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Chicago
to Halifax to
Meet Up with Our Van (and
Clare and Eric who’ve had it for the past five months).
Because of
Merran’s hip being so very painful, we booked a wheelchair to get her from the
check-in to the plane at Heathrow. The airline also arranged for one to meet
her in Chicago.
But we had a MAJOR hiccough before we arrived at the terminal. Thrifty don’t
have their car depot on the inner ring road of Heathrow as do the other main
rental companies – theirs is well outside on the A4. After about 1¾ hours of
circling the airport, I went into Avis and asked if they knew where to find the
Thrifty Depot. No but the courtesy bus drivers might – and the one I asked did.
We handed the car back at about the time we wanted to be at the terminal but
because of the wheelchair attendant knowing exactly
where to go we got through all of the formalities quickly and on time. It was
as well that I was ahead of Merran because of the (oh my how illegal can you
get) bottle of water in her hand luggage. Once they’d got to me (the bag they
were inspecting when Merran’s was plucked from the system had full toilet gear,
medicines, dumbbell weights, bungee cords and exercise elastics and it took
quite a while to expose them all) all I had to do was drink the water &
then they gave me back the empty bottle & told me where to refill it. At
that time Merran and her push -wallah arrived via the lift (elevator) instead
of the escalator which I’d used. This chap was a humourless Indian but he knew
his way about the place and we were soon on board. And soon in Chicago – much
to Merran’s relief … until we reached the one chap in Immigration who handles
those in wheelchairs. He wanted to know why we were back in the US so soon
after leaving and where had we been this time. Where was Merran’s ticket – and
mine. How will we support ourselves while we’re here? What is Michael doing in
DC and how was he still residing there after eleven years. How are our
grandchildren in Hawaii
and how can their mother be there even though her husband is an American. On
top of al of this, I don’t think he’d ever heard of the word superannuation
which Merran used when explaining our financial stability so I added the fact
that we have a good retirement fund. I’m still not convinced that he was
entirely happy that we aren’t about to become a burden on the long suffering US taxpayer.
But he stamped our passports and turned us loose to find a shuttle into town.
The
“Chinatown Hotel” is in Chinatown. Surprise,
surprise!! As soon as we were ensconced Merran sought refuge in sleep (and a
goodly dose of painkillers) which helped for a while but we certainly couldn’t
do any sightseeing that day. Hopefully the prediction by the doc she saw in England will be
right and the hip will heal itself. I went for a bit of a walk in the local
precinct and we dined all the way across the street (Chinese by coincidence)
and we both crashed for the night. Having collected edibles from a local
bakery, we dined at the hotel. The other chap in the room was using a computer
and typing and muttering in an agitated manner. It transpired that he is a taxi
driver who had driven all night and was now trying to “quench the demented
ramblings” of a group who had just put in a claim for a 16% fare increase – the
day after one of the biggest falls on
Wall Street ever! He gave us excellent advice about using the elevated rail
system (The El to locals) and where to catch the trolley / double-decker tours
of the city. He stressed that we should do a boat tour which includes the
architecture of the city. We did and thoroughly enjoyed it. Chicago
is a beautiful city and it uses the shores of the Lake
to show off its beauty. Because she could sit at different angles and stretch
and move, Merran was not as distressed as she had been from the flight and she was
(relatively) comfortable to catch the Amtrak to Washington. Wow! - don’t the autumn colours
make this a pretty trip. We took Amtrak from San Fran to Portland last time we were here and had a
wardrobe which they laughingly referred to as a sleeper compartment. This time
we had the deluxe sleeper compartment to get to what we expected. It was fine
and the food good. Being able to move around helped Merran’s comfort level,
which was good. At breakfast, we were seated with a US couple and he’d worked
for a railway firm all of his working life so they were well aware of just what
one gets in a standard sleeper compartment so when they did a trip from
Adelaide to Sydney on the Indian-Pacific train in Oz, they booked the deluxe.
It was one of the bridal suites complete with bubbly and flowers etal. They now
know what to book in Australia
– and most other places that we’ve used sleepers on trains like Turkey to Romania,
Kenya and India!
Michael
was at home when we rang the door-bell which was good as well. He was back
briefly from Indonesia and Mongolia but would only be in the US for about two weeks before heading
back on “Mission” to Indonesia which has the more pressing report for the World
Bank’s consideration. He is really busy. Unfortunately, Yunie his partner was
in Vietnam
so we only got to talk to her by phone (Skype on speaker from the computer
actually). She could see us via a webcam but we weren’t able to see her.
