Sunday Drive… on Monday

It was another beautiful day – windy beautiful day – so we went for a drive to see the ocean. We went south towards Sherbrooke. Just before Sherbrooke we turned off to the east. We stopped in Port Bickerton at their Lighthouse Interpretive Centre. For $3 each we got to drive up to the lighthouse and lighthouse keeper’s building. Port Bickerton seems to have a lot of proud people living there. Their fish processing plant is no longer in operation (other than their refrigerated area that is used to store shrimp for another facility until shipment). The government was going to use the area to store PCB’s but the town turned it down. Instead, together with the provincial government, they embraced their abandoned lighthouse facility and turned it into an interpretive centre. I imagine all of the people working there were probably volunteering. There lighthouse is operational, but all automated of course. The buildings where the lighthouse keepers and his assistant and both of their family’s lived were boarded up, but they opened them up, fixed them up, and rebuilt the top lookout above the big house where the old light was kept. I bravely even climbed up the extremely steep steps to look out. Our 70 year old tour guide told us of the shipwrecks he knew of during his time and when his dad was a boy. Luckily no loss of life. I have photos, but they’ll have to wait until I graduate away from this yucky dial up.

After that we headed to Country Harbour where we had to board a barge like ferry to cross the waterway. There are several of these little ferries around Nova Scotia. I imagine they’re much cheaper than designing, building, and maintaining fancy bridges. It was only $5 a car. We ate the lunch I packed while we sailed the few minutes across.

We then headed to Canso. The road goes through many small coastal communities. I don’t know what people do to survive in these towns now that so many of the fish processing plants and such are closed. Even many of the corner stores were long closed.

The highway follows the coast. It is very bumpy and very curvy. Great scenery though. Canso dates back to the 1600’s!! It has large old buildings, but overall the town seems to be on a drastic decline.

After Canso we headed up to Guysborough. This town was very nice looking – it even had pretty shops that were open today but we kept driving. We headed back north to Antigonish and filled up with gas (and finally remembered a jerry can for the lawnmower and trimmer!) before we headed back home.

The man who was acting in Jeff’s new position for the last year stopped by our house. Nice fellow. He lives on this lake, and so does the man who retired from that position after 30 years, and so does another colleague from the office to the north of here, AND two retired RCMP officers! Popular place!

So it’s evening now. I would love to share some photos with you but they will have to wait. I took some of the brown bunny who is often in our yard. You can get within 10 feet of him. I think he thinks we can’t see him or something. I don’t think the dogs have spotted him yet.

Jeff is busy polishing his boots and ironing his uniform for his first day on the new job tomorrow. I hope he can sleep tonight! Hopefully I won’t go too squirrelly being home alone all day with no Internet to pass the time. I’ll have to unpack more or something!