Fayette State Park, Michigan

Furnaces at Fayette

Yesterday, traveled from Montreal to Sudberry, Ontario, then today, we made it to upper Michigan. We’re staying the night in FayetteState Park, home to the historic townsite of Fayette. This was an iron smelter town from 1867 to 1890. Left on the grounds is the smelter, charcoal kilns, and some of the commercial and residential buildings of the company town of 500 people. It was a very different place to visit, a place to stop if you're nearby. The buildings are somewhat restored, usually a couple rooms in each building. They explained a lot about the original town, it’s inhabitants, and their work of restoring the town based on what they find on the grounds and buildings. 

Historic buildings of Fayette

We then headed to Appleton to visit my parents and see how they were doing. I got my perch dinner on the first night home and the next day we visited Door County and then had dinner with Bob and Cindy. 

Then off to Minneapolis to visit Laura and Greg. We worked on wedding plans, had a great dinner at  oriental restaurant and, of course, a Swedish breakfast on Sunday at the Taste of Scandinavia

We planned this trip, because we had always intended to revisit Nova Scotia after a short stay there a few years ago. A full week there was almost enough, if we had 2 more days we would have headed for the Northeast coast. We made use of it to visit friends and family along the way. We probably had too many long travel days - sometime, we've got to take a few months and just tour up and down the East Coast in a more leisurely manner.

If you'd like to see the video here on youtube. 

Montreal Botanical Gardens

We traveled to Montreal in the morning and our plan was to revisit the Montreal Botanical Gardens. We were quite impressed with the sheer size and variety of the gardens last time, and ran out of time to fully explore them. The sun came out after the rain of the morning and the gardens were spectacular. Our favorite part is the Chinese Gardens which are similar to what we saw in Shanghai many years ago. I also recommend the rose gardens, Japanese gardens, and the Lilac Gardens. We also took a walk through the woods. We ended up finally at the green house section which not only had tropical plants, but also featured orchids, desert plants and a Bonsai section. A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.

Estilebe Chinese Garden

Quebec City

Friday was a travel day through New Brunswick. One part of the highway was devoid of towns for over 125 kilometers going through forest land on a road that was good in spots and bounced us around in others. There was almost no one on it. 

Hotel Frontenac

Saturday, we did a walking tour of the old city of Quebec. The fortress walls surround most of the old city and inside it seems your planted in an old French town. We spent quite a lot of time in some of the old churches – the chapel for the Ursaline convent, the Catholic Cathedral and the Episcopal church with its colorful organ. The upper town has most of the government and church buildings as well as the landmark Hotel Frontenac. We ate lunch on the steps down to the lower town which has a historic square with a church on it as well as many shops selling to tourists. Last time we had visited the Citadel, so this time, I had hoped to go to Battlefield Park which explains the battle between the French and English on the Plains of Abraham. But it was already 3:00 after our walk, we decided to relax instead.

Place Royale Lower Town

Bouctouche, New Brunswick

We traveled most of the day through rain from Cape Breton to Bouctouche, New Brunswick.  Our only stop of the day was the Irving Eco-Centre here in Bouctouche which helps preserve a 12 mile long sand dune between the Bay of St Lawrence and a river estuary. The rain stopped for a while, so we were able to walk the boardwalk for some 800 meters above the grass and sand. It was rather chilly, but that didn’t stop the kids from enjoying the beach.

Dunes at Bouchtouche

Cape Breton National Park

Cabot Trail 

We spent most of Tuesday traveling from Port Royale to Cape Breton in the far Northeast corner of Nova Scotia. We were careful never to let our tank get too low, because there are often 30-40 mile stretches of this island that don’t have a gas station. We camped at Broad Cove campground in the park (with electricity, water, and sewer). On Wednesday, we took a ride around most of the park on the Cabot Trail. We started out with a stiff wind and rain on the Atlantic coast. But after we turned inland, the rain stopped and we were able to do some sightseeing from the viewpoints and a number of short hikes. We had a nice hike to a waterfall on Macintosh Creek

, and through a bog area. But the highlight is the coast facing the Bay of Newfoundland.  Here the highway goes up some steep slopes rising to 400 meters high and then plunges down again. It is a beautiful coastline. We stopped at the visitor center on the other side, and then headed back and the rain began and kept going all night. I even had to barbecue in the rain. But a beautiful day even if the weather wasn’t sunny.

