Ho Ho Ho Home Again Jiggidy Jig Merry Christmas

Our story so far: We got home safely. After

FLOOD at a campsite on the Assinaboia River

HURRICANE Shredded leaves the morning after at Beaumont on the St. Lawrence.

And just missing the tornado that took out downtown Goderich Ontario.

We arrived at Kelowna to find we are short one son-in-law. The kids are adapting.

We have been privledged to see many wonders:

A rainbow jumping over the Moon at a former  WWII prisoner of war camp on Lake Superior.

And great adventures:

Which one has acrophobia?

Met great people:

War Bride Zoe Boone near Perth Andover

Canadian Coast Guard Lady swotting up on Lighthouses

A big wheel on the Tobermory Ferry

Although there were many temptations to stay on the road...

We are back with family in the Lower Mainland

So we end where we began all those months ago, with a visit to Eswyn's Garden

Where a single Gentian was braving the fall season

And a single stone from the Atlantic fills a hole on Qualicum Beach.

To all of you who patiently shared this adventure, many thanks, Merry Christmas, Season's greetings, Happy New Year. Take our advice. find a distressed RV with a shaky transmission, follow your bliss and see what the wide world has waiting for you.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot

Terry & Carolyn

tlyster@shaw.ca

TID BITS

As the degerees flash by, our attention has been taken by:

 The largest wooden church in North America, sustained by the small town of Church Point.

The Hopwell Rocks which are quite commercial and tidal

The clock at the Sackville City Hall. What can I say? All hands in deck?, Where's the second hand store?, It's a matter of a pinion?

The Archives at the University of New Brunswick where Eswyn's War Bride research will be kept.

Nearby, the Brydon Jack Observatory, the first "professional" observatory in Canada.

Carolyn dodges the world's largest Axe at Nacawik

Bees nest in a road sign on New Brunswick Highway 2

Happy Phase at a trout farm and campground near Sunderland.

Logo at the Jell-E-Bean Campground, Wasaga Beach NB

Wasaga Beach, where you can have funnel cake for breakfast....

And scavaging of all kinds starts right after Labour Day.

At Sauble Beach, I ran into one of my Canadome designs from the '70s. This system, which was patented and manufactured by National Shieldweld and was going to house the world, has fetched up as a Used Used Store. The shell structure is in great shape for 40 years of hard winters.

Sauble Beach bird takes flight.

Lighthouses new and old at Cabot Point on the Bruce Peninsula. The Bruce is a place we could have explored for weeks. The trouble with travel is movement.

And for Great Grand-daughter Julia, who collects carniverous plants, a Pitcher Plant in the Dorcas Point Fen. As the Jules would explain, the insects try to land on the flowers, slide off, fall into the pitchers from which there is no escape and make up for lack of nutrients in the bog. FEED ME SEYMOUR!

Until we blog again....

ALONG THE WAY

Your obedient servants have been slowly moving in a westerly and northerly direction as we anticipate the great Canadian winter. See the masthead for our current progress. All along the way various wonders have appeared.

A shop with no real estate over a tidal bore in Bear River

McLobster sandwich in the Digby McDonald's

A lion fountain just missing the bowl since the Boer War.

Disobedient tenants

A cormorant supervising habour activities in Halifax

Maud Lewis's relocated house and her remarkable art in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

The record of my first trip to Halifax aboard the Mauritania 2, arriving February 9, 1946, age 18 months.

Together with Mother's Most Excellent Citizens: Canada's War Brides of World War II on sale at the Pier 21 book store.

A Bricklin casually parked in Moncton (with our friends Melynda & Dan)

The Fundy tides do a remarkable thing twice a day.

EsDora drove straight into the trail of Hurricane Irene. What better place to hunker down than an RV park on the St Lawence?

Stay tuned.

Coasting Through Nova Scotia

Realizing that we have rounded the bend and are now headed home, Carolyn hauled out the pebble we gathered at Qualicum Beach...

 And made a deposit at Murphy's Cove.

 At nearby Taylor Head on the south coast of Nova Scotia, we encounter a beached sea monster.

Peggy's Cove is all that it is cracked up to be, from this sculpture in living granite (fisherfolk have time on their hands in the off season).

To picturesque vignettes everywhere you look.

We were there on a blustery day which probably means less tourists per square inch. At it's heart, a working village, population: 35

A great surprise was The Ovens. A beach with sea caves which had a gold rush in the 1860s.

People were still panning on the beach.

Not Fred Flinstones car; quartz intrusions were ground up with these stones for local slucing.

Lehavre had the best City Hall so far. Local government cut to the bone.

Cape St Mary is the western extreme of Nova Scotia. Now heading along the Fundy shore...

Where we camp in fog at Blomidon...

And the bottom drops out of the ocean at Wolfville.

Stay tuned.