Getting Ready for Nova Scotia

We’re getting into serious planning for our next major holiday – this time it will be a driving trip between New York City and Nova Scotia, Canada. Naturally, we will be doing this trip in the coldest part of winter – that’s when we do all our big trips!

Knowing there will be real snow on them roads, we tried to rent a Subaru for the journey, but they are now so popular in the USA that they’re not available on bulk discount to rental car companies, which means “no can rent”! So, we’ve ordered what we think will be a Ford Explorer – that’ll be OK. Our friend Jack in Skykomish has an Explorer, and it does the job in the snow.

Almost every trip we have had to the States, we’ve stayed in Los Angeles to get over the jet lag. That’s been a good formula, but we’ve deviated from it this time, and will fly “direct” to NYC, and spend a week there to resynchronise our circadian rhythms. With luck, we’ll enjoy New York as much as last time, and will get to see a show or two and a museum or two. We’ll certainly visit the new WTC memorial.

Map from MyScenicDrive showing our intended overnight places.

We’ll spend a month on the road, and the map shows our envisaged route. We aren’t bound to this route, because we won’t make any advance bookings anywhere. Cape Cod will be a new experience for us, and from there we’ll make our way slowly up Route 1 through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. Then into Canada and New Brunswick on the way to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. We expect it to be very cold up here, but we trained for that by being in Minnesota during the Polar Vortex earlier this year.

Summer view of Peggys Cove lighthouse [Photo: Enrico Nunziati]

We originally thought of catching a ferry to Newfoundland, but that would probably add too much time and kilometers, and we’ve dropped it from Plan A. The map shows our drive back being via Quebec and even Niagara Falls, but if we run out of time, we’ll skip parts of this optimistic plan. One of the scenic highlights of Nova Scotia is Peggys Cove and its lighthouse. That summer view looks great, but for us, it’s more likely to look like the lower picture!

Winter view of Peggys Cove lighthouse [Photo: Noriko Natsume]

On the way home, we’ll fly west to Seattle and spend a week there visiting old friends, then back to Australia.