Macintosh Creek

Port Royale

Fort Anne

Monday, we headed back Northwest to camp in DunrominCampsite outside of Port Royale. Here we saw the remains of Fort Anne another star shaped Fort (but only in earthen works) from the time of the French and British competition. Port Royale was the original capital of Nova Scotia and in the officers quarter we saw one of the two remaining copies of the Charter of Nova Scotia. This town faced a similar history to Grand Pre with most of the French property confiscated and the people deported.

Historic Gardens

Nearby is the Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens. The gardens is particularly noted for his Rose Gardens, but it also has a large variety of different gardens and was a pleasant place to take a stroll admiring the various plants.

Nova Scotia Atlantic Coast

Lighthouse at Peggy's Cove

Sunday, we visited Peggy’s Cove, one of the most picturesque areas on the coast. The granite here gets pounded by the surf creating stone formations that look like the back of a whale. The lighthouse here is the most photographed spot in Nova Scotia. They’ve kept a rustic look to the boats and buildings making the whole place charming. Since the weather wasn’t particularly nice, we didn’t have to fight the crowds to see the place.

Peggy's Cove

We headed along the coast to the fishing and shipbuilding town of Lunenburg.  Here we visited the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic. I was worried about another nautical museum and as expected the aquarium part of the museum was disappointing. But we were fascinated by our guided tour of one of the fishing schooners. Our guide had been a captain for over 32 years of his 47 years at sea. His explanation of the challenge of fishing really made it all come to life. This was hard work. He admitted that the fisherman were at fault for the decline in the fisheries. They would have to go out farther and farther to catch fish, and would cheat at any opportunity – to increase their catch, even if it was illegal. For example, they would sell catch to foreign ships who weren’t allowed there and then continue fishing for their own catch. It eventually resulted in the closing of the fisheries off of Newfoundland.

The Bluenose racing

The other superb story was the story of the Bluenose. We watched the film and saw the many exhibits.  In 1921, after the America’s cup had been cancelled because of 22 knot winds, the men of Lunenburg and Gloucester, Massachusetts, decided to have a race between fishing schooners. The purse was put up by a local merchant, and Gloucester won that first year. The next year, they built a new schooner, the Blue Nose (named for how your nose looked after being out at sea). The Blue Nose easily won, though the race was close, until they turned into the wind. This ship continued to win every time it sailed. It became famous, and was on the 50 cent stamp, the back of the Canadian nickel, and even today is on the license plate of Nova Scotia. It was never defeated retiring the International Fishing Trophy to Lunenburg in 1938, the last race before World War II and the last of the fishing schooner races. 

Grand Pre and Wolfville

Today, we took a short ride northwest, back to the Bay of Fundy and Grande Pre, one of the French settlements, founded here from the people who left La Rochelle and other parts of France. This fit in neatly with our trip to La Rochelle in May. The best part of the visit was the movie which explained the history of the area. They called this land Acadie. They built dikes to hold the tides of the Bay, and turned the land into rich farm land. The community was quite self-supporting. The problem was the British and the French were continually battling to control this region. The French controlled Quebec, the British, New England and this was the land between the two powers. The Acadians were caught in between. The British insisted that they take an oath of loyalty to the British Crown. The Acadians were concerned that this would subject them to fight the French. Meanwhile, most of their trade to get manufactured goods was with the French, which the British considered treasonous. While they tried to retain their neutrality, eventually, over the course of eight years the British deported them to New England and to France, confiscating their lands, and burning the village of Grand Pre.

Grand Pre Memorial

In the nearby town of Wolfville, we visited the AcadiaUniversity’s botanical gardens. In just a few acres, they created eight different plant zones, from bogs, to herb and vegetable gardens, to evergreen and deciduous forest. A nice little area. 

Pitcher Plant Flower

Halifax

The ditch of the Citadel

We spent the day in Halifax under nice blue skies. Our primary stop was the Citadel, inspired by the star pattern designed by Vauban who served Louis XIVth in France. We had seen a number of his Forts in France in May. This citadel was designed by one of his students. It is well designed with a ditch that you can’t see from the city. If it ever had been defended it would have been quite easy with rifle holes on both sides of the ditch and only one bridge that entered the Fort itself. Our guide explained a lot of what life was like in this fortification. We had a demonstration of a breech loading rifle, converted from a musket. All their weapons here are original, our rifle was from the 1870’s. It was amazing how quickly they got off one shot after another, about every 10-20 seconds. Our tour ended with the noon cannon, shot off every day except Christmas.

