My younger brother Dave moved to Port Saxon, Nova Scotia in April of this year and has continually invited us to make a trip for a visit.  We finally decided to head out that way and confirmed with him that mid-October would be a good time.  So we, watered the plants, fed the fish, packed up the car and headed off.
When I mentioned this to our niece she said that she has a friend living in Barrington, Nova Scotia who is ill.  I suggested that she could hitch a ride with us which she gladly accepted.
Proposed route > Ontario Highway 416, Quebec Route 30, 20, 85, New Brunswick Highway 2, Nova Scotia 104, 102, 123, 103, 309, South Shore Road.

Tuesday 14 October 2014
We departed Ottawa at approximately 09:00 and took a bit of a side trip to pick up our niece at her home.  The trip along the 416 highway to Quebec Route 30, which we had recently learned would take us south and thereby missing all of the Montreal traffic.  Passing over the toll bridge ($4.00) on route 30 we carried on and instead of getting off at the junction of Route 20 we simply carried on.   As it was getting near lunch time we swung off on Route 132 which was only a two lane highway and had lunch in the nice little village of Verecheres in a restaurant overlooking the St Lawrence River.  Both the girls had a chicken Caesar salad while I had nice lasagna (so much for the gluten free).  After lunch it was back along 132 through many more small villages bordering the St Lawrence until we decided to get back on the 30 and hook up with Route 20.  When we saw the next sign for 30 we took the turn to only have the highway run out a short while later and it was back on to the 132 again.  We eventually saw a sign directing us to Route 20 so it was off we went.
While heading east we came to a junction that directed us to New Brunswick so we decided to take this road instead of carrying on to Route 85.  We swung off on to the winding and hilly 289 which took us through more small villages.  As night was upon us the reflection of village lights in the many lakes was quite a sight to see.  I must say that our niece was getting a little worried because we were not on the proposed course and was unsure of just where we would end up.  I reassured her that the sign had directed us to New Brunswick and as long as we were heading east everything would work out.  Of course it all worked out and we crossed into New Brunswick in the dark on to highway NB 120.  We really did reach Edmonton, at about 9pm, along this out of the way route and overnighted at the Quality Inn.  My supper - fish and chips. Weather - sunny and warm.

Wednesday 15 October 2014
The three of us were up early and enjoyed a relaxing breakfast before departing Edmonston.  We connected with Highway 2, the New Brunswick portion of the Trans Canada Highway (TCH) which connects Canada from coast to coast.
The TCH through New Brunswick is basically a 4 lane straight line running north and south which, at times, boarders the St John River.  The original TCH was Highway 1 but Highway 2 was widened and straightened which means a very smooth ride at the posted speed of 110 Km/h.
After missing a possible lunch stop in Moncton we reached Sackville in the early afternoon for lunch in Mel’s Diner.  Mel’s was built in 1945 and no doubt the same decor is still in prominence! Lunch - smoked meat on marbled rye.
After lunch it was back onto the highway to the Nova Scotia border where we stopped to pick up a map and information about the South Shore.  On our way again and we got instructions on where to drop our niece off at her friends.  We arrived there at about 5pm and after a short visit and instructions on how to get on to highway 213 to connect with 103 we were on our way again.
Dave gave us instructions on how to reach his place on Shore Road but we ended up driving past it three times before we finally discovered it.  And there he was waiting on the porch for us.  It would have been much easier to find in the day light but at 9pm the daylight had long disappeared.
Dave’s new place is a wonderful century old home and he certainly made us comfortable and had a soup supper waiting.  Weather - Sunny and mid 20s

Thursday 16 October 2014
I was up early and took the opportunity to walk along Shore Road to the junction of route 309/Port Clyde Road.  Along the way I took a couple of forays to explore along the shoreline. When I got back Dave and Wendy were up and Dave escorted us around his property.  It is quite interesting, on the house side of the road it is about half forest and one quarter gardens.  The gardens do need a bit of work to get them back into production and that is planed for next year.  Walking through the woods we came up a fair amount of bear scat, and Dave explained that the bear had gobbled up all of the apples under an old apple tree and then marked it as his!  After breakfast it was a drive into Shelburne and a walk along the historic waterfront.  A quick stop at Soby’s for groceries and lobster for supper then back to Dave’s for a late home made soup lunch.  In the afternoon it was to Fort St Louis and Baccaco light house.  On the way back we saw four deer in a field which we stopped to watch and then another two further along the road.  In the evening the wind and rain started as hurricane Gonzalo passed off-shore.  Supper - fresh NS lobster.  Weather - Sunny and mid 20s.

