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I do like gin.  And when a friend and I were in Newfoundland several years ago, we discovered The Newfoundland Gin Distillery and its Seaweed Gin.  LL is also a gin lover, so once cross-province alcohol rules lifted (before COVID, I believe) we each bought a couple of bottles of their Seaweed Gin.  Mine were gone before I left for Scotland, but LL had hung onto one of hers.  She brought it on our recent Charlevoix trip and left it with me, saying, “I seem to have gone off it, Lainey – you can have it.” What a sweeetie.

Well, it turns out I’ve kinda gone off it too.  I don’t mind it every now and then, but it’s no longer really to my taste.  So what’s a girl to do?  I decided to start checking out other regional gins, much like I did in Scotland (God, I still miss my Kirkjuvagr and Kinrara gins).  So I asked at the Nova Scotia liquor store and based on her recommendation, bought a bottle of NS Compass gin.  Umm, no.  Again, not to my taste.  Then I found this quaint little farmer’s market near the Bay of Fundy and, in spite of being annoyed by all the spelling mistakes on several of this one guy’s labels, picked up a bottle of their aptly named ‘Gin’.  But this time I was smart – I only bought a small bottle.  Well, thank goodness for that, because I did not like this gin any better than the first two!  Clearly the east coast of Canada is not the best place to source classic London Dry style gins.

So I now have approximately $100 worth of gin I don’t like, and as the bottles are all opened, I can’t really give them away as gifts.  Oh, and I’ve given up on supporting local and am back to my tried and true British Bombay Sapphire. 

Sigh.

After a day of nursing my bruises and hiding from the rain, I made it into Annapolis Royal yesterday.  It was such a pretty town.  Two independent bookstores and I bought something at each one ☹.  One of my goals on my travels was to support as many indie bookstores as possible, and I now have a drawer full of proof (oh dear).  In fact I’ve been so supportive over the last three months that I think my gas mileage is being impacted due to the additional weight.

A great seafood lunch at The Whimsical Fork, then an afternoon spent wandering around Fort Anne – built by Scots (yay), managed by England, France, Britain, and Canada, and has been attacked or blockaded more than any other North American fortress.  Quite a feat.  It, and the Botanical Gardens down the road, were absolutely beautiful to wander around on a sunny day.

Re the post-fall bruising – no pictures (no one needs to see that) but I am a little concerned.  Not by the pain, that’s mostly subsided, but by the fact that I have a massage booked for six days from now, and my entire left side looks like I was mugged by someone wielding a cricket bat.  Here’s hoping I won’t scare the masseuse too much on the day.

Well, I’m now regretting yesterday’s smug and snarky comment about people who won’t go out on a rainy day.

The plan for today was to ride my bike into Annapolis Royal and spend the morning & early afternoon sightseeing, then come back to the campground and spend the rest of the day emptying all the external storage compartments and giving them a good wipe down.  Oh, and a load of laundry before all of that.

At around 2 a.m. the wind picked up and the rain started.  And I don’t just mean rain.  I mean a wrath-of-God, build-an-Ark, tie-down-the-picnic-table deluge.  It rained and rained and rained all night and is supposed to continue well into the afternoon.  The RV shook, and the exterior ceiling fan covers sounded like they were about to snap off (even though they were closed tight), and I woke up at least twice an hour, every hour, until I finally gave up and got out of bed at 5:30.  So that was today’s plans scuppered.

But that wasn’t the only problem last night.  At around midnight I scooted out of bed (I truly do not remember why) and stepped onto the ‘bedroom’ floor.  Remember the 4″ step up from the ‘living room’ into the ‘bedroom’ and last year’s broken toe?  Well this time, in the pitch dark, I forgot that that step doesn’t run straight to the wall, but angles inward, stepped down onto the lower level, and I fell.  Hard.  I went down on my wrist (bruise only, no sprain – thank goodness), my  shoulder (the one with the torn rotator cuff), my hip, and my knee.  And I cried out – quite loudly.  I think someone must have heard the thump and the cry, as I heard an RV door open, and then close, as if someone was looking out.  So my entire left side hurts.

