Visited the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, where we saw the work of famed folk artist Maud Lewis. Her painted house sits in the gallery, where it was moved in 1998, so I got a panoramic interior shot.
Also it’s worth noting that there’s a whole other wing to the Art Gallery that we totally did not notice till later; it’s where all the older non-contemporary/non-Maud Lewis art is, and is not accessible from the outside, only via a basement passage.
That’s where we saw Arthur Lismer’s watercolors of dazzle camo ships.
If you’re visiting Halifax and want to see all this for free, Art Gallery of NS has BMO free access Thursday nights from 5-9PM (admission charged all other days). More on Maud Lewis in the 1976 short film “Maud Lewis: A World Without Shadows.”
Some shots from a short Sunday walk around Point Pleasant Park on the southern end of the Halifax peninsula. There’s a beach there, called Black Rock Beach, but they advise no swimming since it’s right near the Seaport and the water might be dirty.
An anchor from the HMCS Bonaventure memorializes naval personnel who died in service.
It’s finally gotten warm enough to melt the snow and ice coating the paved walking paths that wind through Forest Hills in Cole Harbour, so it’s been nice to walk through the local woods to see the trees and lakes and little parks.
(I’m cheating a bit with the sound on this one; the original time lapse video was silent, so to add ambience I snipped some audio from an older video and added it to this one.)
And a still photo of said sunrise if you’d rather not see video.
Turns out we’re just a short drive from Rainbow Haven Beach, so we went down there to take in the Atlantic coastal scenery. Too cold to swim, of course, but Ezra had fun watching the waves.
We also visited the famous Cow Bay Moose, a concrete sculpture by folk artist Winston Bronnum. Ezra is saying “moose” in the photo.
(The moose is at Silver Sands Beach, which used to be a nice sandy beach before the sand was all mined for construction, leaving only rocks.)
It was quite snowy later that day and through the night, with a nice fine powder that was fun to wallow about in the backyard for a bit the next day.
One more trip back to DCA to say goodbye to our old North Virginia townhouse before finally selling it and ending our official residence in the United States.
Visited a couple of old friends.
And one last takeoff from DCA with a view of the National Mall. Goodbye and godspeed, Washington, District of Columbia. (So sorry to all you DC friends I wasn’t able to see, I’ll hopefully be back sometime for a proper get-together over some nice Virginia oysters or something.)
Postscript: A detour through Montreal, Quebec (as my original departing flight through Newark was rebooked due to a dent in the engine), where I conversed briefly with a restaurant robot who persuaded me to order a salad.
Also browsed the #YULArt “Le Montréaler” exhibit, in which local artists imagined covers for a Montreal-based magazine in homage to the New Yorker.
Two views over the same point along the USA/Canada border from Calais, Maine and Saint Stephen, New Brunswick: a border crossing I made twice as I brought our cars from Virginia to Nova Scotia.
First drive: Amy’s Ford Fiesta, the week before Christmas. The day I was supposed to leave, the battery died, taking an already faulty transmission controller with it. Took an extra day to get the battery replaced at the service centre, which meant emptying the car of moving items beforehand and then repacking it afterward. (This was okay; strategizing the repack allowed me to cram way more leftover house stuff into the car.)
Finally got to leave VA at 10PM, detour up I-81 and I-84 through Pennsylvania to avoid late night road work on I-95 and generally skip NJ/NYC unpleasantness. Drove all night and all day while chugging canned coffee, surrounded by trucks for much of the route, was amazed at the rows and rows of trucks stopped for driver sleep breaks at every rest area and adjacent shoulders. Finally stopped in Bangor, Maine to rest at a hotel when my eyes could no longer stay open on the road.
Fun bit of serendipity in Bangor: after napping till about 11PM I took a taxi down to the local Irish pub, Paddy Murphy’s to get some food, but the kitchen had closed, so I just ordered the most filling dark stout on draft. While nursing a pint of Gunner’s Daughter, I struck up a conversation with the guy beside me, who turned out to be Sean Faircloth, author and former Bangor mayor and Maine state legislator. Not only did that make for an hour of fun politics conversation, but he knew a place across the street where they still had food for another hour — and a pint of some Narragansett IPA.
Next day, drove an hour and a half to the border, crossing over at the new border crossing to officially export the vehicle from the US and import it into Canada. (This involved tons of paperwork and stopping at both border offices, plus contacting and paying a broker a week beforehand to facilitate the export and provide 72 hour notice to the US CBP facility.) I was glad to have picked Calais to cross rather than the I-95 facility in Houlton — there was no line, and the whole process was done fairly quickly on both ends. I celebrated in Saint Stephen, NB with a Five Kings salad and a contemplative sunset walk along the snowy waterfront facing the border.
From St Stephen it was about six more hours to Halifax, mostly uneventful, no need to stop in St John, Moncton, or Truro. (I did try stopping for a pee break at the Nova Scotia Welcome Centre after crossing the provincial border that evening, but it closes at 4:30PM so I ended up at shopping mall in Amherst, NS.)
Second drive, Fiat 500, mid-January. I went a bit slower this trip, taking time to see some sights and visit friends and family.
Left VA at 6PM and had my fastest trip up I-95 to NJ ever, dropped in on the in-laws in Union, then headed to Brooklyn to meet up with tmkf. Also did that NYC thing were you get food at 3AM, in my case a spicy halal platter from the grill at the back of Union Deli Grocery.
Walked around Brooklyn a bit the next day and ate at Dinosaur BBQ before heading out to drive across Manhattan and up into North NJ to visit stynxno, then striking out across Connecticut to have dinner with vee and duckstab before turning in for the night in Boston.
Next morning I dropped in on my cousin Kara, and had oysters with helicomatic at Union Oyster House, then hung around the Boston waterfront for a bit before getting back on the road and heading north to Maine.
Stopped back at Paddy Murphy’s in Bangor again to have a bread bowl of Guinness Stew and another pint of Gunner’s Daughter.
Stood on the waterfront for a bit to stare at the frozen Penobscot river before driving back out on narrow mountain roads towards the coast to spend the night at Quimby House Inn in Bar Harbor.
Next morning I wanted to try the famous Lobster Ice Cream at Ben and Bill’s but they were closed for the season. I did get to walk the Shore Path and see an Atlantic sunrise from the icy, tree-lined waterfront, and that made the whole detour worth it. Also got to chat Star Trek with the owners at Trailhead Cafe, which made for a very fun breakfast.
I wish I had stopped at a scenic outlook shortly after leaving Bar Harbor; Cadillac Mountain glistened with ice in the late morning sun in a view from the mainland I’d probably never see again, but I didn’t stop for a photo. Two hours later I had reached Calais, ME once more.
Parked by the Calais Free Library for a bit to gaze over the St Croix River before crossing the border once again, repeating the paperwork rigmarole on both US and Canada sides.
Six hours of driving through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to Halifax, with just a brief stop at an Ultramar to get coffee and cash for the Cobequid Pass toll. Got to experience the exhilarating panic of a minor skid on the ice while getting back on the highway but otherwise the trip was uneventful, and I got to Halifax around 10PM.
There’s still stuff to do: the cars need to be modified and inspected within 45 days of entry to meet Canadian import requirements, and registered with Nova Scotia RMV. For now it’s good to have two very long solo road trips out of the way.
