be 700 kms and about 500 of that on the same road we had travelled a few days ago. Once we hit the border we cleared customs/immigration and continued on our way. Arrived at about 7.00pm and checked into the motel. Headed straight out and bought dinner. We went to Applebee’s and it was yum diddly scrumscious!!! The bloke who was our waiter was really nice and we had a good talk to him about our trip and Australia etc. Went to Walmart after dinner to get some supplies and then back to the motel for TV and catch up with the blog. Tomorrow we are going to head south as we are planning to go to Atlantic City which is a couple of days away. Probably stop at Boston on the way.

coal mine and cabot trail

miners museum

abbie our tour guide

bronte in his miners gear

looking out towards the ocean direction

some old mining equipment

cabot trail

fog through the mountains

ferry ride

views on cabot trail

more of the view on route

Saturday 13th June
Today we had decided that we would go to Glace Bay which was only about 20 kms from Sydney and do a coal mine tour. Glace Bay and the Breton Island is world famous for its coal mines which are mined out about 7 miles under the floor of the ocean. At the visitor centre/museum they had a replica mine where you could go down and have a look what it was like to be a miner in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The tour was taken by a 72 year old ex miner who worked in the area before the mining stopped back in 2001.

The mine was actually dug out and the coal sold and money used to produce the tourist version of the mine. It was correct in all its dimensions but only went out just beyond the shore line. The tour was very interesting and enjoyable. After the tour we went back into the museum and finished off there before heading off. Next on our list for the day was to drive a scenic trail which went north to the top of Nova Scotia. This was their version of the Great Ocean Road if you like. It was called the Cabot Trail and on its own was about 300 km in length.

The drive was awesome, the scenery was magnificent and the views were incredible. We even had a ferry crossing at one point to get across one off the outlets of a river where it met the sea. This was at a place called English Town.

There was part of the drive at the northern tip where you crossed a mountain range to get to the western side. As it was getting closer to 5.00 pm and the day coming to a close the clouds had come in and we were driving through really thick fog. It was very cool to drive through but interrupted the view a bit. Once we got to the southern part of the route we turned off to a ‘back road’ to get us to New Glasgow which is where we were headed. This was a back road to say the least, it was small, bumpy and not maintained. It was a nice drive though and we did enjoy it. Not too long and we hit the main road, this time joining up with the road that took us to Sydney the day before. We had to back track a bit to get on our way back to the USA. Stopped at a small place on the way for dinner and had A & W burgers, the girl who served us was good and asked us questions about where we were from and where had we been while on vacation.

We had booked accommodation in Stellarton which is a suburb of New Glasgow. The motel was the Holiday Inn and was brand new, had fantastic rooms, plasma TV and a water slide! We did have a great night sleep at this motel. We did need to though as we are planning to drive 700 kms tomorrow as we head to the state of Maine.

sydney

peggy's cove fishing harbour

peggy's cove light house

see how foggy it is!!

me on the rocks, the sea is behind me

some of bronte's art

fishing shed

memorial to swissair flight 111

Friday 12th June
Once we got up this morning we decided to head out to Peggy’s Cove to have a look. Peggy’s Cove is a place about 40 km from Halifax that has a light house situated there. It is a small fishing village situated on a rocky out crop that does not seem to be touched by time. The village has remained the same for many years. It is visited by many tourists for the light house and its attraction for photographers. Well that’s all well and good but the day we go it is as foggy as hell. It was still a good drive and the light house is cool but the photos suffer due to the amount of fog. Anyway it was a nice place. Once finished there we started to make our way back to Halifax so we could then carry onto Sydney. On the way back we stumbled across a memorial for a plane crash. Swiss Air flight 111 crashed of the shores of Peggy’s Cove in September 1998 and killed all 229 persons on board. We had seen this on air crash investigators and stopped to have a look. From there we continued back.

Got some lunch in Halifax before setting off to Sydney Nova Scotia which was around 400 km away. The weather remained foggy and we had a fair amount of rain on the way. The drive was nice and the scenery along the way was very picturesque with a combination of the coast and some rivers. Arrived at the motel and checked in and then went out and got some KFC for dinner. Went back to the motel to get some sleep ready for tomorrow.

maritme museum and titanic

apparently this is humorous!!

light house lens

merlin the museum mascot

deck chair from titanic

carving from titanic

fog over harbour

j.dawson for the movie buffs

fairview lawn cemetery

un named grave

Thursday 11th June
Off to the ‘Maritime Museum of the Atlantic’ today which is in Halifax. We walked from the motel down to the ferry as it was only a few hundred metres away. $2 to catch the ferry to Halifax and we arrived at the terminal. We walked from the terminal along the wharf first to have a bit of a look around. Thought we would get some early lunch before we went to the museum.

