Last days in Halifax and then home to Lake Cowichan. Oct 11 - 13

Our fabulous maritime trip is almost over! 8 weeks went by pretty fast. We found lots of the colour Ray wanted to photograph.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Not home to cook this year.

We've experienced an amazing 8 weeks here in Newfoundland and the Maritimes. The weather for the most part, has been fabulous with only a few days of rain. We've seen, deer, wild turkeys, pheasants, tons of shore birds but no moose. We never drove at dawn or dusk though, which are prime times.

I drove us over 4000 km in Newfoundland and over 4500 km in the Maritimes. In NL with a Volvo and in NS a Nissan Rogue. I have to say the Volvo is a better drive and hugged the road better and didn't slip in the rain. 

I think we now have a "good feel" of the people and places and will miss the warm hospitality and their friendly smiling faces. All the shops, restaurants, hotels and B & B's take customer care to a whole new level.  

You'll notice I'm mostly wearing a ball cap in the pictures. The water here is terrible for my hair and it usually sticks out everywhere. I gave up fussing and do a wash n wear with a hat'. lol Doesn't help I'm 8 weeks out from a hair cut so it's really too long.

This trip also taught us that we would rather travel in a motorhome, taking our beds with us than changing every couple of days. The pack up and unpack every couple days is really tiring. Good sleep here, not so good there etc., definitely played havac with Ray's back and my hips and knee, but we powered through. Also, only wanting "a little something" for breakfast or dinner instead of a whole meal proved a little challenging too. We made use of Ray's arrowroot cookies and granola bars.

We made the decision to buy a small 25 foot motorhome July 31st and will take possession of it sometime in the New Year. Stay tuned. This trip really reinforced our decision we made, before we left for our trip. We will take shorter trips closer to home. There is so much to see in BC, Alberta and the Yukon we have yet to visit. (Ray's already making lists of attractions, waterfalls, etc lol.)

Today, Sunday, woke up to clear skys again. The wind from yesterday died sometime overnight. These pictures I took off of our deck, in the cabin. Gorgeous. Nice to see the owner's boat is still there after the 50 km gusts of wind we had for 36 hours. lol I saw someone come down and check their little dock out front yesterday afternoon.

Packing up day again.... heading into Halifax for our last stay before flying out Tuesday morning, back to the island.

Ray saw this beautiful sunrise and the fact that the wind had stopped, so he made another run to Peggy's Cove to get some reflection shots.

Look how clear the water is here.

He came back home to gather me and all our stuff. Today's adventure will be finding a laundromat to wash our clothes, I'm not packing a bunch of dirty things mixed with clean clothes. lol I would do it tomorrow instead, but it is a statutory holiday for Thanksgiving and the laundromats may be closed.

Found a place about 15 minutes from out hotel, 2 hours later by noon, we were done. Last time not using my own. Yay! The laundromat is spotless and we were the only ones there.

Now what? Check in is not until 3 pm. Ray found a park to visit close to the Inn.

Shubie Park is a 16-hectare urban park in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia maintained by the Halifax Regional Municipality. Heavily forested, Shubie Park is roughly linear in shape as it is bounded on the north and west by Highway 118 expressway and on the south and east by Lake Micmac and the southern edge of Lake Charles. It centers around a key segment of the historic 114-kilometre Shubenacadie Canal, which connects Halifax Harbour to the Bay of Fundy.

Lock 2: Originally built in 1826 and rebuilt in 1854 due to freeze-thaw stress, this is the only composite lock on the canal, featuring original granite blocks combined with North American-style stone walls reinforced with lumber. 
Lock 3: Located alongside Lock 2, this lock helps link Lake Micmac and Lake Charles (which marks the high point of the canal system at 31 meters above sea level). 
The Deep Cut: A dramatic channel carved through the local bedrock by Irish and Scottish immigrant laborers using simple pickaxes and shovels. 

This is a U-Tube Video that was made about the history of the canal and how it was used. Kinda cool.

https://youtu.be/I0LpCxwc3To?si=A1DVvgnUM7sTqefu

The lock as it is today.

Beautiful colour along the walking paths. Tons of little chipmunks. I saw a bunch of peanuts being left for them in various places. They also have a lot of hazelnuts to eat. Certainly no starving this winter. 

You can rent a kayak and paddle down to the lake and back.

The Lake Micmac

Lots and lots of ducks too.

We spent about an hour and walked 1.5 km. Enough for today. Back to the Inn for lunch. Today they are serving Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner, so of course, that is what we had.

This Inn is 54 years old and showing it's age in places. They got some financing in 2025, so they are working on repairing and fixing a bunch of stuff. The room was clean and comfortable although the carpet should be torn up.

It was delicious and we also shared a slice of pie from locally grown pumpkins.

By the time we finished lunch, our room is ready. Now came the fun part. Emptying the car of everything into our room so we could pack up tomorrow for our flight home on Tuesday. Hopefully everything fits.

We rested for a couple hours in our room before heading to the Pub for a drink. Ray a mocktail caesar  and me a G & T. 

Monday morning, cloudy and it rained overnight. Glad we went to the park yesterday in the sunshine. After showering and getting dressed, we headed out for a big breakfast about 10 minutes away, then back to the hotel so I could pack up our 4 suitcases ready for tomorrow, leaving our toiletries and change of clothes for tomorrow. The rain started pouring driving back to the Inn. Happy I didn't have to go far as there are "divits" in the highway and this car likes to hydroplane. 

Happy to have the packing done early in case I had to empty and reorganize more to get everything in for travel to the airport. Ray put the 4 suitcases into the car.  We will stuff everything else into our carry-on backpacks.

This afternoon, Ray did a bit of a walk about to the lake and the creek next to the parking lot. There is actual fish rising in the lake. Great fall colours here too.

There be fish! Ray looked it up, there is yellow perch, small mouthed bass and striped bass.

Tonight for our last meal here, other than the airport, we decided on Chinese Food a few minutes away. It opens at 4 and I guarantee we will be full by 5 pm and back to our room lol.  It was delicious.

Early night as we have a wake-up call set for 4:30 am .... yuck.

I ended up waking up at 3 am ... so definitely a long day for me. Ray was up at 4:15 am. By 4:45 w'ere  at the airport returning the rental car. After checking our bags and going through security we waited for boarding at 7 am. Our flight pretty much left on time for our 5.5 hour flight to Calgary.

We had a delicious breakfast of Banana Foster French Toast.

Landing in Calgary.

We had a 3.75 hour layover so took Kristi and Jason's suggestion and relaxed in Westjet's Premier Lounge as Westjet Gold clients.

Free Empress G&T and N/A beer

Our flight took off on time and we actually ended up arriving in Victoria 20 minutes early. Amazing. We were picked up by Steve and Dianne. We treated them to lunch/dinner in Sidney at Mary's Bleue Moon Cafe.

We left the restaurant at 5 pm and then got stuck in horrible Victoria traffic trying to get back to the lake. Ray drove us all home. A great trip but are looking forward to our own bed and our own things around us.

Thanks a huge bunch Steve and Dianne for taking such good care of our house while we were gone. They also put away most of our summer stuff so much less for us to do.