Another lap around Nova Scotia

Prologue
After I got back from the Trans-Lab and Nova Scotia last September my long suffering better half Donna told me that she has always wanted to see Nova Scotia and that I had been informed of that many times. You guys know what that means - Time to plan a trip to Nova Scotia. This will be Donna’s first multi-day trip on a moto. The plan evolves. To save her from the rigors of a long slog up I-95 I will ride ahead with all the gear packed and she will fly the next day and we will meet in Bangor ME. I will be carrying all her stuff (except what she will be riding in) on the bike so when she gets off the plane we will be ready to roll.
The Baroness ready to go



Starting out.




I leave Annapolis at 5AM and the temperature is already 80 degrees. It could be a long day! The ride is pretty uneventful as I head north. Is there a worse slab for a motorcycle than the New Jersey Turnpike? If there is I want to avoid it. To skip NYC I trade the turnpike for the Garden State Parkway and the Tappan Zee Bridge. I take 84 through Connecticut and 90 into Mass. Things are going great till I get on 495 near Boston. Things come to a virtual standstill. My feet are on the ground as much as they were at the last gas stop. Zumo has a detour feature and I decide to see what that will do. Looks good as I movel quickly on the back roads and then all stop again. Construction and an accident create another back up. I get back onto 95 and crawl along through New Hampshire and into Maine until the first toll booth on the Maine TP. 2 ½ hours to go 86 miles. Yuck. And I notice that my EZPass does not appear to be registering at the toll plazas. That should prove to be interesting when the bills arrive. But eventually I get to the motel in Bangor.




The adventure begins tomorrow when Donna arrives and we head for St John NB and the ferry to Nova Scotia.

Nice Marty.

How fabluous! We did 4 of the 11 Byways coastal routes (Evangeline Tour, Lighthouse, Marine Byway, cabot) on NS last year and had a blast. Actually, the best lighthouse (Baccaro Point Lighthouse) I have EVER seen was a little south of Cape Negro.

It even had a working fog horn, and it was soon remote and errie that day. Infact, if you do follow the Southern tip up the atlanic side, you will see some other fab lighthouses. The tourist trap one (Peggys cove), is worth a 10-min photo stop and that's about all.

I hope you are planning to spend a day in Lunenburg and Mahonoe Bay? Shelburne had a quaint little historic area with some very nice museums. They were even working on making this Dory boat and let us sink a few nails..



Here the RR if you need other ideas..

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=610031

Very cool and by giving her a fly/ride, her experience will hopefully lead to many more!
Congrats on having her want to share with you.


Bob

I'm in. Baroness eh? Nice name for the red girl

One of my favorite places to ride.Light traffic beautiful scenery friendly people and some of the best scallops I ever had,enjoy!

The first order of business was to find the Bangor Airport. Not really that hard to do as Bangor is not that big.
Bangor International Airport terminal





USAIR gets there on time.

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(True Story!) Donna asking the security guy if he had seen someone on a red motorcycle in the area as I was standing there taking the picture.


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We get on the road and head east on Rte 9. This is a good road for riding &#8211; some hills with passing lanes to get by the18 wheelers and RVs, some curves, and a decent road surface. Donna&#8217;s hello was prefaced by a demand for food so we stopped at this place about 30 miles down the road.

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Very cozy and VERY friendly staff


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Food porn

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The burgers are excellent &#8211; recommended<o></o>
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Then we were off to find Canada - that&#8217;s not hard either. Stay on 9 to Rte 1, then right to Calais (not the one in France) and then turn left at the sign to the International Bridge. The border crossing was so uneventful that I did not have time to get the camera out. I did stop right after the border to take this shot of a memorial that has grown to remember WWI, WWII, and Korea.



Then it was on to Canada 1 to Saint John. 1 is turning into a super slab when there is no construction in progress. The hard part is remembering that 110KPH is top speed.<o></o>
I managed to lose the directions to the B&B where we had reservations so we wandered around Saint John till we found someone who knew where Douglas Street was. (don&#8217;t ask about GPS &#8211; all my Canada maps have disappeared and I didn&#8217;t check that before I left Maryland).

