Monday, August 24: Checked out of our lovely (if somewhat damp) Blomidon Provincial Park site this AM early, so we could get to Sue’s home when we’d told her we’d be there, to park Roomba for a while. Naturally, the day we had to check out was the most beautiful day of our stay. Goodbye Blomidon PP – we will definitely come back to stay again.
From there, we also had to to manage our day sufficiently that we could drive to the Halifax airport Holiday Inn (where our bicycle tour will terminate) to park our car; and then somehow manage to get ourselves down to Halifax proper and link back up with our bikes, and meet our tour group for dinner.
Roomba rode like a champ to Sue’s place, and we introduced ourselves and had a great time not only showing off our trailer, but also touring their 1850s-era home and all the renovations they’d made there, and then sharing a spectacular lunch with Sue, Jim and my Virginia friend’s sister, Jen.
The day had dried off and the wind had come up and it finally became what I’d expected we’d find, weather-wise, here in Nova Scotia. We spent a few hours chatting and sharing stories with them and had a truly delightful time. As we were sharing our meal, a bald eagle graced our skies and we all had a look as it soared in the blue sky.
We said a reluctant goodbye to Roomba, shut down the systems, gave away our leftover food, and then Sue and Jim took us up to one of the nearby wild blueberry farms, where we could see all around the 5 or so districts, and ate a couple warm wild blueberries, standing in wild thyme patches. It was lovely.
Headed to the airport Holiday Inn on an easy drive, and caught a cab from there to Halifax. Very chatty driver from Poland, who said we must absolutely not miss the salt mine-turned museum in a village near Krakow, when we go there (the dollar is quite good against the Polish currency right now, we learned).
As Jack was continuing to chat with our driver (and paying him $70 Canadian) Laura and Craig English, two of our fellow tour riders, asked if Jack always chats up the cabbies like this – of course, I answered, “He chats up everyone like this. It’s why we’re always late!”
We hugged necks and they were off to the harbor, and we were off for a shower before the group gathering for dinner.
16 of our 20 gathered in the lobby of the Hampton Inn, and we walked the couple of blocks to our group dinner at a restaurant called Five Fishermen. Met up with 2 of the group there (staying at a different hotel) and the final two of our number went whale watching instead of joining us for dinner.
Allen gave us the overview of the tour and those of us in the group who had not ridden together in the past introduced ourselves and we had a delicious meal with wine tastings from the local offerings and an excellent locally-made Ale served at a quite decent temperature (not too cold) from a Nova Scotia micro brewery whose name I could not pronounce last night and cannot remember now, but will try to get and document, because I hope to have another soon.
We van our suitcases and those bicycles brought from home (including ours) up to Wolfville tomorrow, where those who did not bring their own cycles will be fitted for their tour riding machines. Then it’s going to be a quick ride to lunch and then I think we get to decide where and how far to ride after lunch. Might depend on whether there is wine involved with lunch or not 🙂
peregrinations 