Because they’ll pass like ships in the night with her Mission
in Vietnam ending and his in
Indonesia starting, it’s
been decided they’ll meet in Tokyo
for a weekend. It’s one place Michael hasn’t been before. Our sightseeing was a
trip to see Mt Vernon. No not that one – not the former home of George
Washington some 14 or 15 miles downstream from Washington
town but one in Maryland.
While I went back into the unit for a sweater, Merran looked up the road atlas
and found a Mt Vernon so off over
the Bay Bridge we hied. We never did reach Mt
Vernon but we had a beaut look along the Eastern shore of Chesapeake
Bay and had a tour of a touristy shrimp-boat sort of town called
St Michael with lots and lots of Halloween decorations. Well actually there
were Halloween decorations everywhere.
I’m sure Mike was convinced that we’d been abducted by aliens we were so late
getting back, and he’d prepared an absolutely wonderful meal – he’s a really
good cook.
Our
friend Jeanne had invited us to call on her (and family of course) in Frederick
Maryland on our way North and East to meet up with Clare and Eric and our van.
Wow! Liam has really grown. He’s had a really tough start to his life but he’s
growing into a really tall young fellow of three who was excited to see us.
Just maybe our arrival had been built up a bit by his parents. Jeanne took us
for a quick tour to show us a couple of covered bridges, a wonderful display of
pumpkins and other “stuff” for Halloween (and Harvest Festival for some) and the most over-the-top lot of Halloween
decorations on one home. It was outstanding – in a macabre sort of way! Once we
got home to her place we found out that not all of the excesses in decorations
occur outside the home. Her home was
like a haunted train ride at the show in Spades!!! There were witches,
ghosts, spiders, dismembered arms, pumpkins candles in every size you can think
of. Eye-opening!!! – but tons of FUN. We had a lovely visit and wish we could
spend longer with her as she’s such good fun – and she loves her two tame “Red
Rats” from down-under.
Our
route took us back through Lancaster
County (Amish territory).
And I didn’t buy another letter-box now I wonder how I could have been
restrained. It’s one of Merran’s favourite places. That must be because of the
‘Shoo Fly Pie” or perhaps the farm made ice cream or the scenery and the
horse-drawn carriages etc. Whatever. Stockbridge in Massachusetts
was the home town of Norman Rockwell
who found real fame as an artist doing covers for the Saturday Evening Post. He
had the cartoonist’s ability to sum up a moment in time and place and his
covers were truly memorable. But his home town, which appeared in a great many
of his covers, is also a delight – especially when daubed with gay abandon in
the golds and reds of Autumn. We adored it. Then it was off to the real colour
centres of Vermont, New
Hampshire and Maine.
Even in pain Merran’s camera finger didn’t falter. It may suffer from RSI
(Repetitive Strain Injury) from so much use but she soldiers on gamely with her
300 – 400 shots per day quota {Merran
says: Ian has been known to exaggerate}. Bennington Vermont
was an overnight stop and it proved to be extremely interesting. Not least
because of the Battle Monument on the edge of town (the 2nd
tallest in USA, after one in
where else but good ole Texas)
but also because of Halloween decorations (scarecrows, hay bales and corn
stalks at nearly every post of whatever purpose) but also because of an
exhibition of human characters throughout the town. These figures are
life-sized and totally realistic. They range from a man in overalls with
squeegee in hand adjacent to a window (as if he were the actual window cleaner)
to another chap with crutches and a cast on a bus-stop seat or a husband
pointing slightly to one side as his wife looks through binoculars. One fellow
was mopping his brow and averring “Hell it’s time to go fishing” as he resting
in his mowing of the lawn etc etc. We saw ten or eleven of the 16.
The
God who looks after Vacation Practitioners was back in her Heaven because our
route through the Green and White Mountains
took us along yet another of the Scenic Byways – the Kancamagus Highway and oh my goodness
what a burst of colour even though it wasn’t always sunny. The trees are pretty
and colourful in the overcast but flare and glow when the sunlight hits them.
Eric opined that there really wasn’t a burning bush in the Bible – it was
sunlight hitting a maple tree. One thing which struck us was the way that homes
were nestled into the forest so that they were scarcely visible through the
foliage. We were charmed until we thought about it. The only time that sunlight
can get through to the building is in winter when it has no real heat. This may
have been intended but not to our liking as we likes our sunshine we does. Fast
flowing streams bedecked with leaves like the plumage of some exotic bird,
white steeples mirrored in a still lake and set off by a stunning array of
colours. The whole trip was a sensory overload. And it didn’t stop once we
reached Canada
as we thought it might. In 1999 the colour had all fallen by the time we
arrived in Niagara via Montreal
at about the same time of year but this time another blast – especially the
reds of the maples and the wild blueberries. Stunning!!!!!!!!