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Where we are staying

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Views like this earn points toward 4 week solo adventures.<o></o>
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Local story - at the restaurant a local comes in and the hostess asks if it has cooled off yet. He says no. And I am wearing long sleeves for the first time in months. It's all relative.

Tomorrow it&#8217;s the ferry to Nova Scotia and South to Yarmouth.<o></o>

Oh yeh, this is going to be good...

Lakota,
Bet you had fun uploading those maps last night.

Marty, I'm following.

Enjoy the ride! Let's plan to get together for breakfast when we all get back and swap stories.

The plan was to take the ferry to Digby, NS and then ride south to Yarmouth. The problem with a ferry is that whole day is driven by the ferry schedule. The ferry left at noon and they want you there an hour+ early so morning options are limited. After the B&B breakfast of eggs benedict we loaded up and headed over to Reversible Falls. They are no really reversible and seeing it happen is not an event but a process. The force of the tide in Bay of Fundy is so strong that when the tide comes in it forces the river to flow backwards and the rapids change direction. To see it happen you would have to get there just before slack water and see the results as the tide changes. Too long to do and really not worth the effort. Anyway a few pictures from the overlook. A neat place with jet boat rides through the rapids.










Then up the hill to Fort Howe monument, built during the American Revolution to defend St John from the revolutionaries. St John is one of the place Loyalists went after the War.




Another view of our B&B, this time from the Ft Howe monument


Then it was off to the ferry terminal to wait.





Terminal Building




Motorcycles waiting to load




The Princess of Arcadia coming in from DIgby


Bikes on the vehicle deck



A few shots from the boat








Downtown St John



It is about a three hour ride across the Bay to Digby. After two hours the destination is discernable.



Finally one can see the terminal.




Eventually we get off the boat and head to Annapolis Royal. Being residents of Annapolis MD for the last 30 years it seemed a mandatory stop.




Annapolis Royal is important because it was the first permanent European settlement in Canada and because it is one of the few towns of its size without a Tim Hortons

A shout out to my friend JaxObsessed from the SMIBs and Maryland Tag-o-rama.



After Annapolis Royal a fast run down 101 to Yarmouth. No traffic at all. Felt the road belonged to me.




Tonight’s stop





Food Porn
Cream of Mushroom Soup



Chicken coconut curry



Seafood medley




This is from the motel’s dining room. Stay or eat here if you are in the area.

Tomorrow along the coast to somewhere north of Halifax.

I am from Nova Scotia.If you get to Lunenburg,stop at the Knot Pub for a bowl of mussel chowder..its to die for. From Yarmouth to Halifax on the lighthouse Route along the atlantic shore is one of the nicest roads in the Province.I have lived in New Market,Maryland the last 20 years.All my family still live in Nova Scotia.Have a safe and wonderful trip.

thanks John
however we got to Lunenburg in the middle of a thunderstorm and it is still coming down
will eat here and look for the Knot Pub on the next pass

You know the day has the promise of being interesting when you are on a moto trip and are awakened by thunder at 0400 and the lightening and rain continues unabated until 0700. Probably the longest continuous thunderstorm I have experienced. Another revelation is that traveling and staying at B&Bs brings a different dynamic to the riding day. Usually I am up and out the door before 0700 and have breakfast 80 miles down the road. This trip, breakfasts have been at 0800 and the ride starts about 0930. And on top of that I greatly overestimated how far we would ride today. Looking for lighthouses is time consuming.
But I digress. We were on the road at 0930 and the first stop was the light house at Yarmouth Bar.




Then it was back into Yarmouth and onto the Lighthouse Trail. We spent most of the day on Rte 3 and only got onto Rte 103 when forced to by the road planners. The difference is Rte 3 is hilly, twisty, and full of interesting things to see. Rte 103 is wide, mostly straight, and the only thing to see is roadkill.

One section of Rte 3



On the way to the next light we came across the oldest courthouse and gaol in Canada




The we found the oldest parish church in the region




And yet another monument to the war dead.




A UFO sighting was made here in 1967



you can read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shag_Harbour_UFO_incident

Then it was on to Bacarro Light and a lot of fog.
Nice two up on a touring bike road










The sign is not lying when it says hearing protection is necessary. It was loud and I had earplugs and my helmet on.