Friday 17 October 2014
Woke up to more high winds and rain.  The predicted hurricane Gonzalo was indeed passing us.  Undaunted by the weather we struck out for Shag Harbour the site of a UFO incident in 1967. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shag_Harbour_UFO_incident Unfortunately the museum was closed for the season and the wind and rain precluded much walking around.  From here it was on to Woods Harbour.  Spotted one lonely deer in the woods.  In the afternoon the weather began to clear I put up two bird feeders that I had bought and filled them with seed.  As the weather was clearing it was a trip to Ingomar Beach to watch the waves which turned out to be a little disappointing.  The storm was probably to far off shore to create any great breakers.  Weather - stormy in the morning but bright and sunny in the afternoon.

Saturday 18 October 2014
Up early and went for a 2K run along the road and a .5K cool down walk and scared a deer out of Dave’s back yard.  Felt good after the run.  Blue jays and chickadees at the feeders and a loon out in the bay.  After breakfast it was a trip to Barrington so see the wool museum but it once again the museum was closed for the season.  It was then a short trip to Seal Island Light Museum http://capesablehistoricalsociety.com/Seal_Island_Light_Museum.html  where we had a picnic lunch.
After our picnic it was on to Cape Sable Island which is the southernmost point of mainland in Nova Scotia.  While there we were able to see the drowned forest, and walk along Daniel’s Head Beach, which certainly is different than the Daniel’s Head Beach in Bermuda!  While on the beach we were able to see Sanderlings swooping along the shoreline and two seal frolicking in the waves.  We continued around the island to Clark’s Harbour to see the Stone Church as well as watch the fishermen push a new lobster pen into the bay in readiness for the opening of the lobster fishery.  We met up with two of Dave’s friends at the Dennis Point Café in Middle West Pubnico where we enjoyed a seafood dinner.  Weather - mostly cloudy.

Sunday 19 October 2014
Went to Port Mouton, were we spent our honeymoon 43 years ago.  The area has changed quite a bit, the little store that was across the road from the house is now gone or has been converted into a home and the number of new homes has also increased.  We carried on to Carter’s Beach for a stroll and pick up a few sand dollars.  Then it was off to Liverpool which is the home of the privateers where we had a picnic lunch of Subway sandwiches in Fort Point Park by the Fort Point Lighthouse. Weather - mostly cool and cloudy.

Monday 20 October 2014
Again up early and out for a 2.25K run (13:15) and a cool down walk of .5K.  After breakfast it was off to Yarmouth and the Forchu Lighthouse.  We will have to arrange to make the trip to Nova Scotia earlier in the year because the lighthouse and museum were, like the others, closed for the season.  Weather - colder, windy and heavy cloud but cleared a bit in the afternoon.

Tuesday 21 October 2014
Frost on the ground this morning and a thin layer of ice on car.  Is it because we are leaving that the weather has turned colder.  It was mainly sunny when we departed Dave’s to pick up our niece.  Arrived in Barrington at 11:00 and after saying our good-byes it was back on the road again.  The plan was to stay at a Best Western in Grand Falls but on attempting to check in both Best Western’s in Grand Falls were full but we were given directions to Pres du Lac, where we spent a night on our honeymoon trip.  This time we stayed in the hotel rather than one of the cabins.  Like many other things this motel certainly has seen some changes.  It is much larger than when we were there and it is also now part of the Quality Inn chain rather than being privately owned.  Weather - became over cast in the afternoon and a couple of spits of rain.

Wednesday 22 October 2014
Make your own waffles for breakfast, one of the features of a Quality Inn, breakfast included buffet breakfast. Upon leaving we almost followed the same route home, TCH, NB 120,  Que 289, both these routes are certainly different in the day light, they may be just as hilly and twisty but much more to see.  Once we connected with Que 20 we stayed on that until the 30 and then it was simply a matter of reversing the route.  After dropping off our niece and having a refreshing cup of tea it was home at about 8pm.  Weather - mostly sunny.

Here are the trip stats:
Total kilometres: - the car odometer 3429.2 Kms
Total kilometres: - the GPS 3481.1 Kms
Difference between GPS and car 51.9 Kms

Total kilometres to my brothers by GPS 1746.5 “off the main highway"
Total kilometres to home by GPS 1734.6 “mostly on the main highway"

Total moving time to Dave’s 18 hours 00 minutes
Total moving time to home 17 hours 26 minutes
Total moving time 35 hours 26 Minutes

Difference Time = 34 minutes longer going “off the main highway"
Difference Kilometres= 11.9 Kms longer going “off the main highway”

Another bright and sunny day - two days in a row now I hope that is going to be a good omen for the trip tomorrow but rain is forecast for here and the Maritimes later in the week so will just have to wait and see.

