Rafting down the Thompson

'Tis my friend's vacation time; he figured he'd take time off and yet had little desire to go or do anything far from home - while every other travel bug I know is screaming to get as far away from the daily routine as possible.  "Why sit by a pool drinking in Mexico when I can do the same thing here?"  Maddening, yes I know!
Yet he came up with this bright gem, to go white water rafting on the Thompson River up the canyon here in BC.  He'd never been rafting before.  I'd only been rafting once with my mother down Montana's Snake River when I was 14, so I was eager to go again.
Many were invited, yet only he and I went.  We departed at 6:30am to reach the Kumsheen Rafting Resort near Lytton by 10am.  It was nice to see the sunrise.  A few kilometers south of Hope we narrowly avoided hitting a bear as it ran across the highway, it ran into the truck behind/beside us but I didn't see it on the road so I hope it's okay.  It made me think that everyone everywhere should have a number for wildlife rescue saved into their phones, because how do you search for that quickly on a highway? Just out of Hope we encountered fog; deep river valley, autumn morning fog.  It slowed our progress, the turn of roads revealing just fragments of scenery like a story unfolding only as fast as a storyteller can tell it; a few close rocks or trees here and there, all that drop off steeply into grey below over the edge of the road.  I knew we'd have a different view coming back home the other way, so I enjoyed it for what it was.
We got to the rafting campground in time, set up tent, went rafting; we'd got the paddle+motor package and got both boats to ourselves since no one else signed up for that day, so we paddled the slower parts in the morning and had a great view of the sculpted canyon walls and green/grey water and it was still pretty quiet, some easy rapids.  We saw a lone female Merganser, one of the few waterfowl that don't mind the fast-moving water.  Saw an eagle, and a dying salmon that lingered near our oars.  It was a a gentle beginning to the day yet I felt giddy.  This is just so nice!
Lunch break was at their kitchen/dining hall facilities, simple make-your-own tortilla wraps.  Perhaps it would've been more elaborate if more guests had been there, but this was fresh and simple and one wouldn't want a heavy weight in their stomach going over the next stretch of white water.  I had tea and that suits me fine.

After lunch we were on the larger power boat, which just ploughed right through the cresting waves, I laughed so much I couldn't keep my mouth shut and kept getting a mouthful of water, tasted clean and wild.  Water held on my eyelashes that I could only brush away once we'd cleared the rapids, so much I saw with one eye open and just enjoyed feeling the bow of the boat drop and get pummeled.  My friend had a GoPro camera recording on his helmet so I trusted the footage would be fine to review later.  For now is just feeling the thrill.

The trip ended where the Thompson meets the Fraser.  I'm sure that had we paddled the silt-brown Fraser that water wouldn't have tasted as nice.  A van returned us to the resort.
The resort and town of Lytton itself is busy for the River Days on the labour day long weekend, but alas we were at the end of season.  The hot tub didn't seem as warm as I'd hoped, the restaurant was closed and we drove further onto another sleepy town of Spences Bridge to find food after 7pm.  Retired to our tent early for lack of anything else to do, but didn't sleep as the trains on either side of the canyon ran frequently as well as the large trucks with their engine brakes.  In the morning while we found a couple of geocaches in Lytton, a woman at the visitor's center confirmed you'd have to be quite far from town to escape the sound of the trains.

View from the back of our campsite, looking left...

and looking to the right.  Note how close the train tracks are.

As in our Sasamat lake floating excursions, we are always on the lookout to refine and improve for next time.  Next time we'd like to come during the River Days, when there's a live music stage in the center of town.  Next time we'd like to have more people to get the group discount and play cards with in the evening and make big-batch camp cooking worthwhile.  Next time we'd like to be far from trains. 
But I was happy with this time, just the way it was.

Out east to Nova Scotia

Thick sculpted clouds as our plane lands.

Late summer finds another trip to Nova Scotia began with a tight weekend schedule including a wedding on McNabs Island, followed by a casual reunion of high school friends, and then a mad dash across the province (yes it's a skinny province) to a small, beautiful old town, Annapolis Royal.

McNabs Island
Despite being in busy Halifax Harbour, McNabs Island seems like a very vast and remote space when you're there, quiet and wild.  Perhaps because it's only accessible by boat (limited ferry service, mostly private arrangements), and there's no facilities for visitors once there, just a simple tenting campsite and hiking trails.  It's a provincial park with rich history including a 1920s carnival, a soda pop factory, a cholera quarantine/cemetery, and several military bases.  The old building foundations marry into the surrounding nature like poetry, accessible to anyone who discovers them.  We had great weather for a friend's wedding and took a brief, easy geocache walk before ensuring that we were on the dock to then be on the dinghy to then be on the boat that would return us to shore.  Great way to start off our touring/exploring vacation.  Being a rather long island, we haven't hiked even half the distance so far so we will be sure to revisit sometime.

