My Last Travel Post from Nova Scotia

    Hi everyone. Happy mid-week to you. Today I am sharing my final trip post from back in September when my husband, our 2 dogs and myself visited Nova Scotia. Time has flown by and that trip was now 5 months ago. Wow. Much of this post is about our last full day, and then I added some photos from our ferry trip back to Bar Harbor.

   We started our day in the Halifax area, and we ended our day back in Yarmouth. Although we needed to be in Yarmouth early the next morning to get the ferry back to Bar Harbor, we had the whole day to travel between Halifax and Yarmouth. 

   If you look on the above map, the red dots are places we stayed and the open green dots are general areas we visited. Halifax in the red dot just above the C in the words Nova Scotia. Yarmouth is  the red dot on the furthermost left (plus you can see the arrows where the ferry traveled to and from Maine).  We didn't have tons of miles to travel that day, but at the same time we did have some exploring we wanted to do.

   We started by taking a little drive around Halifax, and then we decided to drive to Peggy's Cove. The suggestion for Peggy's Cove came from a brochure we picked up at the hotel where we stayed in Dartmouth/Halifax.

   The drive down to Peggy's Cove was quite scenic. My hubby even turned off on a few side roads so I could take some photos. 

    These next 2 photos are from one area where there were these 2 photogenic  "sheds" or boathouses.

    Before we arrived at Peggy's Cove itself, there was a pull off. I knew right then and there that the lighthouse was going to be a little too crowded for me.

   There must have been at least 5 tour busses there as well as many cars. But we did find a parking spot, and we were there, so we just went with it.  I wonder if we had arrived at a different time of day if it would have made any difference.

   However, as I mentioned,  it was a little too crowded for me.  Too bad too because it was such a pretty spot. With a little walking and driving onward we did find some  spots that weren't such a mob scene. 

    I'm glad these people (in this next photo) went with bright yellow for their house.

   And after that, we were back on the highway until we saw a sign for Oak Island.

   Have you seen the show called  The Curse of Oak Island? Supposedly there is buried treasure on this island. That has been the belief since the late 1700's at least. The present treasure hunters are 2 brothers from Michigan and their partners. Plus they have a crew with archaeologists, hydrologists, geologists,  and other specialists. As of the date of me writing this post, they haven't found much treasure, but the archaeological items  have been pretty interesting.

   There are island tours on the weekends, and I asked my husband a couple of times, pre-trip, if he was interested in a tour. His answer was no, and since the tours aren't cheap, I never booked them. Of course, when we then ended up looking across Mahone Bay to the Island, he was wishing he hadn't said no. However at this point the tours were all full.

    We discovered we could drive onto the island. However you were limited to being in the parking lot at the end of the causeway.  For the hubby, that made up at least  a little bit for not going on a tour.

   If you've seen the show, here's the causeway going onto the island.

And here it is in the other direction.

    It wasn't the most exciting sight we saw, but it did make my husband happy. Now he can say he's been there.😏

    From Oak Island we meandered to the nearest "big" town called Mahone Bay. We had a really lovely meal at this Pub.

My fish chowder was amazing.

And right outside the pub were lots of boats for my husband to ooh and awe over. 

   Then the day was getting on, and we had an early morning ahead. We were off to finish our trip with a night in Yarmouth. 

   The next morning we caught the ferry known as The Cat home. The ferry left at 9-ish in the morning, but you needed to get there between 7-8 AM to line up. You can't just show up when the boat is closed up and ready to leave.  And just a note, there is only 1 ferry a day in each direction. It runs between Bar Harbor, Maine and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia  ( I trip per day in each direction) between May and October, but you would need to check the dates if it was something you were interested in. 

 The dogs were ready for their long morning nap. 

The ferry heading home was pretty full, and this trip we parked up on one of the top ramps.

The views leaving Yarmouth Harbor in the morning were really lovely.

   The trip back to Maine was relaxing. From our table we played along with some trivia, I read and warmed up with a chai tea latte.

But I had to watch out for sea monsters at the window...hee hee! 😛

And before we knew it, we were back in Bar Harbor.

  The hubby and I are  actually talking about doing this trip again sometime. Well at least some of this trip. We've been to almost all of the Canadian Provinces in the general Maritime area except Prince Edward Island and Labrador, so we thought Prince Edward Island  might make another good road trip with the dogs. I would also like to explore more of the Coast between Yarmouth and Halifax. And I would love to see the Maud Lewis art in Halifax too.  We will see what time brings, but we may take this trip sooner rather than later. 😉

   I hope you enjoyed some armchair travel to Nova Scotia. Thanks for following along.

   

   

T Stands for Ups and Downs, Highs and Lows

    Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. And if you are stopping by for T day over at  Bleuebeard's and Elizabeth's blog, happy T day to you also.