Probably a really nice view in clear weather.



The next light was Sandy Point – now decommissioned. Allegedly you can walk out to it at high tide.







The into Shelburne for lunch at the Scotia Diner




Food porn – a scallop burger. Yummy!




Then it was on to Port Medway and the last light of the day



Some coastal views





The skies were threatening and we debated about rain gear and decided to chance it. At Bridgeport the thunder and lightening started and we stopped at a Shell Station to gear up. The ride to Lunenburg was an adventure with lots of standing water and big bow waves from oncoming cars. We decided enough was enough. It was 5:30 and we had ridden about 240 miles in 8 hours.



We stopped here.




View from the room





This is what the rain was like.



Food porn
Seafood chowder



Scallops and bacon



Lobster Salad sandwich




And the advrider fave – pie- this is coconut cream pie





Tomorrow we do get north of Halifax, I guarantee it.

Well I said we’d get north of Halifax today and we did. But it wasn’t a whole lot of fun while it was happening. The rain started before we got started and is still coming down as I type this 7 ½ hours later. The pain associated with digging the camera out of the tank bag in the rain meant there were not a lot of pictures taken today.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
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We started out on the Lighthouse Route headed towards Halifax. Along the way we saw the signs for Oak Island. I have been fascinated with the stories of buried treasure associated with Oak Island since I was a teen-ager. Pirate treasure, flooding tunnels and excavations, millions spent with no success. What could be better;. I had to see it. So we took a four mile detour and got to here. It is a private island so we couldn’t go farther.



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Oak Island is a 140-acre island on the south shore of Nova Scotia. Located 200 meters from shore and connected to the mainland by a modern causeway, the island is privately owned, and advance permission is required for any visitation. Oak Island is noted as the location of the so-called Money Pit and the site of over 200 years of treasure hunting. Repeated excavations have reported layers of apparently man-made artifacts as deep as 31 meters, but ended in collapsed excavations and flooding. Critics argue that there is no treasure and that the pit is a natural phenomenon, likely a sinkhole. There has been wide-ranging speculation amongst enthusiasts as to who originally dug the pit and what it might contain. Later accounts say that oak platforms were discovered every 10 feet (3.0 m), but the earliest accounts simply say that "marks" of some type were found at these places.<SUP> </SUP>They also say there were "tool marks" or pick scrapes on the walls of the money pit and that the dirt was noticeably loose and not as hard packed as the surrounding soil.<SUP> </SUP>One expedition said they found the flood tunnel at 90 feet, and that it was lined with flat stones.<SUP> </SUP><o></o>
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About here it really started to rain. I have ridden in heavier rain but never in a rain that was this heavy and lasted this long..
Halifax turned into an adventure trying to follow the GPS and watch traffic in the rain. Crossing a high bridge the rain was complicated by a HIGH wind. And then on the other side was a toll booth. Yet another comedy of errors. Pull to the side of the road in front of the toll plaza and dig around under the rain suit to find a dollar. Eventually we got through.<o></o>
North of Halifax we took the Maritime Route to Sherbrook. This is a great road for motorcycles. On a dry day I would take the Maritime over the Lighthouse every time. It has everything to keep a rider happy. And there are probably great views too but I missed them concentrating on the road in the rain. Donna says it is a nice ride.<o></o>
Eventually we decide we had enough and stopped in Sherbrook.



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<o>You can't beat this palce. Nice people. Great food. And even though they don't have a guest laundry theyy did ours in the laundry they use for the inn and restaurant.</o>
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Eventually everything leaks and today was no exception. The only gear I have issue with is my “mui” expensive Shuberth C3. It had worse fogging issues than any other helmet I own. Back to the dealer when I get home.<o></o>
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And to quote Frenchy750 – Best day ever!<o></o>
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Tomorrow Cape Breton and the Cabot Trail.<o></o>
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Thanks for the preview. We are headed there in two days- last time was about 28 years ago.

Unfortunately we are trailering the bike (SWMBO's request) At least I can bring the bicycle and get some early morning rides in before we go "touristing"

We have a cabin rented on Folly Lake- nw of Truro. Day trips on the RS from there.

Hope we all have good weather.

John