We ate lunch on the wharf (it turned out to be the same restaurant we went to years ago). We were a little disappointed in the meal, but the beer was good. After lunch we toured the Maritime Museum of theAtlantic. The most interesting part of the museum was the disaster of 1917. The SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship carrying munitions, collided with the Belgian Relief vessel SS Imo. The resulting explosion, the Halifax Explosion, devastated the Richmond District of Halifax, killing approximately 2,000 people and injuring nearly 9,000 others, destroying many of the building in Halifax.The museum also had several light house lamps, the story of the Cunard line (both commercial ships and cruise ships) and numerous ship models. Not quite as interesting as the Maine Maritime museum.

Lighthouse Lamp

Shubenacadie Provincial Wildlife Park

Arctic Wolf

The next day we passed by Hopewell Rocks (another spot we had previously visited, which I would recommend) and continued on major roadways. Most of the day was spent going around the Bay of Fundy. We’d see low lands filled with mud, often quite far upstream from the Bay itself. When the tides can be 12m in difference, a lot of land gets flooded at high tide. We stopped at the Shubenacadie Provincial Wildlife Park. This is a fairly small facility, primarily displaying the wildlife of Nova Scotia, with a few exotic animals from other regions. It was a nice break, and would really be a great stop with children, since you they allow you to feed many of the animals. The zoo is of the old style, with a lot of chicken wire fences between you and the animals. But we saw a lot of interesting birds, arctic wolves, and perhaps the only moose we’ll see in Canada (true). 

Himalayan Monal

We traveled on to our KOA campsite near Halifax, managing to miss an important turn which took almost ½ an hour to recover. This KOA is just packed solid with people from Nova Scotia. The lady at the desk said that many folks come from Halifax to spend their weekends or a week vacation here. They had a small pool, but lots of things for the kids to do – play area, a bouncing pad that was quite popular, canoes, and bikes for rent.

Our only Canadian Moose

Fundy National Park

It didn’t take very long this morning and we crossed the border into Canada. The road immediately improved to a four-lane auto route on our way up New Brunswick to Fundy National Park. It rained most of the way, but we arrived in time to at least do a little touring. We took a walk to Dickson Falls near the Bay. It was a pretty, very green brook in a fairly deep canyon. Lucky we got this hike in, because it started raining again immediately. I had hoped to walk the shore in low tide, but it wasn’t to be. 

Dickson Falls

Maine Maritime Museum

Model of the Wyoming

We headed up through seven miles of New Hampshire (they managed to charge a toll here), into Maine. Our primary stop for the day was the Maine Maritime Museum. At first, we were a little disappointed, until we joined a tour of the place. The museum is the original Percy & Small shipyard for building large wooden schooners, from 1894 to 1920, these were primarily used to haul coal from Maine down to Chesapeake  Bay. The largest of all of these ships was the six masted Wyoming (named because the investors were primarily from Wyoming). In the middle of the grounds was a sculpture that gave you a sense for the size of the ship (except the flag poles were only 120 feet high, versus the 170 feet of the original.

Actual size sculpture of Wyoming

Most of the original buildings of the shipyard are on the grounds (they had various uses including being warehouses for Sears since the time of the shipyard). The standard practice was to make a model of the ship, and then translate the model into actual size. By the time of this shipyard, they actually had to go South to find the yellow pine used to build the ship, men would go into the woods to find lumber of suitable size based on the models. The various buildings housed the translation of the model, saws to cut the wood, and steam boilers to bend the wood. The ribs were the primary structure with wooden plating above and below the ribs. After the ship was built, it was then water proofed. It was all quite fascinating. That night we camped outside Acadia National Park. (We didn’t enter the park, since we had been here a few years before and I’m trying to see new things on this trip.)

Working on the ribs

East Coast visits and Hyde Park

John and Helen Lucid with us 

We’ve been visiting friends and relatives for the last four days. We drove to Webster, NY or Friday and spent time with Val, our former sister-in-law and her family. We had a nice barbecue dinner and lots of reminisces from previous times. On Saturday, we drove to Hopewell Junction, NY to meet Greg’s parents for the first time. We had a good time, learning about their past, and having dinner on the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, NY. We lucked out, there were hot air balloons being launched from nearby. 

