Today was a bad day.   The weather man had promised sunny skies all day today.  We woke up to overcast skies – again.

But….by the time we had been on the road for awhile blue sky appeared with some very interesting white and grey clouds.  This is what caused the bad day because it was a perfect day for photographs – and I took almost 300 of them TODAY!  And you are going to see lots of them in this blog because I want you to see the lovely places we saw. (I recently discovered that if you click on the photos in the blog they will come up full screen if you want to see any of them in a larger format.  My sister figured this out already, but I thought I would pass it along in case any of you didn’t know; like me.)

It was our last day before we reached Halifax and we had three stops planned.  None of them were historic; just pretty places.  And pretty places they turned out to be!  Oh my, did I have fun.

The fishing village of Lunenburg is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It is the best surviving example of a planned British colonial settlement. Under the protection of the British Government, in response to an advertisement in European communities, several hundred people (431 from an area of France, others from several German states, Switzerland and Holland) came to the New World for a new start in 1753. The lot descriptions of the land parcels were written on playing cards and chosen at random by the settlers.

We had a great view of the town from the top of the hill at the golf course parking lot, then we parked the truck in town and wandered down to the wharf to see the Bluenose II (the Bluenose is the sailing schooner on the back of our dime.  She was undefeated in the Fisherman’s Racing Cups – she sunk off the coast of Haiti some years later).  Bluenose II is undergoing a VERY expensive refurbishing – cost overruns big time  – by the Nova Scotia Government.  The two ships were made in Lunenburg and made the town famous among sailing racers.

Remember my comment awhile ago about the how I liked all the brightly coloured houses in the Gaspe?  Well Lunenburg had them beat!  Everywhere you turned there was colour.  (And some nice dogs too.  I met a very nice white Standard Poodle name Frisco and an English Bulldog named Otis who loved to have his back scratched. I can always take time to visit with a dog.)

  Some Dory boats  WI and WWII Memorial   Model of the Bluenose

We drove south of Lunenburg about 8 km to see Blue Rocks, an area where the rocks are supposed to have a bluish caste.  The light must not have been right because they just looked grey to us.  It was a beautiful little bay though – very popular with kayakers.

After we left Lunenburg we drove along the coast to Mahone Bay where we stopped for lunch.  There are three churches side by side at Mahone Bay (and a fourth one back in the trees) and on a sunny day the reflections in the waters of the bay are stunning.  When we were there conditions were not quite right for the best shots, but it was pretty anyway.

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45 km west of Halifax you will find the quintessential Maritime village of Peggy’s Cove.  Just west of town is a memorial to the victims of the Swiss Air plane crash in 1998.  A huge granite rock was cut in half and each half was inscribed.  A path through lichen covered boulders leads you to the memorial overlooking the Atlantic where the plane went down.

The lighthouse at Peggy’s Cove is considered to be the most photographed lighthouse in the world.  It is built on solid rock.  All of the buildings at Peggy’s Cove are nestled among huge granite boulders.  The place is swarming with tourists.  The population of Peggy’s Cove is about 100 people; fishermen and artists mostly, but there were probably 500 tourists clambering over the rocks and having their picture taken in front of the lighthouse.  But…oh my, oh my was it beautiful.  I could have stayed there all day.

 

Note the name on the boat

And…. in the parking lot at the Visitors Center was a white Ford truck with an Ontario license plate.  The truck had been purchased at Hanna Ford in Collingwood, ON.  We drove by that dealership when we stayed at Blue Mountains last month and I pointed it out to John saying I had to take a photo of the sign.  A Hanna Ford  dealership!  John’s family only bought GM products when he was growing up and he still likes General Motors.  My family however drove Fords.  My dad and his brothers bought Fords exclusively for over 50 years. Somehow John managed to leave Collingwood without passing that car dealership so I couldn’t get my photo.  Well I have one now!

Today was a fabulous day!  We saw so many beautiful bays and inlets as we drove along.  I was constantly snapping photos out the window and asking John to slow down here, or please stop here.  We did make it to Halifax in time for dinner.  If you take the main highway from Bridgewater to Halifax it is about 94 km.  We took the winding coast so we traveled an extra 100 km.  Still, we left our hotel in Bridgewater at 9:45 this morning and checked into our hotel in Halifax at 6 pm.  Not too bad really.  Yes, it was a bad day all right.  I hope tomorrow is another one just like it!