North East Vacation - Boston, Acadia, Nova Scotia

What a great vacation; we started out with a Marlin vs. Braves game in Miami and then caught our flight out of Ft. Lauderdale the next morning to Boston. We loved Boston; we stayed in Charlestown for four days and took in the Museum of Science, Museum of Fine Arts (fantastic), The Aquarium, Old Ironsides, Haymarket, Chinatown, the Common, the Gardens, tour of the city in an amphibious “duck,” legendary Italian food in the North end, Mikes Pastries and finished up with the Red Sox/Yankees at Fenway.

(Click any image for a full size view)

On the Road

After our stretch in Boston we visited Gloucester, an interesting little town with lots of maritime history. We visited the monument dedicated to local fisherman who lost their lives to the sea, including the poor boys who were victims of the “storm of the century,” on the ill fated sword fishing vessel Andrea Gail. I looked for the Gorton’s fisherman but couldn’t find him… in all probability out fishing. We then drove north on the costal route and spent the night in an unassuming little fishing village with lots of art galleries called Rockland, ME. The kids said it was spooky but I couldn’t dig up anything on-line in Rockland’s history to substantiate their claim.

Acadia

We then headed further up the beautiful coast of Maine where we rented a seaside cottage for a week in Seal Cove on Mt. Desert Island. Acadia National Park was infinite and beautiful, covering most of the island; never-ending, kayaking, biking, hiking and places of interest with incredible seascapes. We didn’t care too much for Bar Harbor which offered lots of shopping, galleries and restaurants. Bar Harbor is primarily geared towards tourism not unlike Key West but there were lots of small harbor towns close by that we fell in love with such as Southwest Harbor, Manset, Seal Harbor and NW Harbor. All were close by and had great little restaurants, galleries and very friendly folks. We also rented some bicycles and took the ferry out to the Cranberry Islands only to get very wet due to torrential rain.

Briar Island, Nova Scotia 

Finally we were on our way to St. Johns, New Brunswick to catch the ferry to Digby, Nova Scotia. Our first and only serious incident occurred when we thought we were one hour early only to realize that there is an “Atlantic” time zone. (One hour earlier) Who would have known that? We just drove our car on in the nick of time! Disembarking from the slow three hour ferry passage, driving an hour, and taking two more short ferry rides, our next stop was a small lodge on Briar Island, an island at the end of Digby Neck; a remote long narrow spit of land bordering the Bay of Fundy. We spent two days there whale watching; one time from a whale watch boat, the other was serendipitous; we saw Finbacks swimming a stones throw off the shore while we were exploring the Island. Liza was especially proud of herself finding whales without a guide!

After visiting two of Briar Island’s lighthouses, we took a long dirt road to visit the third one on the north end; what a beautiful setting with rocky bluffs bordering the enormous fifty foot tides, plenty of wildlife such as all types of shorebirds, seals and ducks. The fog was heavy with limited visibility and the conditions were dead calm in this remote location - not a soul around. The fog horns on all three lighthouses were sounding. The contrasting pitch of each horn would gradually diminish by echoing into the concealed Atlantic, never completely fading away until you heard another one off in the distance as if they were conversing like lonesome stone giants warning mariners of impending doom. A very impressionable moment, one I’ll never forget.

Cape Sable 

Reluctantly leaving Briar Island, we traversed the peninsula to the South side of NS, visiting Lunenburg, and Bridgewater, spending the night in Liverpool, driving through Barrington and then discovering a place called Cape Sable. Sable Island was one of our favorite places; miles of unspoiled sand beaches broken up occasionally by huge rocks and yet nobody there in early August! Clarks Harbor was the closest town, a no nonsense fishing village struggling to keep up with fewer fish and high fuel costs. We were so impressed by this area that we stopped at a real estate office to check on property. You can buy oceanfront acreage for example 20 acres a house and barn for a very reasonable price, we are seriously thinking about it. After hours of successful sea glass hunting we took off for Yarmouth, NS.

We then took a 300’ 55 MPH ferry called the “Cat” from Yarmouth to Portland, ME; that was a blast. The Cat had all the amenities from internet, multiple movie theaters, restaurants, bars, and casino. We didn’t visit the casino but it was a painless five hours of travel and very cool being on a ship going that fast! Customs wasn’t easy; after they interrogated the kids we ended up in our hotel around 11:00PM. Sorry to say we didn’t see much of the great city of Portland, ME - we’re saving that for our next trip.

Following our night in Portland, we made the easy drive back to Boston, turned in the rental car and took the taxi to the North end once again to experience the great Italian food and Mikes Pastries… Can’t have too many cannoli’s. We caught our flight the next morning out of Logan into Ft. Lauderdale and made it home to the good old Florida Keys safe and sound only to experience tropical storm Fay the following week.

We would like to express our appreciation to Dr. Gary and Suze Starbuck, for giving us the inspiration to visit this great part of our country and Canada. We would also like to thank Ian and Gail MacRae of Bridgewater, NS whom we met on a whale watch trip out of Briar Island and later ran into again in Bridgewater; a coincidence we’ll never forget. Ian and Gail took the time to give us lots of great info on where to stay and what to see in Nova Scotia.

Tags: North East Vacation - Boston

This entry was posted on August 20th, 2008 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.