Annapolis Royal

                       
We stayed at one of the many bed+breakfasts here - the houses are gorgeous Victorian homes, many with heritage status, and I suppose the best way to keep up maintenance costs and property taxes is to turn them into businesses as well.  Annapolis Royal is in a geographically ideal end of the fertile Annapolis Valley (formerly apples, now increasingly wine) and a shallow harbour.  Annapolis Royal started out as a French fort/trading post Port Royal followed by a Scottish settlement across the water where the main town is now, both that have been fought over and captured by the French and English many times over.

After geocaching around the French Basin marsh, we had a very nice dinner that served local seafood with a European flair, hence I got scallops+spaetzle with gruner veltliner wine.

The highlight here was a graveyard tour of the garrison cemetery in Fort Anne, hosted by a high member of the historical society, who issued each of us candle lanterns and led us carefully around the grounds.  Easy walk on a warm night, this wasn't a spooky ghost tour, but rather a fantastic delivery that really brought the history to life through the stories told by these headstones.  Informative and engaging, this is a must-see to gain a full appreciation of the town, that really sets it apart from any other small town of funky boutiques and art galleries.


Then we had a day or two rest at our home base in Sackville, near Halifax. Time to chase around friends and family and scheduling and plannning our whereabouts, with a brief bout of bushwhacking geocaching.  Then onwards further northwest;

Spencers Island, Cape D'Or, and Joggins
I will treat all three of these together, as that visit was a very brief blur: we had intended to meet someone at home who wasn't there, and had commitments bookending this mini-trip.  It was late afternoon by the time we got to the Masstown Market, an excellent place for lunch, snacks, groceries, imports, crafts and gourmet foodie delights.  'Twas a hot afternoon I had spent geocaching, dehydrated and eaten alive by ravenous mosquitoes, so I felt instantly restored by a margarita ice cream.   Mmmmm, creamy limey goodness...

This is the last landmark as we depart from the main highway and take the old highway 2 then onto the old 209  that follows the coast of the Minas Basin.  Here are tiny towns all seemingly similar to one another with one road in/out, a church and volunteer fire hall, convenience store, and not much else.  Signs warned us to be sure we had enough gas, as the next stop wouldn't be for a long drive.  These were feeder towns to the larger town of Springhill that was a coal mining town.  The land is scrubby low-bush blueberries, I'm not sure if anyone owns them, and lush green forests over hills.  The shore drops off in cliffs of layered ancient geology that was once part of Africa, and we lost sight of the land on the other side of the Minas Basin as the sun softened the horizon.  It seemed like the end of the earth (the 'end' would be Cape Chignecto Provincial Park, where a friend was out on a camping trip at that time.  More on him and his mushrooms later).

We arrived at our B+B at Spencers Island - a small community on the mainland that views Spencers Island itself, which looks quite uninhabited - at around 7pm, the owner was friendly and helpful and there's no restaurant to eat in that town at that hour, or the next town Advocate Harbour, so she called ahead to a fella that runs the restaurant at the lighthouse and told him we'd be on our way.  "Be kind, he's understaffed tonight". What followed was a twisty drive on gravel/dirt road in dying daylight with the wall of fog rolling in, ending in a lighthouse that because of the foghorn we could hear more than see, and a restaurant that shined like a warm beacon for us.  The poor fella inside was indeed very busy but his meals were excellent, I had a poached salmon with dill sauce and vegetables, and shared a dessert of rhubarb crumble.

Looking west, same cliff, less spooky.

Looking west.

A hot steamy shower soothed my mosquito bites.  Bed felt good.
Morning was a homecooked breakfast and a walk along the rocky beach while the tide was out, then to drive again the road we took last night to the lighthouse to geocache and enjoy the view.
Back to the 209 as is comes away from the coast and skirts the provincial park and wilderness area, turning north.  Barely any other traffic, no wildlife, just green and a couple of small communities.  Onto Joggins.

Joggins is a slightly bigger town, with more than one road, and most notably a state-of-the-art environmentally green building housing the museum for the famous Joggins fossil cliffs.  We hit the beach and follow along - but not too closely - cliffs that are steadily chipping away with every season or storm, revealing more fossils.  Not every one is a dinosaur of course, this is from the Coal Age of ancient swamp and sea bed and our eyes adjust to the rocks we recognize what to look for, the darkish stains on grey that are patterns of grass or other plant structure.  Some were giant slabs we could walk on, these fossils are protected but there are many similar beaches around where I could just imagine some homeowner loading up her 4x4 with slabs of fossils to use as decorative paving stones for her walkway...
Minding our time we hit the highway and made it back to Sackville in time for dinner reservations for my obligatory Nova Scotia lobster dinner.  Love me some lobster.

After this we went to the cottage in Chester, and a cabin... in the middle of nowhere, sorta close to New Ross.  This is time to see family and had a great time moving slowly without much rush at all.  Biggest note here was the wonderful summer storm at the cabin, with much booming thunder, hard angry rain and a peculiar and uneasy hue of yellow in the sky that no one's camera could truly capture.  You just had to be there.