Eric
and Clare met us as arranged and were effusive about their time in the van –
they’d had five and a half months and in that time they’d been from Vancouver
Island down to Northern California, across to the red rock National Parks of
Utah and Arizona, up to Calgary for the Stampede, then South again through the
badlands of the Dakotas, via our friends Pat & Charlie in Kansas City to
Memphis, Nashville, Savannah, Charleston etc up to Winnipeg, Toronto, Quebec
and PEI (Prince Edward Island for the non-locals) as well as New Brunswick and
finally into Nova Scotia. They zigged and they zagged across about 23,400 miles
and stayed in a variety of campsites from WalMart car parks to the grounds of a
horse stud in Kentucky.
I think that they were well and truly ready to hop into a proper bed at the
timeshare resort we shared until we dropped them off at the airport for their
trip back to the balmy spring weather of Newcastle
(Oz). Before they left, we had a couple of days to explore the ‘Southern Shore’
of Nova Scotia.
Peggy’s Cove is a must see for anyone
in the area. It’s a fishing village with a most distinctive lighthouse (there
are 365 lighthouses along this shore
of Nova Scotia so it’s
not surprising that there is a “Lighthouse
Route” which meanders through picture book village
after picture book town and along windy, twisting roads lined with the most
beautiful autumnal colours). I’m sure that you, dear reader, can imagine the
babble of voices over the dinner table as we all exchanged experiences. This is
what travel and friends are about.
Once
we’d put the others onto their plane we set about finding some medical attention
for Merran and some preventive medicine for the computer. But since we so
close, we headed to a sign on the highway which proclaimed it to be “Halfway
between the equator and the North Pole” – and Merran took a photo of it. The
first available exit brought us face to face with a Mammoth – well a fibreglass
representation of what the one whose bones had been found nearby would have
looked like. It was at the Visitor Information Centre that we learned of the
monster explosion which had flattened a very large chunk of Halifax during the First World War. Two ships
collided with one carrying a vast amount of munitions. The result was “The
largest explosion ever up to Hiroshima”
so it’s no wonder that so much of the city was destroyed.
On
the way to find the hospital, we fell across a computer store with a service
department and they agreed to treat us expeditiously because of the small
amount of time we’d be in Nova Scotia.
What they found was that I’d been infected by a real nasty. It’s called
“Antivirus 2009” and from what they said it gets in everywhere – like sand
after you’ve been dumped while surfing. Merran was quite some time at the QE2
hospital but was poked, prodded, mauled and x-rayed. The young man who reckoned
he was old enough to be a doctor and that he wasn’t just a boy scout playing at
doctors told her to get some physiotherapy or some sort of manipulation and if
nothing was better by Saturday to come back, ask for him by name and he’d jab
her with a Cortisone needle. It was well and truly dark by the time we left Halifax for the timeshare
(but at least I’d retrieved the folder I’d left in the rental car when we’d
handed it back. The folder is our “bible” because it has all of our e-tickets,
ferry bookings, timeshare bookings, copies of our travel insurance etc etc. It
would have been disastrous to have lost it).
The
computer fellows told us to come and collect it so, after Merran’s first
appointment with a chiropractor in Liverpool, off we went back up to the
outskirts of Halifax – but we called at various other small communities
en-route trying to find replacements for some of the things which hadn’t made
it back into the van at some stage. From Halifax
we headed into Mahone
Bay which has a classic
boat festival each year as well as a scarecrow festival which was in full swing
at this time (even if their visitor centre closed today instead of the
advertised tomorrow). We’d seen a few of the scarecrows when we called into
here on our way to the airport to fill with fuel. I had checked the gauge but
Eric advised me that it’s out by about ¼ so when it shows ¼ full it’s actually
empty. Oops at least we got to the bowsers and it took over 90 litres!!! Merran
and I roamed the village taking in the atmosphere and lots of photos. Around
the next headland is another wonderful harbour with yet another picturesque
town. This time Lunenburg with its famous college building dominating the
scenery as one enters the town. But it’s the old waterfront where the history
is among the warehouses, pubs, shipyards and other nautical buildings. They
even have a four masted schooner (the Bluenose) which takes landlubbers out of
their comfort zone and allows them to pull on this and hang onto that and feel
as though they’re actually sailing the thing – or helping to anyway.
