tom around the world: Eastern Canada

If I take a look back at all the things I’ve experienced while I was in Canada it is hard to imagine that all this happened within such a short time. Besides traveling all around the country and to the US I also did some research and wrote a thesis. When you read the last and this and maybe the next entry in my blog, you might wonder when I have done all this. To be honest I don’t know. However, since it is neither interesting to write about work nor to read about it I don’t want to extend this excursion into my research. I just want to remember that by the time Lenko and I left for our next trip which is the topic of this entry I had finished a draft of my thesis and it was the work of many endless seeming days and nights and I got seldom more than five hours of sleep.

Anyway, on August 21^st of the year 2007 Lenko and I started our trip to Eastern Canada. We rented a car (Toyota) and the plan was to drive east and see as much as possible. The final destination was St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador. We traveled six different provinces of Canada and have seen and experienced so much that it is impossible to write about all of it.

First we went to Montreal and Quebec City. After a more or less glance at Quebec City we went up north to Baie-Ste-Catherine where we saw some minke whales. If we would have more time we would have gone on a whale cruise in the Parc Marin Natl Saguenay-St-Laurent where it is even possible to see blue whales.

However, we drove on through New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island (PEI). PEI is the smallest of the Canadian provinces but it is beautiful. Especially for a person like me who loves rough weather and light houses it was amazing. Due to a high percentage of iron in the soil the beaches of PEI all look kind of reddish but you can see that more clearly on the pictures. After a short stop in Charlottetown, the capital of PEI, we went on to Nova Scotia, visited Lunenburg and Halifax and a few days later we arrived in Sydney (Cape Breton) to catch the ferry to Newfoundland.

Unfortunately we didn’t have a reservation so we had to wait one night for the next available spot on a departing ferry. The ferry trip to Newfoundland was six hours and we arrived in Port aux Basques around mid day. The next day we simply drove along Highway 1 straight to St. John’s and Cape Spear the eastern most part of the North American continent. We took a few hours to do a whale cruise on the Atlantic. We didn’t see any whales on this cruise but instead thousands of puffins.

After we’ve seen everything of interest (or let’s say the most interesting things) we turned around and were on our way back to Kingston. We stopped at Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, and did a hike up the highest mountain/hill there. On this hike we’ve met some caribous, a moose, and a bear and so on… We got really lucky with the ferry and left Newfoundland.

Back in Nova Scotia we drove around Cape Breton and went to Cape Breton Highlands National Park. There we met a few more moose and whales but it was just a short stop on the way back to New Brunswick. There we stopped at Hope Well Rocks, a nice rock formation created by the force of the tide. However, time was pressing so we drove on, visited Fredericton and Edmundston, NB, raced through Quebec and arrived September 1^st in Kingston.