So, day two we actually manged to be up by 9 AM or so. Right away we checked out what the view outside the window looke dlike int he daytime...
Not bad at all... so anyway, Ivan has this idea that he wants to take advanatage of the rental bicycles that the Quarterdeck has available (along with sea kayaks, surfboards, etc.). OK. I'll go along with that. We go out and start bicycling down the road. Unfortunately, my mind was not with me and I did not bring the camera along for that. If I had, you would have been able to see a pictyure of me similar to the one of me 15 minutes after I started hiking in Yosemite. There were a few too many uphill stretches on a bike with no gears, and I must admit Ivan smoked me. He was past the horizon beyond my sight, and before long I just gave up and sat in front of a post office with the bike until he came back. Guess I gotta get back to the gym!
Soon though, we were on the road again...
This time we decided that to make up time we'd skip Yarmouth and instead headed overland accross Nova Scotiaheading to the north shore...
Once we got to the north coast we headed west on "Digby Neck" a stretch of land heading off to the ocean from the main part of Nova Scotia. We were heading toward Briar Island at the end of the neck. To get there we would have to pass a couple of channels by ferry. The first one was the ferry to Long Island, which had a cool lighthouse at the end...
When we saw this channel, we noted for the first time one of the things this area, the coast of the Bay of Fundy, is known for. It has the highest tides in the world. There wqill be more on that on Day Three, but right now we noted that in this channel the water was RUSHING out toward sea...
Then we got on the ferry...
After a bit more of that, we made it to Briar Island and got ourselves tickets on a whale cruise...
As we started they pointed out the rock formations...
The first animals we saw were seals...
They were pretty cute...
But then it was time for what we were really there for. The whales. As we get out from shore a few miles, the guide suddenly says, "We have some humpbacks off the right side". And there they were.
At first there were three of them going along parallel to the boat, later there would be up to five.
They had been keeping their distance, but then one of them decides to get a little closer. It hads right at us, goes under water, then shows up just a few feet from the boat. Everybody saw it coming and gasped and was saying, "here it c" and things like that...
They got pretty darn close...
They stayed close for a long time...
And then they started doing tricks for us... many times they did the "tail thing" where they dove and splashed their tails up in the air as they were going down...
Then they did the "flipper flap" thing where they would lie on their side and then splash the water as hard as they could with their flipper. Everytime they did it sounded like a hippo doing a bellyflop into a pool...
Then they dived and went away. There was a nice view of sun on water, but not much else to see.
Just as everyone was not looking, there was a HUGE sound of rushing water off the right hand side of the boat. Everybody turned in a hurry. One BIG humpback had just surfaced LESS THAN FIVE FEET FROM THE BOAT. It was huge. It was loud. And it was RIGHT there! You could se it's fin and its tail and it was about to dive again. I rushed for my camera, but just got the last bit of it as it went back under water...
As it went under water, it swam right UNDER us and then along with two of its friends showed up on the other side of the boat. About ten feet away now, not as close as when it had made all of our hearts jump by showing up five feet from the boat, but still pretty darn close...
They swam along side us for a bit, then finally turned and waved, leaving us to head back to port.
Of course this whole time, Ivan had a massive headache. It had started right before we got on the whale boat, but he forgot to take anything for it. While he managed to peek out and look at whales when they were close, most of the time he was on the boat he was not happy.
At a couple points he just collapsed in pain.
But eventually, some of the happy people on the boat...
Hey wait, doesn't that one on the right look kind of like Rebecca? Anyway, one of the happy people on the boat...
had some Advil on them and took pity on Ivan (or at least thought this would shut him up) and gave him some Advil. After about half an hour, Ivan was back to his normal cheerful self. Just as the boat was pulling back into the dock.
On the way back to the car and saw this green building andtook a picture because it looks like it is owned by a coworker of mine...
So now, the whale adventure being over, it was time to find a place to stay. After having the previous night made reservations, and then having to stay another place but still pay for the place we couldn't get to, we had decided not to make reservations. Of course the one motel on Briar Island was full. Well, it might be good to get a head start on the next day anyway. The next day we wanted todo two things, get to the actual random spot, and ride the "tidal bore" where those highest tides in the world actually come up so hard and fast that the rivers in the region reverse course and start flowing inland... causing rapids as they go. So we would just head toward where those things were, and try to find a hotel or motel on the way.
Personally, I thought we would end up sleeping in the car. Ivan was more confident. We started heading east. In every town we checked the motels. "No vacancy". "No vacancy". "No vacancy". Over and over and over again. At one point in the middle however we did stumble accorss a very interesting sign. It was way after dark so I couldn't get a good shot of it, but you can still read it...
In case you can't read it, it says "You are now half-way between the North Pole and the Equator". I checked my GPS, and while the sign may have actually been a couple hundred meters off, for all intents and purposes it was correct. Pretty cool. Also a reminder that while to us folks down in the USA all of Canada seems like it is increadibly far north, including Nova Scotia, in fact it really isn't that far north. I mean, here we are up in Nova Scotia, and we're still only half way to the north pole from the equator. And in fact a quick check of a map shows that actually the great bulk of Europe and Asia is further north than this. 45 degrees North may be way north compared to New Jersey, but we were still further south than Paris!
So we continued on our search for a place to stay. At one point we reached a decision place. We were about the same distance from the place where the high tides was and Halifax, the big city where we started. We could try to make it to ruro, the largest town near the tidal areas, or just get ourselves back to Halifax. Halifax would probably be our best chance to get a room, but it would mean a longer drive in the morning. We decided that we could spare the time in the morning and still get to everything we needed to get to. So we headed for Halifax. And on the cellphone I started calling every hotel or motel in Halifax. None of them had rooms. After calling like fifteen places, I finally called someplace called the "Bluenose Motel". They had a room. Because someone hadnot showed up for their reservation. We snagged it. That is where we would stay. We headed that way as fast as we could go... and then SWERVE... WHUMP!
I lood up from the map I had been looking at. Ivan was now swearing. "It came out of nowhere! I swerved but it just kept walking! Damn! I don't think I hit it that hard... Why was it so stupid? If it had just stopped instead of walking..." In any case, Ivan had swerved to miss a porcupine. He almost made it. The front missed the porcupine, but apperantly the back did not. Maybe the impact hadn't been that bad, but I'm sure it was hard enough. Ivan was very upset about this. I wasn't that happy either. Poor thing. When we finally got to the bluenose, we saw the evidence...
Porcupine quills nicely embedded in the back left tire. The poor porcupine may not have been killed instantly, but I'm sure we hit it hard enough that it didn't survive. We felt aweful. But from what we saw on the roads... a dead porcupine every ten miles or so the entire time we were in Nova Scotia... this wasn't uncommon. Apperantly porcupines are slow and not all that bright, and they are constantly getting hit by cars while trying to cross the road... Sigh.
In any case, we found our roon, and fairly quickly crashed for the night.