Unfortunately we were running out of light by now so there aren’t nearly as many
photos as one might expect from such a setting. Both Lunenburg and Liverpool were ‘Privateering Ports’ during the time of
the wars which the Americans fought with the British (1776, 1812 etc) and a bit
of that history can be found at http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~jacktar/privateering.html
One
of the other effects of the Americans’ wars with the British was the defection
from America of people loyal
to the crown of the United
Kingdom. Shelburne is one of the centres of
Loyalist settlement which clings to those roots. The Union flag of 1707 (which
was the flag of Britain
at the time and which includes only the St George and St Andrew Crosses) is
flown throughout the town and along roads leading thereto. There are other
centres where the loyalists settled and some sites were occupied by
predominately white settlers whereas others were where the ‘Black Loyalists’
found themselves. The English / British in an attempt to have civil unrest
within America, offered slaves freedom and land if they fled from their masters
and joined with the British forces. Those slaves who did this and who escaped
the fighting, were sent either to the West Indies or to Nova Scotia were the land was issued thus:
Officers and gentry got first (and best
obviously) allocation;
Free settlers from the colonies after them;
Non-commissioned officers next allotments;
Rank and file servicemen;
Free men; and finally
Runaway slaves.
The amount of land also varied and what was
allotted to the last two groups was not sufficient to sustain life so they
found themselves working for others mainly as artisans particularly in the
shipbuilding trades. Wooden craft were built for customers all over the world
at the slipways and yards of Shelburne until the end of WW2, and the town’s
architecture and museums etc all reflect this. On one corner of the town there
are four wooden homes – one on each corner and each was built before 1785!!!!
And still standing. What’s your 1970’s brick veneer, triple fronted, red tiled
bungalows prospects for that sort of longevity he said asking.
Religion
has a great deal to answer for. The Amish and the Mennonites as well as the
Quakers all fled to the New World to escape
religious persecution. As did a group from France
and Switzerland
and they set up settlements in what they called Acadie Because of the wars
between the French and the British, these poor souls were exiled from their
lands by the conquerors. Our first knowledge of them was when we read of their
being relocated from Nova Scotia to Louisiana (then a French colony) and we
wondered if this was a part of the Canadian (more specifically Nova Scotian)
history which had been forgotten and / or swept under the carpet so to speak.
Not a bit of it! Nova Scotia looks like a
figure seven and at the end of the log stick is the port
of Yarmouth, which is where the
Catamaran roll-on / roll-off vehicular ferry from Bar Harbour
brings its cargo. It is also adjacent to Les Pubnicos which is a series of
thriving Arcadian towns, villages and fishing ports. Our campground was at
Middle West Pubnico, and the wind farm at the end of the point was at Lower
West Pubnico and on the other side of
the bay all of the towns / villages were Upper, Middle or Lower East Pubnico. In our driving around, we saw a sign
advertising an Arcadian
Historical Village
so we headed of to see what was there. Since it was now after 15 Oct the sign
read Closed For The Season. We
poked around the sides of the main admin building at the entrance and two
ladies arrived up from the actual buildings which had been relocated to the
site to represent the types of structures built by these hardy folk. They told
the village was closed but there are
some cancellations for the Halloween Ghost tour tonight if we’d like to do
that. Of course we would so all we had to do was dress warmly and be back there
by 1930 for a 1935 tour. It was a HOOT!!! There was even a story behind the
whole thing …. Reuben is missing and you/we are the search party. Every year at
Halloween people go missing and there seem to be more and more wolves and
werewolves so stick together and we’ll search his normal haunts and talk to his
usual friends and associates and maybe just maybe we’ll get some clue of where
he’s gone. It was extremely well coordinated, well done and loads of fun and,
when it was all over everyone got a nice bowl of hot soup and tea or coffee –
all for just $10 each. They have bookings for about 380 – 400 on both the
Friday and Saturday nights with all proceeds going to assist the running of the
museum. There are other pockets of Arcadian population across the Province and
they display their Tricolour with a Gold Star proudly and quite often ahead of
the Nova Scotian flag (which is the Scottish flag in reverse – a white St
Andrews Cross on a Blue Field with the Red Scottish lion on its yellow
background in the centre).