    Last week was kind of an emotional and strange week. I had some work done on my car, and it cost me less than I expected, so I was happy about that. I met some friends for lunch one day and that was fun too. My husband went back to work after being out for a few weeks with a herniated disc in his back. His sciatica still isn't 100%, and he's still going to physical therapy, but otherwise he is doing much better. Plus, going back to work means he is now semi-retired and working only 3 days out of the week. This is all good. 👍😀

   But then the call came that my mother-in-law was starting to fail. The hubby and I headed over to Portland, Maine where she was in a nursing home and gathered with his 2 sisters and one brother-in-law to say our goodbyes. That was a really exhausting and sad day. She passed the next morning.  My mother-in-law had a great life, but at 92  she had dementia and was no longer very mobile. She was never happy having to be in care facilities, but she needed too much full time care not to be. Her passing is therefore sad, but in another  way a blessing.

  Plus we had  a bit more snow and some more extremely cold weather with wind chills making it feel like -20 degrees F/-28 degrees C. What a week.

  Enough babbling. Here's my drink for T day this week. It's time to toast my mother-in-law. We all knew she would wish she could be with us sharing a margarita.  Even though at times she and I didn't see eye to eye, she was a lovely woman, and I will miss her. I hope she is in a much better place now.

 That's all for me. Have a super T day and week ahead. 

Sunday In the Art Room

   Hi everyone. I hope you are having a lovely weekend. It's gotten bitterly cold again in my area. I think even colder with wind chills than the cold weather we already had. 😨 So much for February being a bit warmer- ha ha. But I will say it was up around the freezing point last week which almost felt like a heat wave. 

  Today I am joining Nicole for her Sunday in the Art Room  and also Gillena for her Sunday Smiles . Plus since I have some art journal pages to share, I'll be linking a up to Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's Anywhere,  Any Place, Any Time with Anyone challenge at Art Journal Journey.

   When I go away on a trip, I like to collect bits and pieces of things like brochures, napkins, postcards, feathers, postage stamps, stickers...you can get the gist I'm sure.  When I come home I love reliving the trip and making a travel journal. I not only get to use those bits I picked up but lots of other supplies I already have. 

   My last trip was this past September when I visited Nova Scotia for the first time with my husband and our 2 dogs. This past week I finished my travel journal from that trip. Hurrah! I had 90% of it done before the holidays, but it was time to complete it. I thought today I would share a few spreads from it as it's the art I've been working  on for the last couple of weeks.  

   Sometimes I make my own journals and bind them together, but this time I went for a 3 ring binder. And I finally discovered some printed paper that was the perfect cut size, heavy enough to actually work on and that wouldn't leak through. It's taken forever to find this. (FYI-it's the 6x8 sized paper from 49 and Market.)

   The left side of the above spread is a postcard that I cut the edges off of. The right side of this spread above didn't use any trip pickups but instead used some paper scraps, a sticker, and old mesh scrap I found in my stash, as well as some other items I had on hand.

   And Ha Ha. Did you notice the poop bag box side on the left.? It's another one of those bits from the trip. 😏

   The leaves on the left are stamped and fussy cut, and the old postmaster sticker was in my stash. I did buy the Cat ferry sticker. I added a bit to the actual ferry ticket folder on the right side of my spread, and I mounted the dashboard car notice (the yellow pets on board) for the ferry ride on the red paper before adding it to my journal.

  Finally for today, my left side background is made with part of a bag from when  I bought some stickers at the gift shop in Acadia National Park. And I used one of those stickers on the page also. The right side is made with  some items from my stash. It is about my first trip back to Bar Harbor, Maine after 15 years (and so many changes).

   Before I end this post I have to ask if anyone is going to watch the Superbowl? I know some of you are probably not interested in football at all, and some of you probably aren't happy your team didn't make it, and if you live outside of the US, perhaps you have never even seen or know anything about American football.   I am excited to watch the game tonight because after a  bad start to the football season, The New England Patriots shocked us all by making it to the big championship game. I think most of us feel that even if they lose, we didn't expect them to get this far this year, so just making the Superbowl is fantastic. (But I wouldn't put it past Drake Maye.) 

   The weird thing is the last time the Pats played the Sea Hawks in the Superbowl was 2015. Strangely enough that year  my husband was in the hospital with both kidneys having failed (and this year it's his back). Plus that year we had a brutal winter just like this year. I know that because since the hubby was in the hospital I was home stuck shoveling out the snow... 😬 That year the Pats won in the last few moments of the game. I hope there's more than just coincidence, and that win happens again tonight. Go Pats!

    Whether you are watching tonight or not, and whether you like the Patriots or not, I hope you have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.