Let's (Go Back) To Places (and Meet People!): Wolfville, Nova Scotia

 

Sigh, friends, this is the second to last post on the Great Maritimes Bender.  The beginning of the end.  I was missing home, but I was also nowhere near ready to leave.

At least I had the consolation of another weekend at Lighthouse HQ with Elisabeth & Fam.

Friday Night - Home Away from Home

When I pulled into the driveway on Friday evening, John and Indy were hard at work on the grill.  The nightly feast was burgers, sausages, and salmon.  Elisabeth made potato salad and a cucumber and tomato salad c/o a gift from their neighbor's garden.  I skipped the burger and went for everything else plus hot sauce.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record (much) but it's worth saying for the umpteenth time that we just don't have seafood like this at home.  Anytime that I'm near the coast, I'm loading up.

After dinner, the kids got cleanup duty and Elisabeth and I went out on the town.  There had been a trail closure in NS due to the risk of wildfires over the summer, and the trails had just reopened a few days ago.  We went for a lovely evening stroll.

We came back to the house, and Elisabeth whipped up lava cakes with a spoonful of peanut butter for dessert.

But wait, there was more.  Elisabeth and I continued our Hitchcock streak with North by Northwest and then called it a night.

Saturday Morning - Let's Go for a Walk

Breakfast on Saturday was french toast casserole.  I had a small drizzle of maple syrup and of course a scoop of Greek yogurt on the side.

We needed a good solid fuel base because we had Big Plans for the day.  John and Indy were heading out for a deep sea fishing trip, and Elisabeth and I were headed out for a walk.  Belle had a session of hard earned Belle Time at home on tap.

When I say that we went for a walk, I mean of course that we went for a very long hike.  Someone had to let the newly reopened trails of NS know that they had been missed.

We went to Cape Split, and when we got there, Elisabeth let me know that we had two options: a shorter version or the full version.  Pshaw, as if I came all the way to NS to do the short version.  I heard her say the distance in km's, and I had an inkling of what it was in miles, but I rightly didn't bother to do the math.  We set off through the woods and picked up 36 Questions from where we'd left off last weekend.

As we got closer to the cape, I was amused by the long warning list.

And then we arrived at the Cape.

I soon understood the warnings.  It looks very innocent, but the drop offs are steep.

But it was a lovely spot for a picnic.

We continued on the trail.  We'd finished the 36 Questions, so we moved on.  We did a pretend episode of the Sarah's Bookshelves podcast (two old books we loved, two new books we loved, one book that we hated, and our last five star read).  Elisabeth pulled up a list of Deep Questions and a list of lighter questions, and we alternated between the two lists.

Along the way, I continued learning to speak Canadian.  On my side of the border, we have lookouts, but here they are lookoffs.

They are gorgeous in any language.

All things must come to an end, and we did reach the end of our hike.  It felt like a half hour stroll, and the only clue that it had been longer was my empty water bottle.

I've done up to 10 miles of hiking in one day, but in separate hikes.  My previous single hike record was just over seven miles.

Saturday Lunch - Let's Refuel

After the hike, we drove back to Lighthouse HQ and picked up Belle for a special lunch.  Elisabeth is not a big fan of poutine, but Belle is and she wanted to encourage my "have poutine in every province" mission.  The aftermath of our hike was definitely the meal to do it.

We went to Swiss Chalet.  In my mind poutine is a complete meal, but when I saw that they had ribs, of course I expanded things a bit.  Sadly they were out of cheese curds, so we had to make do with regular cheese in the poutine.

Belle had a running joke going about my home state, and it was one with a lot of truth to it.  When I was 15 and my dad told me that we were moving to Ohio, the first words out of my mouth were "Idaho?"  It's pretty common for folks to confuse the name of my state with Idaho or Iowa.  Belle went one better and called my home state Utah, which I thought was both funny and flattering.

During the meal a subject came up with information that Belle knew and Elisabeth did not.  It was a Need to Know matter, and Belle decided that Elisabeth had not yet reached Need to Know status.  But she confided in me, and I was very honored.  Whatever it was, I will take what she told me to the grave.

After lunch we dropped Belle off at home and went back out on the town, aka we ran errands.  Another thing that Elisabeth has written about is the great deals that she gets at grocery stores, which was hard to relate to.  The only deal at my home grocery stores is that the more expensive store gives kickbacks in the $1-$2 range, and sometime we can get out of there for less than three figures.

Her store was running a "spend $60 get $20" kickback.  AND it was a bit of a struggle for her to buy $60 worth of stuff.  My face turned a bright shade of green and stayed that way for the rest of the afternoon.

Saturday Night - Catch of the Day

John and Indy returned from their epic day at sea with dinner.  They'd caught several cod, which they had to release since it wasn't cod season, but they'd reeled in a pollock.

The menfolk cooked up their catch and Elisabeth brought out the leftovers from the night before.  We weren't very hungry after our huge lunch, so we put together grazing plates.  The two salads and a sausage from the night before, some sun chips, and the pollock.  That pollock tho...I ended up refilling my grazing plate.

I wasn't so full that I didn't have room for dessert.  After we got back from errands, Belle and I made cupcakes (my main role was as a baking companion.  Belle did 90% of the work).

It had come to the family's attention that I had never seen The Great British Bake Off, so we took our cupcakes down to the TV room and did something about that.

Sunday Morning - One Last Wolfville Hurrah

The end was near, but it wasn't here yet.

First there was church, and then Elisabeth and I went back out on the town.  We went back to Charts with our laptops and got caught up on our blog reading.  I'm always a sucker for a soup and salad deal (veggie soup and a feta sandwich).

We went for one last walk past the Wolfville sign.  When we were there on Monday morning the tide was out, and now it was back in.  If I'd had more presence of mind I would have lined up my then and now photos a little better, but you get the idea.

Then:

Now:

Then:

Now:

Then:

Now:

It's worth repeating that we do not have anything like this in "Utah".

We stopped by the Wolfville Visitors Center, where we saw the program for the upcoming Devour Fest which includes a Poutine Smackdown.  I already didn't want to leave, and Wolfville was really rubbing in what I was going to be missing.

The clock said it was time to go o'clock.  I sadly passed exit 10 on my way out, and headed for my final 24 hours in the Maritimes.  But that's a story for another day.

Until next time Wolfville!  Many thanks to Elisabeth and Fam for their gracious hospitality.

Elisabeth's side of the story is here, here, and here.