The
week at the timeshare taught us the difference between Autumn and Fall. When we
drove in we took photos from a bridge of the most beautifully coloured leaves
alongside a small lake. One week later there were just bare trees. The little
‘Goldilocks’ cottage we had was surrounded by dense colours of gold, yellow, orange
and reds and there was no way of seeing any neighbours or other details. We
could have been 100 miles away from anyone else (except for the paper boy who
delivered the paper each morning an the firewood man who made a delivery each
morning and another each evening – complete with paper and kindling to restart
the open fire if it had been allowed to go out). At the end of the week we
could see the shape of the hill, the rocks strewn about and the other houses
within fifty metres of where we were. It was amazing to see what a difference
that week made. While in Intercourse, which is the actual name of the town
which Harrison Ford visits in the movie set in Amish territory - “Witness” we
bought a whirligig. Heading out after our fantastic week it was missed in the
packing. It had fallen down off the spare bed in our room (this timeshare had
TWO count them 2 double beds in each bedroom for whatever reason) and neither
of us looked there. About half to ¾ of an hour after leaving we saw an ad for a
whirligig festival and the penny dropped so back we went – just in time to
catch the cleaners as they were about to leave the cottage having completed
their tasks. They had found it and it was returned safely. This was the same
day that we met the ladies who told us of the Haunted Village Tour so the God
of Vacation Practitioners was in her Heaven (again).
In
the Science Fiction / Fantasy novel “Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy” there is
a character called Slartybartfast and he claims that he is responsible for all
of the wriggly bits around the coastlines. (He was particularly proud of his
efforts in Norway).
He had a field day around the Southern Shore in particular and the coast of Nova Scotia in general.
There are inlets and coves and bays and points jutting out and islands and
peninsulars galore. It is stunningly beautiful – particularly when the autumn
colours are out so we were wonderfully blessed by being here when they were
still good. One inlet, river estuary, whatever which leaps to mind for this is
the town of Bear River.
It is on the shores of the Bay of Fundy which
is renowned for the amazingly high tides which happen twice per day there. The
highest tide ever recorded was on the New
Brunswick side of the Bay and it reached 57feet! But
each and every tide is a giant in its own right. Because of this, some of the
buildings in Bear River are on stilts. The
shape of the Bay (like a big funnel with the big end at the sea) is what causes
every tide to be big. The only tidal power generation plant is along the Northern
Shore of Nova Scotia. Somewhere I read that something like 14 million tonnes of
water pass the plant every six hours. There is a phenomenon called a tidal
surge which is a wall of water which is caused by the amount in the wide part
of the funnel being forced into the narrower part. When this wall of water
meets the out-flowing waters of a river or creek, the direction of the flow of
the river changes and this is called a tidal bore. The heights of both the
surge and the bore depend upon the phase of the moon. The bore we saw was about
450 – 600mm high (18 inches to two feet in old speak).
The
whole of Nova Scotia
seems tied to the lobster industry. There are lobster fleets all around the
coast. So much so that there are even harbours built entirely of breakwalls on
otherwise unprotected coastlines. The season starts on 1 Nov and so the
preparations are well under way. Regardless of the winds they will go out every
day from the beginning of November to Christmas because “Everyone wants their
Lobsters for their Christmas parties”. The pots have undergone a change in
shape. The traditional ones were semicircular prisms of wooden slats with
weights to keep them on the bottom, but now they’re all rectangular prisms of
plastic coated steel. Last season’s ones had green coating this season it’s
yellow. The stacks along the roadsides are attractive (and photogenic). If only
I had waited – I could have had a lobsterpot letterbox! What a shame we don’t
need two.
Cape Breton Island is at the point of the seven where the
short stick turns sharply and heads downwards. It is home to the Cabot Trail
which is colour, colour, colour at this time of the year. We’ve missed the reds
but the golds and oranges are a joy. Two of the folks who feature in the
history of the Island are Alexander Graham
Bell and Marconi. Bell because he spent the last years of his life at the town
of Baddeck
and was partly responsible for the first manned flight in Canada
as well as other inventions – like the hydrofoil boat. Marconi made his first
trans-Atlantic transmission from near Sydney to
just near the Lizard in Cornwall later messages
were sent to Ireland to a
facility in the town of Letterfrack
which is where the Sea Breeze B&B we stayed at is. When we went walking in Cornwall with Arnold (Annmarie’s
dad) we saw the spots where Marconi had built towers and aerials while working
there. It was interesting to see the other end of the message so to speak.
The
Fortress of Louisbourg is the largest historic reconstruction in North America. Up to 18 Oct they have costumed staff who
re-enact life within the fort in 1744. After that date there are only some
buildings open and no costumed staff. We had a cold wind-blown but fascinating
visit.
After
the end of September, Canada
should have a sign right across it – like nearly every attraction, museum
campground and specialty store. It would read:
CLOSED FOR THE SEASON,
fortunately, they can’t close the scenery,
even if they can close the facilities near it.
Trish
Bulbeck has shamed me into it so there will be some photos posted – eventually.
