Yarmouth, Nova Scotia - ten days after taking off from Bar Harbor on the post-transcontintal portion of my bike trip, I'm sitting in this seaport town impatiently waiting to catch a ferry back to Maine. Tomorrow afternoon in Portland, I'll meet my father for a four-day trip aboard a windjammer, sort of the rustic retro New England equivalent of Carnival Cruise Lines.
This trip has definitely been a mixed bag, a situation that is entirely my own fault for not planning it out better. What I didn't realize is that Nova Scotia is actually a pretty big place, certainly larger than it appears on your average map. As a result, despite skipping the portion of the trip that would have led through northern New Brunswick, I've still spent the last week feeling pressed for time. I've had to do more 100-mile days than I really wanted, and I haven't found myself with enough time to stop and simply see Nova Scotia. Plus I've had to contain myself to a fairly limited route that cut out most of the province.
That all being said, I have at least gotten a chance to briefly dunk myself into Nova Scotia culture and ride down a lot of seacoast roads, many of them quite gorgeous. After Halifax, I followed the south shore of the province, then turned inwards and cut across the isloated interior. The highlight of the whole exercise came yesterday and the day before, when I rode out Digby Neck, on the north shore, to a place called Brier Island - basically, I rode out an isolated 25-mile peninsula, caught a ferry at the end of it, rode down a 10-mile long island, caught a ferry at the end of that, and spent the night on the tiny island upon which it deposited me. The ride was remarkable: no traffic and seacoast views all around. On Brier Head, I had an entire hostel to myself, and went to bed with the pounding of the surf outside my windows and sea air in my lungs. It was all too brief a stay (see previous lament), but it was worth it, even if I had to retrace my route for 40 miles yesterday.
Now I'm in Yarmouth, a small and generally pretty charming town on the west end of Nova Scotia. My plan is to catch the ferry tomorrow, spend four nights on the windjammer, then bike back to the ancestral Moran manse in Massachusetts, a two to two-and-a-half day ride. THat will end the biking portion of my trip, and commence the siting-around-on-my-duff-for-a-week-or-so-while-I-figure-out-what-I'm-doing portion. (Sure, no doubt, to lead to some scintillating blog entries.)