We had a full calendar for August until, you know, what happened. Best laid plans, as the saying goes! So, instead of receiving back-to-back house guests with intermittent camping trips, which necessitated cancelling, we spent the month convalescing and not swimming, making sourdough bread, eating fresh fruits and vegetables grown by our favourite farmers, going to physio and working on a design project for the Northumberland Fisheries Museum.
Precisely one-month post fall, Julie hobbled with Christian on one side and a cane on the other into the ocean. Bliss! Post fracture inaugural swim, Hélène and Kajetan, who we met at a Harvest Host in Ontario in 2022, spent a night in their campervan in our driveway en route to Cape Breton. We spent an enjoyable evening and morning catching up on life since our last meeting.
Just after Labour Day weekend, our friends Julie and Ted, who we met during our first year on the road, arrived for a long overdue reunion from Baltimore. We laughed, ate, toured and laughed some more. We took them to the Pictou Agricultural Fair on their first night here because who doesn’t love an old-timey country fair?! Enticed by the advertised parade, it was more of a procession of serious-looking 4H Clubs entering the arena. Julie and Ted are exceedingly good sports. Ultimately, the horses, cows, chickens, vegetables and jams were more exciting than the advertised parade. The fun didn’t end there. We showed them around Pictou County, over to Antigonish and Cape George and finally to the big smoke, Halifax. We’ll always be reminded of Julie and Ted whenever we see extra-long strawberry Twizzlers. We sincerely hope it won’t be another ten years before we see them again.
We happily resumed camping, spending five days at three different campgrounds on PEI in early September, all with views of the ocean. We travelled west to east, crossing via the Confederation Bridge on the way there and returning to Nova Scotia by ferry.
The first campground was Linkletter, just outside of Summerside, because we love camping directly beside the Northumberland Strait, at sea level, where we could hear the surf all night long while breathing in the sea air. In the morning, we could see the fishing boats and the bridge connecting PEI to New Brunswick. We revisited Samuel’s Coffee House, the PEI Handpie Company and the Fox Den. We stocked up on coffee and tea at Samuel’s and filled our freezer with a cornucopia of hand pies for our friends Andrea and Dian back in New Glasgow. We bought ourselves cozy recycled woollen mittens at the Fox Den, which have already been well-used.
We explored a part of PEI we had never been to, the northwest shore, where we camped at Jacques Cartier Provincial Park. We barely scratched the surface of this culturally rich, bountiful hub. It is the home of the Lennox First Nation and rich Acadian Culture, Cascumpec Oysters and the Stompin’ Tom Centre. The red surf and landscape, incredible sunrise and sunset, Malpeque Oysters, and delicious produce grown by Heart and Soil Farmstead make us want to return.
Our third campsite was in southeastern PEI. From our site overlooking the Northumberland Strait, we watched the ferry travelling back and forth between PEI and Nova Scotia and towering brightly lit cruise ships moving between Charlottetown and Newfoundland. We swam at the beach at Panmure Island and visited and photographed the lighthouses at Panmure Island and Point Prim with our pinhole camera. We watched the sun and the moon and ate woodfired pizza from Bar Vela Pizzeria—cool nights and days warm enough to swim in the ocean. Glorious last days of summer spent doing what we love.
Three more trips to Cape Breton followed, the first of which was with our new friends Roz and Jim. It’s not often we intentionally travel with others, but we did a clockwise tour of the Cabot Trail together.
We were in our campervan, and they were in a tent. It was their first time camping in a tent in decades. As the week progressed, the nights and the days became much colder. It turns out tent camping in Cape Breton in late September is not for the faint of heart. The van became a refuge when it was just too cold to eat outdoors and a place for them to warm up. You learn a lot about people when conditions aren’t optimum, and what we learned about these two optimistic, extremely good-natured people is that we’d travel with them again in a heartbeat.
Seeing a place we love through others’ eyes was also fun. Of course, we spent time in areas that were new to us, too. It was our first time camping at a campground slash oyster grower–a campground with a glorious view of Aspy Bay and the North Atlantic Ocean beyond. From here, we explored the coves, beaches, overlooks, and harbours on the east side of the cape. The oyster bar cum campground office is the perfect place to sample the bivalves that this Dingwall family has been growing since 1985. We’ll be sure to return during lobster and snow crab seasons. While at Hideaway, the temperatures dipped, and there was also rain. Roz and Jim wisely opted to rent one of the unserviced cabins overlooking the ocean, which was most certainly more comfortable than their tent. We highly recommend stopping at Salty Rose’s and Periwinkle Cafe in Ingonish, where we enjoyed an incredible lunch. Of course, if you aren’t camping, they also offer accommodations.
Julie’s aunt and uncle decided on a last-minute 2100 km drive from Windsor, Ontario, to New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, to see us at the start of October. Of course, we showed them some of our favourite haunts and caught up on a year’s worth of face-to-face visits. The highlight of their visit was checking an item off Uncle Marvin’s bucket list. We took them to Burntcoat Head in the Minas Basin to walk on the ocean floor of the Bay of Fundy. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the highest tides in the world occur in the Bay of Fundy. The highest average tide here is 47.5 – 53.6 feet!
“When I’m abroad, I brag of everything that Nova Scotia is, has, or can produce; and when they beat me at everything else, I say, ‘How high do your tides rise?'” – Joseph Howe (1804-73), Politician for Hants County
One of the best things about living where we do is how close we are to Cape Breton. On (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend, we popped up to Big Spruce Brewing in Baddeck for the day, ate yummy Rose’s smash burgers and Trick Dough’s doughnuts, sampled their excellent non-alcoholic beers, and listened to two great bands as part of the annual Celtic Colours. It was a beautiful day, and the weather ran the gamut from bright sunshine to pouring rain, with the trees in top form showing off their colourful foliage.
We closed the camping season in Nova Scotia at the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, squeezing out every last drop out of autumn. Every visit to CB is different. The weather, the tides, the season, the nooks and crannies we discover, and the desire paths we choose to follow are the changeable ingredients to unique and memorable experiences. It was a last-minute decision to take advantage of the final camping weekend of the season at the National Park. It also happened to be the Cabot Trail Food Truck Rally, which was the icing on the weekend cake. We went not once but twice to what might be our favourite Nova Scotia food destination, Fish out of Water in Margaree. We left with full tummies, happy hearts and snow falling in our rearview mirror.
Though health concerns were at the forefront of our lives for the final three months of 2024, we managed to fit in a few trips to Halifax, including Nocturne, a city-wide outdoor art experience in the vein of Nuit Blanche.
In between visits to the ER, we managed a 36-hour trip to Port Mouton to visit our friend Lise. Sunshine, wide and smooth white sand beaches with turquoise waters, colourful houses, and a surprise sculpture park at the back of a garden centre were highlights. A smattering of day trips and explorations on the north shore filled the remainder of the year.
As the year ended, we joined our friends Katherine and David around the fire to reflect on the continuous cycle of growth and renewal. Fire symbolizes purification, transformation, and destruction, breaking down the old to make way for the new. Like the mythical Phoenix, we fed the fire of our fears, anger, sadness, and self-pity to raise us from the ashes stronger and more resilient. We emerged determined to stop worrying about the future and unwilling to let uncertainty get in the way of Living. We’re ready for and counting on a healthier year ahead. Our motto for 2025 is Hope is our Super Power.
