Why are you going? Storytime!

So, in my previous posts I showed a little of our timeline for our trip out east. It was definitely a hard trip to schedule, but there were really only 2 things that I really wish I had done differently, which is not too bad considering one was added after (and one was because I had scribbled on my calendar to many times and had lost a day. How even?)

Why are we going? Eldest is going to a Scout camp outside of Halifax, and being a prairie family who has never been further East than Niagara Falls, we all wanted to see what our Atlantic Provinces had to offer.

ferry with containers at night
View of the ferry from our "short" crossing from Cape Breton to Newfoundland. We loaded near midnight
We did research and found out what our “musts” and “that would be nices” would be. Never having been there, it was from things that trickled through collective consciousness (like Peggy’s Cove and Bay of Fundy), web searches, and talking to friends. It was a surprisingly fairly short list that is probably longer now than before we started, especially since we only stayed one day in any place, and most places can take a lifetime to explore completely.

How did we figure out our schedule? Well, we had a couple hard dates; sending eldest to camp, and picking him up. We also had a few “stiff” dates – there were options, but not many of them – for the ferries we wanted to take. The short ferry to Newfoundland runs daily (or twice daily), but the long ferry only runs twice a week. And it made more sense to start at one end of the island and go around, than to try to end at the same point. Also, we wanted to see St Pierre, preferably a day trip, which was only twice a week as well. That with travel time was complicated. Because of the dates that worked best in Newfoundland, and our hard dates from the camp, we had to see the rest of our sites in between – which unfortunately resulted in much driving between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (which is beautiful, but still).

As I mentioned, I had a couple regrets – I somehow lost a day, so we could have stayed out an extra day (or taken an extra day coming home). Since we had two long days on the trip home, that would have been much appreciated. Also, we decided to do tidal bore rafting (which is amazing!), but we didn’t realize that the trip would be in Nova Scotia – and we were staying in New Brunswick. And driving around Bay of Fundy is less easy than you would think when you are used to prairie and steady rivers. 
 
See you later!
Shaunna

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