Reflections and Summary of the East Coast Trip

Hotel Frontenac, Quebec City.

Tide differences of Hopewell Rocks in Bay of Fundy.

Beach in PEI.

A cormorant colony.

A Cape Breton 'party'.

Peggy's Cove Lighthouse.

Saturday, June 18^th.

That’s it, tout complet, mission accomplished. Both Shayna and I had never been to the East Coast and on this trip we saw everything on our list of things to see and do in the Maritimes and more. We saw the major highlights of the area, with the exception of Newfoundland, which will be a trip unto itself in the future. We loved Peggy’s Cove, the Cabot Trail, the musicality of the Ceilidh, Lunenburg, Hopewell Rocks, the hike in PEI’s Greenwich PP, the Anne of Green Gables site, the Maud Lewis exhibit at the Nova Scotia Art Gallery, the mystery of the Magnetic Hill and Reversing Falls, and the physical beauty of Canada. We learned or refreshed our memory of Canadian history at places like Louisbourg, the Halifax Citadel and the Alexander Graham Bell Museum (any other museums as well). We stayed in smaller towns and probably didn’t do justice to the major cities, like Charlottetown, Saint John or Moncton, for example. 

I have traveled extensively throughout the world and always knew I wanted to see Eastern Canada as the furthest I had been previously was Tadoussac, east of Quebec City in 2006. I figured I’d see the Maritimes when I got old and retired. Well, here I am. COVID definitely helped too, as we were more comfortable and felt safer traveling within Canada. We drove 6237 kms through two countries, five provinces and three states. Gas in the States was around $5.00 a gallon and in Canada it reached a max of $2.15 a litre, or over $8.00 a gallon! The brief visit of the US was a nice alternate route home. I had never been to Maine before and was glad to see the state that Hawkeye called home. There was a lot of in car driving time and long distances, but that is the nature of the beast in this kind of road trip. We did do a fair bit of walking and took a couple of excellent hikes, the last of which was the Glen Boulder Trail hike that we can still feel in our quads two days later. 

We didn’t book anything in advance as I like the flexibility of changing plans on the go and the thrill of discovery. Because we traveled early in the tourist season, we encountered less crowds, cheaper pre-season rates, and cooler weather. We slept in 18 different very comfortable beds. We met many very friendly people in hotels, restaurants, parks, and shops. We ate lots of excellent, very fresh and expensive seafood: lobster, shrimp, scallops, mussels and fish. I was very surprised and admittedly disappointed by the lack of wildlife. We didn’t have any whale sightings, the only animal we saw was a fox and birds? Where were they? We saw lots of the ubiquitous seagulls and omnipresent crows and sparrows, but precious little else. We had two days of rain that didn’t affect us as we used them for travel days. The trip, sites and destinations were not as exotic as other places I have been fortunate enough to visit, but it re-confirmed that Canada is a truly beautiful country from coast to coast and the best country in the world. All in all, time and money well spent!