Let's Go Places (And Meet People!): The Maritimes of Canada

 

Friends, we have so much to talk about.  I just got back from a 10 day Maritimes binge, and it's going to take a few posts to unpack all of the goodness.  Today I'd like get things started by giving you the overview of the trip and telling you about the first night.

What are the Maritimes you may ask?  I hadn't heard this term before I went to British Columbia last month, but now I know that it is the collective name for the three eastern provinces of Canada: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.

How This Trip Came to Be

The unimportant reasons for going to the Maritimes were to further my goal of spending at least one night in every province and state, and it's fair to say that 100% of people who have read Anne of Green Gables want to go to PEI.  

The important and ultimately the only reason why I wanted to go to the Maritimes this year specifically was to meet The Coolest of Cool Bloggers.  For years I've been drooling over Elisabeth's pictures and descriptions of Nova Scotia.  I always believed her when she wrote about how epic her home turf is, but I felt the need to go out and see it for myself.  What started as a joke in comments became the official title of this trip: The Trust but Verify Tour.

TL;DR: Nova Scotia met and exceeded Elisabeth's claims.

Trip Planning

I've been under a lot of stress at work, so I barely did any planning other than picking out places to stay and rereading Anne of Green Gables.  I flew into Halifax on Friday, Sept 12, and came home on Monday, Sept 22.  The dates were determined by the time span between processing the two major monthly payrolls at work (ICYMI I'm an accountant who specializes in payroll, and also ICYMI I am planning to leave work soon for early retirement and I cannot wait).

I wanted to spend a decent amount of time with Elisabeth and go with her to as many NS sites as we could fit in, but I also didn't want to overstay my welcome.  Elisabeth cast her vote in favor of spending as much time together as possible and offered up her guest room to make it happen.  It was a very compelling argument, so even though in theory I felt like I shouldn't spend so many nights in her home, in practice it felt absolutely right.

By process of throwing things at the wall, here is the schedule that we came up with:

Friday: fly into Halifax, drive to Elisabeth's home in Wolfville in time for dinner.

Saturday: do epic things with Elisabeth & Fam.

Sunday: do epic things with Elisabeth & Fam.

Monday: do epic things mainly with Elisabeth, since the rest of the Fam had school and work.

Tuesday: drive to PEI, with a stop in Halifax on the way.  Stay in Charlottetown.

Wednesday: hang out in PEI.

Thursday: drive from PEI to Fredericton, New Brunswick and do epic things along the way.

Friday: do epic things in Fredericton and then drive back to Wolfville.

Saturday: do epic things with Elisabeth & Fam.

Sunday: reluctantly say goodbye to Elisabeth & Fam, spend the night in Halifax and find something epic to do there.

Monday: come home!

Where Are All of These Places?

Here is the bird's eye view:

Let's zoom in for a closer view of where we'll be laying our heads each night:

Right off the bat, I will admit that I fell prey to "it's only an inch on my map" syndrome. This phenomenon was something that I was introduced to in my first job, where the service manager was always trying to get the techs to squeeze in an extra customer visit on their trips, and when the techs would respond "but that's four hours away", the response was "it's only an inch on my map".  To give you an idea of the distance:

• Halifax to Wolfville is a very reasonable one hour drive
• Wolfville to Charlottetown is four hours.
• Charlottetown to Fredericton is three and a half hours.
• Fredericton back to Wolfville should have been four and a half hours, but due to a GPS oopsie it ended up being a six hour drive.

In the end everything worked out and I would not have wanted to miss out on any of the places that I visited.

I Know You're Dying to Tell Us How Much Your Plane Ticket Cost

Why yes I am.  I am three for three in being able to turn credit card points into plane tickets.  The cash price of my ticket was $800, which was similar to the price for the California and BC trips.  After points I only had to pay $70 in taxes and fees, which is a much better price.  

But wait there's more!  The CA and BC tickets "cost" 60,000 points each, but the NS trip was only 30,000 points.  So it was twice as free!

Let's Fly to Halifax!

Just like the CA and BC trips, my flight departed from the nearest Big City airport at 7:00 AM.  In order to take off at seven, I have to get up at 4:00 AM and leave my house around 4:15-4:30 to get to the airport at 5:00-5:15.  Security is super slow at this airport, so it's not the place to show up last minute.

Anyhoo, I did all of the things and soon enough we were in the air.

The plane landed in Newark, and I had two hours until the connecting flight.  It was time to level up and try something new.  I just got a United credit card for the simple reason that the sign up bonus is enough points for at least one round trip ticket (or two round trip tickets to NS!), and one of the side perks is two lounge passes each year.  Since I don't know when I'll be flying next, and the passes expire, it made sense to use them at the earliest opportunity.

So how was it?  It was nice to put my feet up and I didn't mind getting a free meal.  The negatives were that it was crowded, and really not so much more special than hanging out in the regular waiting area.  Unless I ever have an extraordinarily long airport wait, I don't think that I will seek lounges out, but I will faithfully use my United passes for as long as I have the card.

Soon enough it was time to get on the flight from Newark to Halifax.  The ocean gave way to a land of green.

The Halifax airport is very small, and before I knew it I was through customs and in my rental car.  I punched in the address for Lighthouse HQ (my nickname for Elisabeth's house) and did what the GPS told me to do.  The drive was mostly freeway, with lots of trees and occasional glimpses of water.

Exactly one hour on the dot I arrived in the town of Wolfville and found myself pulling into Elisabeth's driveway and walking into her house.

As previously discussed, all bloggers are exactly like their blogs, and I soon learned that this blogger's family is also exactly like they are on the blog.  For the benefit of anyone who doesn't read Elisabeth's blog, her family is her husband John, who was due in from the airport about an hour after my plane came in, her daughter Belle, who is 14 and started high school this year, and son Indy, who is ten.  Indy was playing Minecraft with a friend when I got there, so Elisabeth, Belle, and I sat down in the living room and started our 10 day long conversation.

John came home and everyone rushed to greet him.  In return he had chocolate and a few Lego sets that he'd picked up during the week.  Indy dived right into the Legos, which had me feeling nostalgic for days gone by.  I don't remember the last time the boys played Minecraft or the last time that I stepped on a Lego, but the two things were constants in my house for many years.

Dinner was a delicious seafood chowder with cornbread on the side.  I was amused to see exactly the same thing that happens in my house where one spouse likes it hot and the other is spice averse: John brought a selection of hot sauces to the table (in my house I'm the one who is always carrying hot sauce bottles back and forth to the table).

After dinner Elisabeth and I headed out on the town, and I got my first introduction to the gorgeousness that is NS.

We made a stop for ice cream, and saw that there was a sunflower field behind the store.  From the parking lot it didn't look like much.  The sunflowers were short, and all facing away from us.

Once we wandered into the field and found ourselves head on with the sunflowers, it became a different story.

The ice cream was good, too.

The sun set and everyone turned in to rest up for the adventures to come.  But's that's a story for another day.

PS: Elisabeth's side of the story is here and here, and you will also want to check out her travel page to see more of the goodness to come.

Who's been to NB, NS, or PEI?  When was the last time that you read Anne of Green Gables?