And, for some reason that I don’t understand, I woke up with what felt like a hangover, which is strange, as the only alcohol I had last night was two mouthfuls of a gin & tonic before pouring it down the drain (all part of the East Coast Gin Disappointment of 2026 – more to come on that later).  Maybe it was the bad night’s sleep in the storm.

All this to say, I won’t be doing any of the things on today’s To Do List.  Instead: tea, soup, and a crossword.  Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

I was staying in a campground right in residential Dartmouth – honestly, you turn onto this street of large houses and well manicured lawns, and two blocks into the neighbourhood, there’s Shubie’s RV Campground. I wonder what the home owners think of the constant to-ing and fro-ing of recreational vehicles all day long?

My next stay was not far way – about 20 minutes outside Halifax. So getting there on a rainy Sunday afternoon should have been easy, right?

I have driven in the GTA for the last 35+ years: on-ramps and off-ramps, narrowing lanes, underpasses, merging traffic, you name it. I’m an expert. But somehow, on a 25 minute drive around the outskirts of Halifax, I managed to get lost at least four times. At least. It’s bad enough when that happens in a car, but it is sooooo stressful in a large motorhome, in the rain.

This screen grab is just my journey around Bedford – getting out of Dartmouth and circumventing Halifax wouldn’t fit on the screen. To get from the lower right to the mid-left of the picture should have taken, at most, 15 minutes. I took at least an hour, and stopped twice to re-group.

(And to be honest, when I did get to the next campground, I really wasn’t all that impressed – I’m guessing that in the RV campground world, customer service starts to wane once we’re into September – miserable gits.)

I had (almost) the best weekend in Halifax. I say almost because it has poured, or rained, or drizzled, or misted the entire weekend. But I lived in Orkney Scotland, so I sneer in the face of rain. Truly, I do not understand people who say, ‘We were stuck indoors the entire time because of the rain.’ In this day and age, a waterproof coat with a hood, and waterproof boots mean it’s easy to get around.

I took the ferry from Dartmouth each morning and on Saturday I spent the day in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, and the Mary E. Black Gallery. I tried to get into the Canadian Museum of Immigration, but there were two cruise tours (I recognised their lanyards) ahead of me and I felt a 40 minute wait was too long.

Loved the main Art Gallery – their main exhibit is the Maud Lewis exhibit including her house. But it was some of the sculptures that I really liked. In the Maritime Museum there was lots about the Titanic and the Harbour Explosion as well as the two world wars.

Dined well too: a Mexican lunch at Antojo Tacos + Tequila (it may have included a margarita – who doesn’t love tequila at 11:30 in the morning?) and appetizers in The Wooden Monkey overlooking the Halifax Harbour.

And I spent the next morning wandering the Citadel.

This is my kind of sightseeing – loved it!

I don’t empty the grey & black tanks at every campground. It’s work, it invites soupsies & poopsies, the tanks are supposed to be at least 2/3 full before emptying to ensure good ‘flush-age’, and I’m one person – it takes days to fill those tanks.

The campground I’m at now, Shubie Park in Dartmouth, doesn’t have sewer lines at many of the sites, so instead, three days a week, they come around and pump out your tanks for you. You don’t even have to be there – they just come along, hook up their truck, and deal with your waste. Nice.

So I booked to be here over one of those days, Saturday. But I hadn’t really thought that out. It will have been quite a few days since the last flush out, and I’m starting to worry that I will have left it too late. Particularly the grey tank. Washing dishes, washing hair, and showering all really add to the grey tank. And you can’t throw dishwater out onto the lawn – that attracts wild animals. So for the past three days, I have tipped the sink’s waste water down the toilet, to at least make sure I have enough space in the grey tank for my showers. But I noticed it was still getting higher (this is a gauge on the wall – I’m not peeking down any drains or anything).

