Nova Scotia: still snowing in late April

2022 May

 

Arriving from Montréal, initially we stayed near Wolfville and spent some time in the area. We made visits to Scots Bay, Peggy’s Cove; Victoria Vale, Halls Harbour; Mahone Bay, and Kingston, as well as to Halifax. The weather was mixed, as expected, with heavy rainstorms and winds, as well as a few beautiful sunny days, on one of which we walked to Crystal Falls and then went to McMaster Mill and the Notch. 

Peggy's Cove

 

Crystal Falls

Hall's Harbour

 

Jan kindly lent us her car whenever needed and also for a circuit of Cape Breton, which was excellent. Although at the end of April there was a lot of snow around, and in fact it snowed while we were driving there, we were fortunate overall and enjoyed walks on the east coast north of Baddeck and near Ingonish, and also in the central highlands, where we enjoyed a beautiful warm sunny day and had lunch at a picnic spot by the river. Cape Breton was very quiet, since the “season” doesn't start until May (and some places, like the famous Red Shoe, would not open until June), so we were able to enjoy walks in tranquility, where snow conditions permitted access, although since nearly all restaurants were not yet open the culinary offer was extremely limited. 

 

Baddeck Harbour

 

Ingonish

Cape Breton NP Coastal and Jack Pine trails

 

Cape Breton East coast

 

Cape Breton East coast

 

Cape Breton North coast, near Dingwall

MacIntosh Brook

 

One of the walks we didn't try

 

Cape Breton west coast

Chéticamp harbour

 

Egypt Falls

We returned to Wolfville and the following day flew to New York via Toronto for a packed 24 hours: dinner and then theatre with friends that evening, brunch in the morning, and then to JFK to fly to Bogotá, where we had work which required our presence for a week.

 

Our next stages of the trip:

 

We’ll return to Vancouver after this week in Colombia and finalize preparation of the vehicle:

 

• Install the mattress (we bought a “self-inflating” mattress which was delivered to Vancouver)
• Acquire storage drawers/boxes for tools, kitchen equipment, food, and water (we found excellent folding grocery baskets at Metro in Montréal which we’ll use)
• Acquire a stove
• Acquire a camp table or build a table onto the rear door
• Acquire camp chairs
• Acquire and fit a fire extinguisher
• Acquire emergency warning triangles
• Acquire jumper cables
• Acquire wheel chocks and consider a second HD bottle jack
• Pick up some spares for the vehicle – fuses, bulbs
• Acquire some supplies for general work – duck tape, tie wraps, etc.
• Acquire sheets, pillows, and pillow cases (we’ll take advantage of our return home to take the sheets and pillow cases from home)
• Acquire a second cell phone SIM (ordered and on the way to Vancouver)
• Buy food
• Set off into BC.

 

Hugs

Alan and Marce

alanymarce@gmail.com