Springfield

Sunday we did our one tourist visit for these four days, we went to Hyde Park and Franklin D Roosevelt's Presidential Library (the first to be created). There are a lot of things to visit here, but we only had about three hours, so we concentrated on the Museum and Springfield, Roosevelt's home. The tour of the home is excellent, giving both it's history and amusing stories (like when King George VI saw Franklin's collection of British political cartoons, which Eleanor had asked to be removed before his arrival). We also spent what time we could at the Museum, focusing on his programs to try to end the Great Depression as well as prepare the country for World War II. We could have spent considerably more time here. 

Springfield Living Room with wheel chair

We continued on to New Britain, Connecticut to visit with Mark and Steve. They invited Darcy, Greg and Gail for dinner. As usual, we talked a lot about traveling and mutual friends. Finally, on Monday, we paid a visit to Ruth and her daughter, Emily in Reading, Massachusetts.  She had just been with us to France, but we got to see her new condominium, which was quite nice.

Do you know it's hard to be on your best behavior for four days in a row?

Hayes Presidential Center

We continued on through Ohio, stopping at the HayesPresidential Center. This made our 15^th Presidential museum or library. They claimed to be the first Presidential Museum (later FDR’s library claimed to be the first Presidential library). If you’re like me, you don’t know much about President Rutherford B. Hayes. He served in the Union Army, was elected congressman while still serving, then in 1867 he became the governor of Ohio. In 1876, he became the Republican candidate for President and ran against Samual J Tilden, the governor of New York. The governor of New York won the popular vote and had a firm 184 electoral votes, while Hayes had 165 electoral votes and 20 votes were contested from three different states (including Florida) Congress decided to appoint a commission to determine which electors should be recognized. This commission decided in Hayes favor for all three states, three days before inauguration day (March 20^th at this time). The Democrats acquiesced in what was termed the Compromise of 1877.  Inauguration day fell on a Sunday, so the public ceremony was to be held on Monday, but given that someone might object, Hayes took the oath of office in the White House on Sunday.  The primary accomplishment of Hayes, was that he ended the reconstruction era in the South and allowed them to become active again in the Union. He even appointed a Southerner into his cabinet, the Postmaster General. 

Rutherford B Hayes Home

The museum admission included a tour of his home, large at 3100 square feet. His father built it for him. The ground floor is decorated in the style of the 1870’s with most of the original furnishings, while the upstairs is decorated with family possessions from the 1950’s, when the house was turned into a museum. 

Studebaker National Museum

Wagon built for 1893 Columbian Exhibition

Today was our first real day of touring. Yes, we drove about 300 miles, but we stopped at the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Indiana.  Here we learned about the Studebaker family, who were originally blacksmiths but then began building wagons in 1852. The museum has a collection of Presidential carriages from this era: Lincoln, Grant, Harrison, and McKinley. In 1902, they started building automobiles, some of which we recognized as classics. The wagoner was unique – it was a station wagon, but the top could be removed to haul loads like a truck (assuming you wanted those items on a carpeted floor). Unfortunately, Studebaker didn’t keep up with the times in the 1960s and went bankrupt.  

Bullet Nose Studebaker from the 50's

The museum had a special exhibit on Lincoln's Final Journey including the buggy that delivered Lincoln to the Ford Theater where he was shot. The exhibit continued with the story of John Wilkes Booth and his fellow plotters, the search for the assassins, and their eventual hanging. 

Amana Colonies

This is the detailed blog of our trip to Nova Scotia in July, 2015. If you'd prefer a 6 minute video is available on youtube.

Per usual, we had a long travel day on our first day, taking I-80 to Lincoln, NE. The Camp A Way campground there was just off the interstate, but it was superb with large sites and lots of trees. We’ll use this campground again. Then we headed off on Tuesday to the Amana Colonies. Our intention was to walk a little of Amana and then have dinner at the Colony Inn, a restaurant we’ve coming to for years for the German family style food. But they are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so we instead went to the Ronneburg Restaurant. The food here was still traditional German family-style, but they didn’t serve the cold sweet sauerkraut that we both love. Still I would recommend this restaurant and don't forget to have a cold beer from the Mill Stream Brewery . We stayed at the Little Bear Campground outside of Liberty, IA.

Amana Colonies