Day 6! Only a few days left...time flies when you're having fun.
Breakfast at Cheticamp. Seemed like a traffic jam in this town compared to the number of cars normally see on our routes! It was a nice little down by the water. Very heavy Co-Operative influence. First time I saw the "CO OP" sign at the Sackville McDonalds, I thought it said "coop" as in "chicken coop". I thought it was a strange name for a grocery store, lol.
CO-OP Artisanale Acadien
Smell of fresh bakery is intoxicating...
I can't remember the name of this meat pie but it was very good. We both ordered on a local tour guide's personal recommendation we met on our way inside; she and her tour group was just leaving. Breakfast this morning was great.
Next stop, Les Trois Pignons Museum.
You can see the drastic improvement and history of Hooked Rugs here..
Some of them were very detailed...all hand made.
Nova Scotia became a power house producer of premium hooked rugs.
Very cool... must've taken 100s of hours.
A couple of angels we are...
We decided to see what else Cheticamp had to offer...
...and stumbled upon this:
This was an unplanned stop. I was hoping to pick up a cd of the coal miners' choir group. The group from the RV last night mentioned they went to the coal miners' concert during their NS tour and they all loved it. Everyone in the group were real coal miners. They sing the songs they used to sing to get through their day and other songs about coal mining. It sounded corny at first, but they played us a sample. I thought they were really good...and the lyrics are quite interesting/funny too.
Unfortunately, they didn't sell anything. This nice gentlemen explained that they considered opening a souvenier shop but reconsidered it since there is already another a shop down the street. They didn't want to "be in competition" with them. The reason definitely took me by suprise, coming from the states where competition thrives and drives others out of business w/o a moments thought... This line of thinking is probably based on NS's long history of CO-OP's. He suggested I try the shop down the street, but I decided to skip it hoping to just download it from itunes when I got back home. Unfortunately, I found out that itunes doesn't have it! Damnit.
If anyone know where I can buy a copy, please let me know. If anyone lives in Nova Scotia and can help me buy a copy of this CD, please let me know. Thanks!
This is cool little museum. It's free, or you can leave a donation.
Next, we continued south to check out North America's only single malt whisky producer. Glenora Distillery. Here we are rolling in.
It's a pretty small setup compared to the last distillery I visited, which was Buffalo Trace in Kentucky. I was also surprised to find out they charge for the tour. I thought it would be free like the Buffalo Trace tour. I think these tours are a great advertising tool. Assuming the product is good and the tour convincing, we would be new potential customers and a spokesman for our circle of friends back home.
They had live music at the bar while we waited for our tour to start.
I was expecting something much bigger so this felt like we were chilling in someone's backyard or maybe a restaurant.
We killed some time taking random pics.
Our tour guide. He seemed very knowledgeable, but not very enthusiastic about the tour.
I wouldn't want to get stuck in there...
Tour guide tells us not to get too close and breathe in the fumes because he's had others in the past pass out and fall in! LOL...what a sight that would be.
where the magic happens..
Of course we get samples...
Their displays need some work.
We take a quick, short break after the tour before we hit the road..
Bye bye Glenora!
The NS natives say there are truly 2 seasons in Nova Scotia: Winter and Contruction. We did see quite a bit of it..
...but the construction doesn't last long. We say goodbye to Cape Breton Island and make our way south toward Guysborough.
And we decide to eat some dinner before we run out of choices... It was about 6pm. We learned from past experiences to not wait too long since restaurants don't stay open as late as many do in the US.
lol...I wonder how new members are initiated into this gang.
Dinner... mmm...
Tried their seafood chowder. It was OK. The ingredients were definitely very fresh, but flavor was not as strong as some others I tried.
The garlic bread was awesome.
My buddy ordered haddock. He described his order as comparable to a microwave dinner! lol.. It doesn't look *that* bad. But it looks a bit too healthy for roadtrip food. I'm happy I ordered pasta...it's hard to mess that up.
Anyway...we hit road again, looking for a place to stay. We decide to get a room for tonight. Last night was really cold in the tent...temps must have dropped to the mid/upper 30s. I started to get a runny nose today so I wanted to get a hot shower and get a good night's rest.
We took a quick break here to admire the sun set.. The pics don't do it justice.
We continued along the Eastern Shore until we found some lodging.. It started getting late and the temps really started to drop once the sun finally set. It took us quite awhile to find something too. There were plenty of campsites though.
We had a little setback when we came to one of those river crossing via ferry...but they were closed for the evening! This was a little past Goldboro. Arrgg..that's annoying. Build a bridge people! Anyway, we had to make a big detour to cross via land. A couple hours later, we found ourselves approaching Sherbrooke, and was hopeful to find a place since we were seeing quite a few lodging signs.
We check into St. Mary's River Lodge. It was a nice bed and breakfast place. They were nice enough to give us a small discount since it was late at night and we were planning to get an early start the next day. Everything was very clean.
What a long day... I really needed a good night's rest at this point.