Lunenburg

A quick drive from the cottage bring us to Lunenburg, home of the Bluenose that graces the face of our 10 cent piece.  Once a great racer she's been resurrected for sailing tours at great expense and plagued by safety codes bringing an ancient icon into the modern age.  I got to walk aboard while she was in harbour.  Lunenburg was a main shipbuilding port for dories as well, the red boatsheds a famous landmark.
The houses are mostly heritage homes, all done in bright ice cream colors that cut through even the foggiest days.  We had good weather while we were there as the storm had passed.  We had beer+oyster happy hour at the Old Fish Factory then crossed the street for sushi at the Rumrunner Inn and Restaurant because they advertised a dessert that caught the eye. Alas the dessert was made daily and sold out by the time we got there at barely dinnertime, yet the sushi was fresh and well composed and the service was excellent.  I'll be sure to note them for my next visit.


(Big) Tancook Island

A small island community with ferry service but we took a private boat over, making great time in favorable sailing conditions.  I loved just listening to the gentle lap of hull cutting through water, I don't even need music or conversation, just that tranquil not-quite-silence.
Great weather for a walk and plenty of geocaches for all ranges of skill level.  The mosquitoes hid in wait for us in the woods just off the dry hot road.  Met two characters on the island that were as different as night and day.  Quirky, friendly island folk.  Had scallops+chips, in years past they'd been battered but are now just lightly pan-fried.  The primary restaurant serves no alcohol, so hope you weren't hoping for beer on a hot day.

Leisurely evening at the cottage, then found ourselves in an annoying gas shortage that had us scrambling to find fuel to get back to Debert - right near Masstown where we'd been just a week before - the only place  private/recreational pilots can fly from in NS.  We flew over the old 2 and 209 we'd just driven by car, but the further we progressed west we found more cloud.  By the time we had abandoned the planned route the cloud had found us and swallowed us altogether, much like someone who doesn't like dogs tries avoiding dogs, only to be pounced on by a friendly happy slobbery one.  Yep, we're in a cloud now.  We spotted land again over the Five Islands without crashing into them, and a good time was had by all!

Grand Pre

Bounce back across the province to Grand Pre, we're always glad to visit a family out there.  They have an old farmhouse that's been renovated just enough to be a beautiful functional mix of modern convenience and proud heritage.  Their yard is huge with plenty of gardens for veggies and herbs, grapes along the trellis, and chickens.  When I visit them I somehow rekindle the thought that I too can DIY from garden to table all sorts of ambitious projects!!!, though realistically I'm sure they just make it *look* easy!
The men went out shopping for local corn at one roadside stand and to get nice steaks from his favorite butcher, and we ladies left them to catch up on the year and reminisce about college while we went out geocaching.  We'd introduced their daughters to geocaching last summer, and they're a pleasure to have.  We found three geocaches and were foiled by a fourth before we returned for dinner.

This friend has gone camping at Cape Chignecto and came across wild chanterelle mushrooms, happily harvesting plenty an having them positively ID'd by the farmer's market expert, that was our highlight of dinner.  Lightly sauteed in shallots and butter and balanced on baguette rounds.  Then onto salad and corn barbecued outside, seated at the backyard picnic table.  Likely the most well-crafted dinner of our trip.
Even the coffee in the morning was foamy and strong and unmistakably _coffee_ that I wouldn't bastardize with heaps of anything-to-make-coffee-not-taste-like-coffee.  Breakfast was fresh eggs from the hens that lay more eggs than the family of four can eat, so we were sent home with a dozen as well as some of their homegrown garlic.

Our friend made many of the information signs posted around Grand Pre, we drove out to see them and it was great to see how much of this land that had been brilliantly reclaimed from the sea by aboiteau construction, likely the largest endeavour outside of Holland.  We sought a geocache that was at the historic site at Grand Pre, I'd never been there before but it's a beautiful spot loaded with the sad history of the Acadian deportation.  This was inadvetantly our third UNESCO heritage site on this trip.  Great to walk the grounds and enjoy the gardens, the church there is a very pretty token though isn't a functional church and I'm told it's about 1/5 the size of the original.  Someday I'll get around to reading Longfellow's epic poem "Evangeline".

So with a couple of days left winding down in our trip we retire to the home in Sackville and attended a lecture in the downtown Halifax library on natural disaster prediction (mostly flooding) and preparedness.  The library is a newer building, open and bright, and as I left the lecture walking past the small selection of books and magazines in foreign languages, it occurred to me that I like the sense of libraries.  In an age where media is pushing opinions on you and advertisements are pushing products on you, here is a peaceful oasis where no one idea/agenda demands any more attention than another.  They're all just spines of books facing you, not splashy billboards or glaring lights, and you have to seek them out for them to be discovered.  Books are displayed like offerings all free for the taking, that may or may not catch your fancy, ready to be found or smoothly passed by.  As well, lectures are interesting and free, and the staff are eager to help.  I should spend more time in libraries.  I tried relaying this on to someone else, who brought up that libraries will let you take e-books out on your account and they can be viewed straight from home, no need to come to the library at all! - I think he missed my point.
We ended the trip with a weekend at the cottage in Chester, the weather is sunny and we enjoyed the pool. Then I returned to Vancouver on the heels of a big windstorm, typical autumn weather.