Because it may be a busy day today I didn't do my morning run and besides there is going to be the "Turkey Trot" for todays hash event.  "Spike" has held this event on Thanksgiving Monday for a number of years now and it is always a great day out.  Usually a really mixed up run (well Spike does set it!) through the forest in Orleans and then back for a full Thanksgiving dinner after a fun circle.  [see HASHING for more info]

Wendy is busy making cookies and I got volunteered to clean the bathroom!

Will be going out to the farm when all the chores are done to see if we can pick up some eggs to take to Dave.  I am hoping that there will be a couple of blue ones now that those chickens have started to lay on a more or less regular basis.

A little Thanksgiving Trivia:
While some researchers state that "there is no compelling narrative of the origins of the Canadian Thanksgiving day", the first Canadian Thanksgiving is often traced back to 1578 and the explorer Martin Frobisher. Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Pacific Ocean, held his Thanksgiving celebration not for harvest but in thanks for surviving the long journey from England through the perils of storms and icebergs. On his third and final voyage to the far north, Frobisher held a formal ceremony in Frobisher Bay in Baffin Island (present-day Nunavut) to give thanks to God and in a service ministered by the preacher Robert Wolfall they celebrated Communion.
The first official Canadian Thanksgiving occurred on April 15, 1872, when the nation was celebrating the Prince of Wales' recovery from a serious illness. By the end of the 19th century, Thanksgiving Day was normally celebrated on November 6. However, when World War I ended, the Armistice Day holiday was usually held during the same week. To prevent the two holidays from clashing with one another, in 1957 the Canadian Parliament proclaimed Thanksgiving to be observed on its present date on the second Monday of October.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving

A nice bright sunny day so was out for a short run in the morning.  One thing I did notice was the frost on some of the front lawns which is a sure sign that autumn is upon us and winter will not be far behind.

Speaking of winter not being far away we put the patio furniture away.  Took it all off of the deck and stored it under a tarp beside the house.

Plus a few more little odd jobs to get ready for our trip to Nova Scotia on Tuesday:
patio swept
some plants brought in
Wendy discovered handle on toilet broke and toilet 'running'
to the store for bird feed and handle for toilet plus plates at the $ store to use under indoor flower pots
filled bird feeder to find out one of the ’stoppers’ in a hole was gone - niger seed all over the ground
search for and finally found stopper and fixed
fixed toilet
watered indoor plants.

Put more photos up on picasa and I think that the buttons on the photo page here will link to them.

Here it is Saturday and the Thanksgiving weekend.  We are going to be having our Thanksgiving dinner with Don, Shereene, Mieka, Adrian and the in-laws to-day.  The original plan was to have it tomorrow but Don has somewhere else to go so it was changed to today.  No doubt they will be arriving just in time to sit down and eat.

I didn’t do my run this morning, ended up taking with Cynthia on the phone about our upcoming trip to see Dave.  I was chatting with her yesterday and mentioned that we were off to Nova Scotia.  She has a friend there who has cancer and it ended up that she will going down and coming back with us.  We will drop her off with her friend and then carry on to Dave’s.

I pulled the last of the tomato plants and planted garlic in that section.  I put in 3 rows of 3 different kinds of garlic, 1st row Elephant from my last year’s crop, some kind of red that we got at the Carp farmer’s market, and a row of Red Trouche from my last years crop.  I should have counted the number I put in but the only one I did count was the Elephant and put in 13 cloves.  Used 2 garlic bulbs from Carp but the second one was not good, a bit of rot in it.  My red should be ok.

 I managed to get my morning run in today but only did 4.22 Kms.  I had wanted to do at least the 4.3 that I did yesterday but for some reason I just had to take the break.  I think the headwind had something to do with it.  No matter I still did it and that is what really counts.

Put some photos up on picasa but haven’t sent the link to anyone yet.  One of the problems will be finding a site where I can put up a lot of my photos.  Most of the sites have a limited space unless you pay big bucks for more storage.

Went out for a chilli supper at Pat and Cheryl’s to get caught up with Don Gautier who is visiting from Vienna for a friend’s wedding.  Had a few glasses of wine and even had some bread and crackers.  Suffered for the gluten intake later,  Before going to bed I took one of my yellow pills ‘just in case’ but that didn’t seem to work because later I had to take some Gaviston as well…

 I managed to get my morning run in today but when I put my GPS on I found out the battery was dead.  I must have left it turned on after I had uploaded the data the other day.  And I even went farther today.  Instead of stopping running at Weston/Sanderson I mistakenly continued on to Weston/Arch with no ill effect so I suppose that will be the usual route until I push it up to 5K.  I measured the extra distance using google earth and it was .33 K so the full jog was 4.33K.

