Raegan Driving

This past week, Raegan and I ventured up to Nova Scotia to visit her biological father, who lives on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia. Despite running into car troubles on the way up, the trip – I think – turned out to be very relaxing indeed. In the end, I wound up taking about one hundred photos, that came to a total of five hundred megabytes worth of images that I need to process!

On Sunday night, we stayed at this lovely bed and Breakfast in Saint John, New Brunswick. The hosts were excellent, and it turns out that one of our hosts races cyclocross: Needless to say, that I wound up talking about cycling with him for quite a bit!

Ferry Terminal in Digby

After that, we headed down to the Saint John-Digby ferry for a 3 hour ferry ride to Digby, Nova
Scotia, where Jamie (Raegan’s biological father) picked us up. We spent the rest of the day hiking around various points on the island before settling in for the night for dinner and a night of relaxing. Tuesday saw more of the same: hiking and taking phots, and relaxation in general.

Beer!

On Wednesday, we ventured into Halifax so Raegan could take care of a few things, and to visit the city while Jamie taught his art students. While visiting, we ventured down to the Garrison Brewery, which turned out to be only a brewery. The person manning the desk recommend that we try going to The Henry House; he said they had great food and a decent beer selection. The beer and the food was good indeed! It turned out to be an English style restaurant and pub that served traditional English fare with English ales, which was brewed by Granite Brewery, and served on hand pump. We wound up having to stay the night in Halifax because of a sudden snow storm that made driving and visiblity virtually impossible.

The last full day was spent relaxing and hanging out around Jamie’s house. Raegan and I ventured down to Balancing rock, which is this rock that is naturally balancing off of a rock ledge. It was kind of interesting, but it was even neater when when climbed off the platform and got a real, close look at it. Apparently, people have tried to tip the rock over, but were not even able to make it budge when they lashed it to several tug boats!

Balancing Rock

Needless to say, the drive home was a white knuckle ride for much of the journey: We woke up Saturday morning in Saint John to about 4 inches of snow on the ground, and to make matters worse, none of the roads were plowed either. The snow didn’t clear up until we hit Augusta, Maine, after that, it was kind of smooth driving: We had to cruise along in 4th gear, and 3rd was slowly deminishing. In and around New York City, this genius decided to try to make a right hand turn on I-95 because he missed his exit. We came to a screaching halt, and the poor drivers behind us got involved in a several car pile up. We missed being involved by about 2 inches!