Out East, eh!

We are now in Canada; Nova Scotia, to be precise.  Why stay just in the USA when Canada was just over the border, over there near Maine? So we decided to keep going, and pretty soon the time zone changed and the money got prettier, so we figured we must have reached the Canadian Maritimes.

Maybe the KVLY-TV mast...

We left Fargo on the 25th, but not before we had chased all over gravel roads in deepest farm country, being chased by thunderstorms, to find the 2nd-highest structure in the world, the 628m KVLY-TV mast, which is near Fargo.  We are now not sure we found the right one as we had forgotten to input the actual GPS coordinates and found TWO really tall towers, but I'm sure one of them was it!  That was the last adventure we had with our car and Betty Lou, the GPS, and the next day, after 3206 miles and some amazing memories, we handed them back to the nice Alamo people at the airport.

Then we boarded the plane for the first of three flights that were to have taken us to Bangor.  However, as we had been warned, domestic flights in the USA are temperamental.  And sure enough, as we landed at Minneapolis and checked the boarding gates for the next flight to New York, we found out the flight had been cancelled due to thunderstorms, and we had been rescheduled to a flight the next day.  Damn and blast it!! So we had to find a hotel in Minneapolis (again! That's 3 times we've stayed there now), at our own expense mind, as Delta does not provide accommodation if the flights are cancelled due to weather.  Then, heart in mouth, we appeared at the airport the next day and hoped like hell we'd finally get to Bangor.  Which we finally did, via Detroit.

Our East-Coast ride!

Luckily we'd had the hire car booked from the 26th, so we picked it up straight from the airport.  And what a car!  The Alamo lady must have seen the gleam in our eyes, and promptly suggested the red Mustang convertible!  Actually, it's a bit of a pain to do big miles in, beautiful and throaty though it is, as there is very little in-car storage space and the air conditioning is iffy, but the stereo is fantastic and we look so COOL in the thing...so we set off and went across the border to Canada quite quickly, as Bangor is very close.  The roads over here are not as good as they could be, with some huge potholes that trip up the unwary (i.e. us), and the provinces seem to be very quiet, with a lot of quite unkempt buildings and only very small businesses.  But the scenery now we are in coastal Nova Scotia is fantastic.  Peggy's Cove is one of the most famous spots in the area, with an oft-photographed lighthouse, and a small community clinging precariously to the granite rocks.  Personally, whoever decided to first settle here in the early 1800's should have been lynched! But here the settlement stays, and it's really quite pretty when it's fine.  Even when it was foggy last night I got some amazing photos of the tiny harbour.  We are staying in an incredible B&B at Peggy's Cove(which is for sale, in case anyone is interested!), and went for a big drive today around the little coves and bays to the south of here.  Truly spectacular, and I could stay for days just taking lots of photos if I had a really decent camera.  Photos I took of the harbour last night can be seen here.

Tomorrow it's back to New Brunswick and St John again, before heading back to Maine and ending our all-too-brief stint over East.  Will have to come back!

Peggy's Cove lighthouse.