Sonya's Blog - Day 81 - New Glasgow and Pictou

Sonya’s Blog - Day 81 - September 11th - New Glasgow and Pictou

We didn’t have much on the agenda today except for visiting and hanging out. Blake and I took Kizmet for a long walk and found the Tim Hortons. When we got back Aunt Theresa had pancakes made for everyone and we sat down to a yummy breakfast. The kids then started on their schoolwork and Blake and I looked at the map and tried to plan the next leg of our journey. We also needed to book one more cabin in Newfoundland as I was having troubles getting responses to my inquiries. We made some phone calls and booked the last cabin in Newfoundland. We also booked a campground near Peggy’s Cove for after our trip. Our plan is to tour Cape Breton for a few days, starting tomorrow. We catch the ferry from North Sydney on Wednesday evening and arrive in Newfoundland on Thursday morning. We stay in St. John’s, with our friends The Bennett’s, from Thursday until Monday morning. We then drive to the Bonavista/Trinity area and spend the night there and to explore that area. We then drive to Gros Morne and we are spending 2 nights in the park. We leave Newfoundland on Thursday, Sept. 24th from Port aux Basques and arrive back in Sydney on the Friday morning. We will visit Louisbourgh in the morning and then drive back to New Glasgow to spend a few more days with Aunt Theresa and Uncle Fred. We pick up our RV on Monday and then will go to camp around the Peggy’s Cove area and explore around there. On October 3rd we will drive to Little Brook to visit with Blake’s cousins and his Great Aunt (Little Brook is not far from Digby). We will stay in Little Brook for 4 days and then head back to New Brunswick. We will camp in Moncton this time so that we can visit Hopewell Rocks in the Bay of Fundy and experience the highest tide in the world. We may also camp a couple of nights in St. John as that is where Blake’s Grandfather grew up. After about 4 days in New Brunswick we will drive down to Maine and start our travels down the Eastern Seaboard.

Blake and I also looked through Aunt Theresa's Genealogy, she is descended from a Hines (the same as the ketchup, but not the Hines that invented the ketchup only a relative of). It was quite the document, tracing all the family lines from the one man. It was done by another descendant and he sent a copy to everyone he contacted and got information on. The work that went into it was phenomenal and it was done in the early 80's and you could tell that it was all typed up on a typewriter. It was hundreds of pages and tons of detail. Then Uncle Fred had some discharge papers from his father (Blake's Grandfather) who fought in WWII. Attatched to it were spreadsheets that listed all of the places he was posted and his movements during the war. Some of the handwriting was hard to read and the abbreviations were hard to follow. Something interesting was that he enlisted on September 11th, 1939 and we were looking at the papers on September 11th 76 years later.

With that all planned out and some bookings done we were ready to head out and do something. Theresa suggested that we head into Pictou and check out the Wharf area as it was really nice. So we hopped in the cars and headed to Pictou. The wharf area was revitalized awhile ago and they had done a good job. They had built a reproduction of the ship Hector, which was the first ship that came across from Scotland to this area (200 were on board the ship). The Hector was built as a fully rigged fluyt, designed to carry cargo over long distances, but it’s most famous voyage was bringing these first immigrants to New Scotland. The voyage took 11 weeks due to a delay just off the coast of Newfoundland due to a Gale. Dysentry and Smallpox plagued the trip and 18 people died on the voyage. All I could think when I saw the replica was what an awful voyage for 200 people on such a small ship. You can see the boat in the background in the picture of the kids here:

We then walked around the wharf area a bit and then walked up to main street. The old post office is on main street and it is the only building in the world that has a window in the chimney. The building is for sale right now for about $150 000, but I forgot to get a picture. We found a tea house that sold traditional scottish shortbread, so we bought a few bags to take back and have with our tea.

After we had walked around enough, we headed back to the house for some tea and biscuits. The shortbread was very tasty and we enjoyed our tea. We had it rather late in the day and it was after 4 when we finished so we knew we would be having a late supper. Isaac did some work on his WWI report, Natasha did some reading and I worked on my blogs. We then had a game of crib with Natasha and Blake on one team and Uncle Fred and I on another. After a slow start and being behind the whole game, Uncle Fred and I rallied at the end and won the game. We were pretty proudy pants of ourselves.

We had our late supper after that. We had put our second Montreal Smoked Meat (that we got from Donna and Bill in Montreal) in the crockpot earlier in the day and it was ready to go. Aunt Theresa and cut up some potatoes and made french fries. So we had Montreal Smoked Meat sandwiches and french fries. Super tasty, deliciousness.

After supper we taught Uncle Fred how to play the card game Golf. Isaac went to bed because he was so tired, but Natasha, Blake and I played with Uncle Fred. I was having a great game and getting really good cards, Natasha was not having a great game. So at the end she only had 5 points to go until she lost, so she went out as fast as possible. I looked like I had a good board, but my buried cards were really high and I scored lots of points in the last round (not a good thing in Golf, the goal is to get the least amount of points). Due to that Uncle Fred won the game because he lucked out and ended up with a great board at the end. Wow was he ever proud of himself!

After that we chatted a bit more and then called it a night. We drive to Cape Breton tomorrow and Kizmet stays behind with Uncle Fred and Aunt Theresa for a couple of weeks. Not sure how Pixie is going to feel about that:)

Sonya