Across The Bay of Fundy to Nova Scotia

It looked pretty bleak when I first looked out the window this morning, fog so thick that I couldn't see the end of the parking lot. The weather gods were on our side again though because by 10 o'clock, the skies had cleared and we were blessed with another near perfect day.

The front of the ferry opens to let the vehicles in

Today was sailing day as we had booked passage on the ferry across the Bay of Fundy to Nova Scotia and a whole new round of discovery. It is a 45 mile crossing that takes 3 hours on the ferry, The Acadia Princess. The terminal was quite a busy place with a lot of motorcycles, cars and walk on passengers. After we boarded we found our way to the 3rd upper deck where we had nice seating in a lounge and access to the outside decks to do some whale watching. Unfortunately, we didn't see any but we did spot a few schools of porpoises.

There were a lot of motorcyclists making the crossing from St. John to Nova Scotia today

School of porpoise

We had a couple of porpoise sightings during the crossing.

The coastal view of Nova Scotia is impressive

The view as we approached Nova Scotia was quite beautiful. I had heard how it had these great rock faces and was not disappointed.

Gilbert's Cove Lighthouse

The "light" in the lighthouse

After we got off the ship it was off on another coastal ride to the south and Yarmouth. One of the features of Nova Scotia that we all want to check out os the  lighthouses. It was not long into the trip today that we came upon the Gilbert's Cove Lighthouse, which overlooks St. Mary's bay and was built in 1904. Unlike the lighthouses that we see in movies, both that we have seen so far have been just small houses with a 2 or 3  story tower that houses the lamp. This house had a fixed red kerosene fed lamp that was 4 feet above high water and could be seen from 7 miles out. The light was maintained until 1965 by two generations of the Melanson family when it was converted to an untended electric lamp. It's neat to see how this family lived in the small house (there were 5 children) and to climb up the narrow stairway to the light.

The ride to Yarmouth took us along the coast and through several coastal towns. Since there is no evident manufacturing or commerce, I always wonder how the people who live in these towns make their living. One of the more remarkable things that we noticed are that several of these communities had these huge churches, almost as if they built them in competition with each other.

We got to Yarmouth just in time for dinner. Charlene was off to visit relatives and Cherif (Skip) and I found a nice waterfront restaurant for dinner. It will be an early start tomorrow as we have many miles of exploring ahead of us.