For the last three nights of our Canadian adventures we stayed at one of our favorite rental places ever, on the very edge of the LaHave Islands (Bell Island). You have to drive over a series of bridges and pretty thin land strips to get to it and when you get there you feel like there is not much out there anymore besides you and the ocean (but in reality you still have a few smaller islands a bit off shore).
I won't tell you the events in order, but one of the things we did was go to the famous LaHave Bakery for lunch in .... LaHave. Yummy food and fabulous rustic atmosphere. You just can't go wrong in places like this.
We also drove to a bigger town of Bridgewater to get our groceries. It was a few days before Canada celebrated its independence day on July 1st, so the stores were packed. We found Bulk Barn! The kids went a little crazy on the candy part, but we had fun choosing our snacks and treats. We just don't have a store like that super close to us (well, Whole Foods but still...20 min).
We also hung out (and drove on) that Crescent Beach road that connects Nova Scotia mainland with our islands. Yes, it's June but it is CHILLY!
I am trying to figure out what Mark is doing on this picture, and I think he is eating an apple...but I am not sure.
And back to our house.
Why was our house so cool? Among many things, it's because it came with a boat!
Robert took the kids to the nearby islands to explore.
What made me nervous (as I stayed by the house since the boat perhaps would have been too heavy with me in it;), made them super happy!
This is me....sitting and watching my family row, row their boat. Just kidding...I am checking my email or planning where to go next probably.
One of the days it rained and stormed all morning! It was NOT just a thunderstorm that was passing by and then the weather was fine (like they have here in NC). It was VERY rainy. We waited out the rain inside our house and then headed to LaHave to take a ferry towards Riverport so we could go on a special hike at Hirtle's Beach.
That's us on a very short ferry ride.
The hike was about a 4 mile roundtrip hike that allowed us to see a variety of scenery! We parked at Hirtle's Beach and then walked to Goff Point. The first mile or so was a walk along the beach on pebbles a size of a football. Definitely not a very comfortable walk at first but so beautiful! Then we passed a marsh and a grassy hill that looked like it came from the South of England.
Then we walked into the woods.... First of all...you could be wondering what is that furry thing on the picture! Well...that furry thing was a huge dog that "befriended" us right when we were finishing up our beach walk. And he wasn't alone! These two huge dogs pretty much followed us for the duration of the WHOLE hike! They were super friendly, wet, muddy and pretty much acted like they owned the trail-hahaha. They did try to shake off the muddy water next to us a few times... Not sure why they liked us so much but we let them follow us. It turned out later they lived at the house near the marsh/lake so, I guess they just decided to take a walk with us.
The trail itself is usually probably an absolute joy to follow, but this day, after an enormous amount of rain, it was sooooo wet and muddy! So fun! We had a few times when we had to seriously do some Jackie Chan style moves to jump over huge puddles, over roots and branches or basically hold on to tree trunks and each other to cross over the streams of water. Mark was carried a few times as he was the only one without proper hiking shoes.
It was a lot of fun and absolutely beautiful!
After the woody park, we came out to the edge of the island and saw the ocean! The view was stunning and these pictures don't do it justice!
Whenever we go on big family trips, we almost always have one kid (well, sometimes, adult) in the family that decides to have a "tantrum moment". The most memorable instances include Katya in Croatia and Mark in Puerto Rico. This was Alex's turn. He was a grouch during the whole hike and no one knows (including him) why he was not in a good mood:).
Thank you, children, for this wonderful picture😆!
We loved this hike so much that I even wrote a review of it on Tripadvisor! This was definitely a beautiful place and a very doable hike for the whole family. We would love to go back!
To Be Continued...
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