Exploring Eastern Canada

Hello!

(Reminder: you can click on the photos to enlarge.)

This post is a little late since we were interrupted by Hurricane Irene.  Stormy weather made us cancel church.  Instead we watched sheets of rain come down, with some wild winds...enough to blow down branches and entire trees.  These branches and trees fell on lots of power lines, so our neighborhood lost power from Sunday to Wednesday.  Kind of made me realize how much I enjoy and depend on electricity!

But BEFORE that.  We took an exploratory driving vacation to visit the Maritime Provinces in eastern Canada: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island!  Kind of a send-off to summer, I suppose.  Since then we have started up again with school, seminary, soccer, volleyball, ultimate, homework, and the whole rest of the hamster-wheel routine.

HIKING.  We started the trip at the northern tip of Nova Scotia, at a place called Cape Breton.  It rained on us the whole drive up there, but once we arrived the rain tapered off a little so we could hike, then the next day was even sunny.  They have some beautiful national parks, and some pretty amazing coastlines.  If you time it right you can watch the sunset right on the ocean horizon.  Hmmm...actually the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the one side.  That's where we were.

WHALE and SEAL WATCHING.  We also took a whale-watching tour--always so much fun to take a boat ride out on the waves!  We saw two whales, and then he took us to some caves along cliffs, where there were quite a few seals.  They played in the water for us, and when we started to leave, they lined up next to our boat and "raced" the boat for about a minute.

MOOSE SIGHTINGS.  There are huge moose wandering around in these national parks.  We saw a mom and her calf off to the side of the road at one point, and then at the end of our hike this one was grazing on leaves, pretty nonchalant that we were even there.  We watched her, then walked slowly by and got within about 10 feet of her, I'd say.  Here are David and Teresa walking by her.

RVers and MOTORCYCLES.  It is certainly popular to see Canada via RV and motorcycle!  Even in the rain, you see the motorcycles in groups or just 2 of them, taking in the beautiful scenery.

FERRY OR BRIDGE TO PEI.  "Prince Edward Island" is too long to keep writing and spelling everywhere, so the abbreviation is "PEI."  PEI is a very manicured, neat little island.  We took an hour-long ferry across, then upon return we took the (get ready for this) SEVEN-MILE-LONG BRIDGE.  Whew!  It was such a long bridge!

PEI LAWNS AND MUSSELS.  Everybody takes care of their lawns and grounds--funny that I remember that so well.  All the lawns were groomed and well-taken-care-of.  Otherwise it is a fishing island where they grow mussels -- betcha didn't know you could actually grow those??!  They have ropes strung out across the water with boxes hanging from them.  It takes 22 months or so for them to grow to maturity.  They space out the timing so they can harvest them for the restaurants every month or so.

BIKE RIDING.  One thing you "have" to do on PEI is rent bikes and ride.  Anywhere--everywhere!  You can actually ride across the whole island, all 115 miles or whatever it is.  That would take 5 or 7 days, and sorry but my rear end would be way too sore.  So we chose a beautiful 6-mile stretch and stopped on the bridges to watch marine life and birds.

ICE CREAM.  Another thing you "have" to do on PEI is eat ice cream, since there is an ice cream place on every corner of every little tiny town.  We stopped after our ride and ate our obligatory ice cream.  One of the kids even got a banana split.  Yum!

BAY of FUNDY.  After PEI, we drove to the next Province over, called New Brunswick.  (It's like driving through states here.)  This is where we saw the Cape Fundy rock formations and cliffs.  Cape Fundy has a low tide and high tide difference of about FORTY FEET.  It's true!  At high tide, you see these cool rock formations, and at low tide you see the same formations, only twice as big because you see that there is another 30 or so feet of them below where you could see before--the bottom was just covered in water.

People can walk on the sand around their bases, but as the tide comes in the park guides walk through and usher people out.  The water rises and fills in and upward, pretty high and pretty fast.  It's really cool.  Here are 2 photos of the same rocks.

It was educational for me to find out there are 10 provinces and 3 territories in Canada.  Embarrassingly, in my university Geography class, we had a quiz at the beginning of the term and (gasp) I could not even name 3.
Now, we can say we VISITED three: Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick.  Other provinces are Quebec, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Ontario.

Three territories are: Yukon Territory, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut.  Nunavut was established in 1999!  Yes, only 12 years ago, they formed the territory of Nunavut, governed and managed by the Inuit people--native people of Canada.

Well I have indeed spent more than my allotted time on this week's blog!  Hope you could make some sense out of your rather quick tour of the Maritime Provinces.

Have a great week!  Kari

It Was a Week

Hola!

It has been a week, not an extremely pleasant one, but sometimes life happens, right! Frank is in Argentina and Brazil for last week and next, so he can only call every other day. So of course there were house/renter issues to deal with, and car repairs that couldn’t wait! Ugh.

(Automobiles are those Necessary Evils we must deal with…how disgusting, to put hundreds of dollars into a car repair or maintenance, only to then be able to…drive it away, which it seems like you should have been able to do ANYWAY??!?!)

My friend Audrey reminded me in her blog, however, that there are also bright spots of my week, found in photos and scrapbooking. So I thought I’d share a few pages I’ve been working on. (THIS is what I do some nights after the kids go to bed, and I give myself an hour or so of computer time to edit photos, organize, and create. Meet my therapist, Dr. Photoshop Elements…)

Above are 3 pages: Kara’s baptism, some beach fun in Playa del Carmen last Thanksgiving, and David’s scout group in Mexico City last year. The kids’ books have 8.5 X 11inch pages, and our Mexico book will have 12X12inch pages.

Have a great week! Love, Kari