Day Two: Thursday, September 30th, 2004
| I left home in Tatamagouche a little before noon with my car loaded
up with my tent, futon mattress, sleeping bag, laptop, digital camera,
camcorder, and luggage. The ride was pretty uneventful. I stopped off in
Truro to cash some cheques and then went to Future Shop at Bayers Lake
and bought myself a laptop backpack as well
as the revolutionary Jensen JP20 power inverter, which lets me recharge
my laptop / camcorder / digital camera / lantern while driving. It works
fine when I'm not driving as well, though I wonder how long it will be
before I end up testing the limits of my car battery just a little too
far. I also got a Coleman cooler and a pillow... yes, I forgot to take
the two pillows I set aside.
It was about another 2 1/2 hours of driving before I reached Annapolis Royal, missed an exit, and then had to return to get to Granville Centre and the Dunromin Campsite. I set up camp around 6:30. It was $23 for an unserviced tent site and another $3 for a bundle of wood. (I wonder how much you'd get for a cord of wood at that rate.) After cursing the extendable tent supports a few times, I managed to get it set up and then set to work on a campfire to cook some of the hotdogs I bought earlier. Of course I only had two sheets of newspaper amongst my supplies and as it didn't seem to be enough to catch the firewood, I started searching for something else to burn. After debating over an old road map I had from when I bought the car, I finally dumped out all the cans of Pepsi out and burnt the case they came in, and voila, the fire was soon ablazing and I had a hearty meal of hotdogs and marshmallows. (Though you'd think I was cooking up a witch's brew from the photo below... The day was topped off by a beautiful sunset. |
Day Two: Thursday, September 30th, 2004
| After a long evening spent at the computer, doing a mighty fine job of draining the battery twice, I finally went to bed and had a rather restless sleep. In the morning I crawled out later than I expected and shuffled off to the showers where for 50 cents you get 7 minutes of nice hot water. I stayed in for the full time, trying as best I could to warm up. |
| A very gorgeous day so I decided to do a little exploring. I drove up to Port Royale but wasn't really in the mood for that so I went driving some more and found the world's ugliest church, a semi-friendly seagull, and a lot of big rocks. |
| Eventually I came across the Delaps Cove Wilderness Trail and went for a little hike. They had two trails. One took a half hour while the other took over 3 hours. I decided to go for the half hour one. It was pretty nice. Just a trail built through the woods and coming out by the ocean before heading back in and passing a teeny tiny waterfall. Alas, I never did get energetic and head back to try the 3 hour hike. Maybe next time... |
Day Three: Friday, October 1st, 2004
| A strange dream last night.
I was lost in Halifax, trying to make it to the train station for some
reason. Obviusly the entire city was rearranged so I kept getting lost
down dark dead end alleyways. Eventually I got cornered by a bunch of hooligans
who wanted my laptop. Can't remember if they ever got it or not.
I was awakened at some point to what I can only describe as an air raid siren. It was coming from the tidal power generating plant just across the water. It droned on and on and when I heard sirens I finally had to get up and see what was going on. I was trying to imagine what the tidal power equivalent of a nuclear meltdown would be... a tsunami? Never did get flooded and the siren eventually died away, but who knows what it was all about. The next morning the weather kept alternating between sunshine and rain so I never really got the desire to do too much. I ended up spending a fair bit of the day back at the library (or sitting in the car outside after it closed) using the wireless internet. Managed to get some work done on the web site, reminding myself that this can indeed be a working vacation. The uneventful day made me realize that I should've moved on already. So, in the evening I booked passage on the Cat Ferry for the following afternoon for the low low price of $153 US. ($85 for the car, $45 for me, $15 fuel tax, $5 port fee, and $3 US security tax.) A very cold night back at the campsite. It made me think seriously about driving southwards as quickly as possible. I was dressed up nice and warm at the campfire and had some fun taking a few time lapse photos. |
