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Dateline : Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia, Canada. September 7th, 2007

First - shoutouts to Great Aunt Pookie who's nephew just welcomed a new daughter today. Abby

is very beautiful and is doing well. I'm sure she's got a Texan accent already!

Wow, wow, wow, what a day! Just when I thought it couldn't get any better - along comes the

Marine Route. More on this later.

First, we awoke and headed off towards Halifax this morning. No problem in finding it and we

even found parking right on Lower Water Road - which is the boardwalk and waterfront center.

We had a yummy lunch at Murphy's On The Waterfront. Scallops for turtlex, Fish and Chips for

pookie. We hung around the waterfront for a couple of hours. Watching the weird metro-boats

ferry folks across the harbor. These things look like giant bumper boats and were kind of a

hoot to watch. They zoom back and forth and you really expect them to hit the wharf and bump

back out into the harbor.

From Halifax we started toward Port Hawkesbury along Route 7 which is the Marine Route (

whereas yesterday we followed the Lighthouse Route ). This roadway has got to be the most

beautiful I have ever driven. Around every corner is a new and beautiful inlet, a sleepy

cove, another quite fishing bay. It is stunning. I am loving Nova Scotia. I love the

maritime history and flare of the place. Working lobster fisheries dot the small townes, and

every house has it's own fishing boat. What a place. Simply beautiful.

Today, also, we score not one but two geocaches. These are our first geocaches outside of

the United States of America. We have gone GLOBAL!!!

A quick note about something we saw yesterday in Shag Harbor. We're driving down the road,

marvelling at the sights when we see a sign indicating "Site Of The 1967 UFO Incident". To

which we responded, as I'm sure you just did, "What 1967 UFO incident?". Well, I had never

heard of such a thing and I'm an X-Files fan from way back. Anyway, a bit down the road we

saw yet another sign but this time for a 1967 UFO Incident Museum. Wow. I was impressed

until I saw this "museum"...which you could also call "a carport" or "an interesting use of

a small garage". Needless to say we did not stop for a visit. Maybe next time. Anyway, this

1967 incident is apparently where a UFO crashed into the local harbor. If you're really

hungry for the details - you can look them up on the web. Because, you know, if it's on the

internet, it really, truly happened!

Tomorrow we head to North Sydney to catch the 4pm ferry to Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland.

It's a four or five hour trip. This ship is bigger than the one we took from Bar Harbor (

Bah Hahbah ) to NS. We're really looking forward to the trip. It's some good downtime to

read and plan things to do. Also, this ship has an arcade, a lounge, in addition to cafes

and movies! Neato.

Oh, one more thing - I have no clue what time it is. I think I'm an hour ahead of the East Coast, and two hours ahead of Texas. Now, I believe Newfoundland is like 30 minutes ahead of now. I'm a little dizzy and this is starting to sound like math, so I'm moving on.

Okay, so from this point on, I'm not really sure how much internet access we'll have. We're

staying overnight in Port Aux Basques, and then heading to Gros Morne National Park for two

days. We hope to get some geocaches there, and do some bike riding.

Let's see - the tentative plan after that is :  Get back on the ferry to NS. This time,

we're travelling through the night and have a small "cabin" booked. It's basically a place

to lie down. From disembarking - we're travelling through New Brunswick and back into the US

around Vermont or so. We have more NPS stamps to get and then onto Perkasie. Whew! What a

vacation.

As always, friends, I will post whenever I can. Hope all is well.

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