Poached up the two blue eggs for breakfast this morning.  Wendy had the larger on and I had the smaller one plus one more.  I think that even the white may be just a very, very light shade different.  Don’t believe there is any difference in taste.

Went and got my hair cut this afternoon so that will make it all set until the end of November.  Will need to get one then for the upcoming Hash Posh Nosh in early December.

Last I did manage to get the photos edited that I had put up earlier and then uploaded some more from the first days in London.  I will go and edit them now.  Well just add captions to some of them and delete the duplicates.   I thought the easiest way to do them would be to put them all up and then delete rather than sorting them out and then uploading them.

There was supposed to have been a blood moon at dawn this morning but there were two reason that I could see it; 1 I was still asleep and 2 it was completely cloud covered. It is called a ‘Blood Moon’ for its red hue caused by sunlight scattering off of the Earth’s atmosphere, the lunar eclipse was the second and last to be seen in 2014

I wonder when the weather is going to get a little bit better.  Cool, rainy and very windy this morning so no run.  Darn, I am going to have to give this fair weather running and get back into doing the real thing.  I suppose if I was really adamant about it I would go out in the afternoon now that it is at least a bit sunny..  Will have to see just how I feel about it after supper which will be in a little while.  But, I don’t think that I will.

After doing my FaceBook and weather it was off to Old FARTS at the Vanier Legion for lunch with the boys.  A small group today with only 9 of the regulars there.  I did give Barrie his usual egg order though.  Lunch was a green salad and short ribs in a honey garlic sauce with roast potatoes.

On the way home we hit one patch of gusty patch which was blowing the leaves all over the place and bending trees over.  I just checked and the 4pm weather said that the wind is 43  gusting up to 57 Km/h.  Now that is just a bit breezy so I guess it will be wait till tomorrow to go out running.


Will do a bit of work on this site after supper and put up some more photos of the recent Europe trip.

Another dull and dreary morning with lots of rain and at times high winds so no run again this morning.  It seems as if I am turning out to be a fair-weather runner. Oh well the 8 K run last night may have made up for some of it.  If you check out the stats I don't think I did to badly at all.  There were lots of checks to get caught up or a bit of a rest but I managed to run it all - at least I mean no walking except the odd time coming back from a false trail.

Went to CFS Leitrim for the bi-monthly GAGGLE of ex-291ers.  It is a good get together and a bit of time to spin some yarns with old 'ship mates.'  Sadly there were six who would no longer be able to make it to another GAGGLE.  One of those that went was Bob Enns, we were in Alert together, he was a really nice fellow and one of his hobbies was oil painting.  I have a nude that he painted for me on that trip to Alert.  I gave him a magazine photo and he copied it.  That will have special meaning from no on.

After the GAGGLE, Bernie Forget drove me there and back, Wendy and I headed back out to the farm to check on the chickens and once again pick up some eggs for sale tomorrow at Old FARTS.  There were 12 today including one small blue one.  Took the blue one out of the dozen and put in one of the brown ones from yesterday.  Now we have two blues so we can have one each.

This evening worked on the hash trash and getting caught up here.

     While I am a little late in entering Monday's entry the reportable events are still relevant.

The day dawned, if there was any real sun it was not to be seen, dull and rainy.  Consequently I did not go for my usual morning jog.  Well it wasn't just the weather because I knew that I would be out for the usual Monday night hash (see hashing).  The morning was taken up with the usual weather statistics and my FaceBook posting and in the afternoon it was a trip out to the farm to check on the chickens and pick up any eggs to sell at the hash.  As it turned out there were 15 eggs, including one blue one, so we had a dozen to sell.  While there  young Adrian came out to the barn, "Grandpa, Grandpa look what we got!" and it was a blue egg.  He was walking so carefully so as not to drop or break the egg and so excited to not only get one but to show it off.  Wendy and I decided that the one we got we would keep for ourselves.

In the evening it was off to the hash, hosted by Dodgy Princess. (see hashing, hash trash)

HASH #1568 TRAIL MAP

MY HASH TRAIL STATS:

  Not very much going on today.  Did my morning run but had to take a bit of a break in 4 kilometre portion.  I also added a another  entry - a comparison of the last four runs.

     Now trying to work on this site, getting some info about the Hash House Harriers so that anyone reading this, who does not know about this infamous group, will gain a bit of insight.

     Usually we alternate Sunday dinners between our place and with our son and his family but so far have not heard anything from him so supper is being started for the two of us.

TODAY'S RUN