I have now published eight stories about our trip through the Maritime Provinces of Canada, plus at least two others focused on our preparations to come. At this moment, I am sitting in a red Adirondack chair at Cape Forchu on the western most tip of Nova Scotia. I am looking out at the sea across a pile of rocks and some seaweed at a lovely seascape with a large white with red roof lighthouse that has been here in one form or another for almost 200 years. It is 98 feet high and boasts a 1 million candela powered Fresnel lens that can be seen for 30 nautical miles in all directions. It is only one of 185 lighthouses in Nova Scotia. The lighthouse is set in the midst of 19 acres of what is called Leif Erikson Park. It is not known for certain, but suspected, that the place Erikson landed when blown off course on his way to Greenland, may have been Nova Scotia, a place he labeled as Vinland due to finding some grape vines. The city of Yarmouth has taken the liberty of claiming Leif as their own, and why not? This is certainly a place worth stopping to enjoy the scenery.
To me, that seemed like the essence of the Maritimes in one moment. As for the ride, while I always think you see more on the back of a motorcycle than in a car, I can’t really commend the area as as riding destination. The roads were decent quality for the most part, but they were just not that interesting to ride. Not enough turns and spectacular scenery like on the coast of Turkey or Croatia, or northern Spain for that matter. In fact, for pure riding pleasure, I think the Southern California roads near me are more interesting.
We saw some lighthouses and some rocky coastline, but again, I’ve seen nicer views in lots of places. Unfortunately, what might have been the best roads and views were in the Highlands area of The Cabot Trail and we happened to encounter that during the one bit of fog/mist and rain during the whole trip. Otherwise, I’m particularly glad to have seen PEI and the lovely town of Charlottetown and some pleasant bits of coastal Nova Scotia. While I am not really in the bucket list game, this was a bucket list place I wanted to see, so I’m glad to have seen it.
This was also a test of my interest in motorcycle ride trips and I’m glad to report that despite the slight discomfort of riding a much smaller bike than I’m used to, I really did enjoy the riding and never felt extremely uncomfortable. One of our group got a bad case of monkey butt, and I remember how uncomfortable that can be, but other than a few stray leg cramps, I handled the riding pretty well.
The last day of riding was from Yarmouth to Lunenburg for lunch and a sweet little café in this sweet little coastal Village. Lunenburg seems to be Nova Scotia Chamber of Commerce choice Village as it’s very picturesque and welcoming to tourists. They are not yet inundated like places like Barcelona and Rome, where you get squirted with water by locals who’ve had enough tourism to last them their lives. From there, the guys went north east towards Truro while the ladies went to Halifax after doing a bit of shopping at Lunenberg. We took secondary roads to Truro and actually found the riding much more pleasant through the Nova Scotia countryside than we had experienced on the highways Yarmouth to Lunenburg. We returned the motorcycles to Nigel in good order with no incidents other than a little bit of excess mileage and our car back to Halifax after a pleasant finishing dinner where we tested our good fortune to be together and make such a ride. We hit it off for a fast sleep of a couple hours.
It’s a little bit before 4 AM now and we’re at the Halifax airport waiting for our 5 AM flight to Toronto from where him and I will catch a flight back to San Diego and Steve. Maggie and Marc will catch their flight back to Phoenix. We arrive in San Diego at 10:15 AM which will feel very funny, because despite the early wake up, that seems like a very early arrival (thanks to the four hour time zone change). We will stop to pick up Buddy on the way home, and then we will crash hard for the day realizing that we’re off again on a road trip to Oregon in another week.
Motorcycle trips are a little more work in terms of the preparation and the packing (I have a monster hockey bag full of riding gear that I’ve already been able to check in). I feel tired for several reasons, there’s the early hour, the end of the nine day trip, and just the fact that knocking around on a motorcycle all week changing hotels every night takes its toll. It will be nice to get back home and relax into my normal routine at least for one week.
There is a part of me, based mostly on my three years living in Maine, that feels connected to a region like the Maritimes or Nova Scotia. Towards the end of the week we started to see the fall colors start to peek through and that was particularly reminiscent of my younger years. I also spent many years traveling New England as a banker which further connected me to the northeast. Whatever part of me that is Puritanical and connected to the land really well to the hard scrabble life in New England. I’m not sure it qualifies as an exciting part of the world, but it is a very comfortable part of the world at least for me.
Riding a motorcycle for a week also takes me back to my youth and has a certain familiarity and comfort attached to it. so in a strange way this week in the Maritimes seems to have re-grounded me to my origins.