Once we had lunch we went to the museum. It was pretty good and contained lots of history about Halifax and it’s history as a port dock. There was loads of info about an explosion that took place and killed many people and ruined a lot of the town back in December 1917. The explosion killed 2000 people and flattened all buildings in a 2 square km radius.

The top floor of the museum was mostly dedicated to the Titanic. They have a number of articles that were saved by some of the men who went to save people and assist after the ship sank in April 1912. These items included some of the timber from the fancy wood carving inside the ship and a deck chair. There was also a very small portion of rusting metal that was taken for analysis and now displayed. There was loads of info on the people who lost their lives and their families. This was really very interesting.

We caught the ferry back to the motel now. This trip on the ferry was much different than our earlier trip, the weather had changed and the clouds had come in. The bridge from Dartmouth to Halifax was covered in fog. Got to the wharf and walked back to the motel and it started to rain. We got the car out of the car park and then wanted to drive to the cemetery to have a look at the tomb stones of some of the victims from Titanic. Over 150 people from Titanic were buried in Halifax in 3 separate graveyards. A lot of these people were unidentified and still remain that way today. The Fairview Lawn Cemetery has the largest amount of persons buried so we went for a look. The unidentified people are number in order of them being found. The headstone has a date and a number on it and that’s all. It was a bit sad and gloomy walking around looking at the grave sites of people killed in the Titanic disaster as you hear so much about it over the years but to be there is something different. The weather had come in quite wet now and it had started to rain.

Went for a bit of a drive around and found a park in the city. Walked around some of the shops for a look and ended up buying an ice cream from DQ. We went for a bit more of a drive around to explore the city and then made our way back to the motel.

Organised our dinner which we had in the fridge as it only needed to be heated. Watched a bit of TV and went on the internet for a while and then off to bed. Tomorrow we head for Sydney Nova Scotia.

covered bridge at hartland

watchout for moose

a new road in a different location upsets tom!

bridge stats

hartland new brunswick covered bridge

bit of info about bridge

1432 feet or 391 metres long

me at the walkway entrance

driving through

Wednesday 10th June
Today we had planned to drive to Halifax Nova Scotia which was about 700 km away. We started out and the road was fantastic, it was all new freeway and speed limited to 110kph. It was interesting though as the tom tom did not have the new road on it and it was going crazy telling us to turn left, turn right and to turn around etc. Also on the freeway were signs to be aware of moose on the road, which was different to the token kangaroo ones at home!

We drove a bit further about 1.5 hours and located a sign directing to the longest covered bridge in the world. Bronte really wanted to see a covered bridge while in US and Canada so we detoured to have a look. The bridge is at Hartland New Brunswick which is only a small town. The bridge was cool thought. We drove over the bridge, parked the car and had a walk around and took some photos of it. As you can see the bridge was built in 1924 and is 391 metres long. Spent a while there and back into the car to keep moving on. Stopped for lunch in Moncton and then continued to Halifax. The weather was fairly bad as it rained a lot of the way to Halifax.

Arrived at Halifax and checked into the motel. The motel was actually at Dartmouth which is on the other side of the river. You could either take a ferry across or drive around over one of two bridges. Once settled in we went out for a drive and got some food for dinner. Once again we had a microwave and fridge so we could do our own meals and stuff.

Our plan was to visit the ‘Maritime museum of the Atlantic’ which had some Titanic displays on show. Halifax was where the rescue operation took place and where the bodies from the Titanic were taken and some buried. Looking forward to seeing this display.

edmundston

Tuesday 9th June
Got a really slow start today, we didn’t leave the motel until almost 12.00 pm. It was nice to have a sleep in. Our trip was not too bad though as we only had 350kms to travel as we were going to stop Edmundston for the night. Arrived just before 5.00 pm and checked into the motel. It was a very quaint hotel set in the lush green hills just outside the town. Once we got sorted out we washed the car as it was nice and dirty, it’s now squeaky clean. We decided to go to DQ (Dairy Queen) for dinner as we had seen the adverts for it and wanted to try it. The food was great and the desserts were awesome. Went back to the motel and watched some TV so we could get up and leave nice and early as we had 700 kms to drive tomorrow and we had free breakfast to make the most of.

trip so far

View Our trip in a larger map

All you need to do to view the map is to zoom in or out and you should be able to see where we have driven. It's around 6000km at the moment. Of note we caught the bus from New York to Washington where we picked up the car.