That’s led to a new hack: when it’s time to pack up, I have to turn off the water from the city line (the hose). So first thing I do is open the kitchen faucet, then head out, around the back of the RV, and turn off the spigot from the campground. That results in between one and two litres of water from the time I open the kitchen tap until the hose drains – most of the time it just runs down the sink drain. I am so worried about the grey tank filling up and the shower stall flooding with dirty water, that I have taken to capturing this runoff in an empty bottle, and saving it to use later in my tea, or more likely, just travel along with me until the tanks are finally emptied and I can pour it away. I know have two full 4-litre bottles of clean water sitting in a cabinet.

The dump service comes today while I’m out – thank heavens, as both tanks are registering Full and I’m rationing water like a Californian in August.

Going forward: Must pay more attention to tank flushing!

The day does get better. I arrive at the Waterfront and buy a ticket on the Hop-On Hop-Off tour. $90+ !!! Ninety! Okey doke, inflation.

The tour was so-so. Obviously the tour company cannot help the weather, so the damp seats and fogged windows in the pouring rain were not their fault. The tour guide was very upbeat & chatty, and I do prefer a live tour guide to the audio-headphone style. But, I felt his content focus was a tad off. Lots about the Titanic – check. Lots about the 1917 Harbour Explosion – check. Some info about Africville and the black diaspora – I found that very interesting, as I had assumed most of the black history of Nova Scotia was as a result of the Underground Railroad; I hadn’t heard of the black Loyalists who moved there after the American Revolution (and who were subsequently treated dreadfully by the local settlers). Lots about the various traffic intersections and round-abouts and what Haligonians thought of them – odd. Next to nothing (and I do mean NOTHING) about the Citadel – disappointing. We drove up to it at 11:58 and the tour guide told us to plug our ears because of the noon time cannon (windows of buses have been blown out if they park too close to the cannon!). We never did hear the boom (guide thinks we were upwind) and at 12:03 we left the Citadel and he hadn’t said one word about it – that seems wrong.

The tour was 75 minutes long and I really don’t think it was worth it. It reminded me a little of the Hop-On Hop-Off in Reykjavik – over $70CAD, 90 minutes long, and at three of the stops we just sat for 10 minutes before moving on. I mean, what is there to say about smaller cities like Halifax, Reykjavik, etc…. It’s like trying to imagine a 2-hour bus tour of Guelph. Ah well.

The waterfront was great and I walked one end to the other in spite of the rain. Checked out the Basilica, and had a fab lunch at The Bicycle Thief.

So the day ended much better than it started.

It’s 9:32 a.m. 

Here’s how the morning was supposed to go:

• 8:00 am: oil change at Rhino Truck Lube (no appointment needed, I was just to get there by 7:50 and they’d have a spot for me)
• 9:00 am: car wash at WashX Truck & RV Wash (no appointment needed, according to website)
• 10:00 am: Cruise Terminal outdoor parking lot (best lot for large vehicles along the Halifax Waterfront)
• 10:15 am: start the day’s sightseeing (probably start with Hop-On Hop-Off)

Here’s what really happened:

• Let’s start at 1:00 am.  Downpour starts (the tail end of whatever wrath-of-God storm the GTA had the day before)
• 6:15 am: Alarm goes off, I have cup of tea and get dressed to the sound of the skies dumping on my fibreglass motorhome
• 7:20 am: Run out in the rain and un-hook electric & water, and remove levelling blocks and stow in compartments
• 7:35 am: Pull out of campsite and drive through Dartmouth rush hour traffic in absolute downpour (windows keep fogging)
• 7:50 am: Pull up to Rhino Truck Lube service bay & wait
• 8:00 am: Get oil change from two absolutely delightful and helpful young men, who also do a cursory inspection of brakes (which still look brand new to them – yay)
• 8:20 am: Sit in Rhino parking lot and wait for WashX to open.  Spend that time determining that driving into the Halifax waterfront and hoping that there will be space for a large motorhome may not be best plan.  Determine that there is parking at Dartmouth’s Alderney Ferry which will then take me directly to Halifax’s waterfront.  Excellent.
• 8:55 am: Drive to WashX, which is nowhere to be found.  No signage, no open wash bays, no answer on phone
• 9:05 am: Drive to another local Truck/Car wash, only to be told that they are appointment only.  Give up on idea of a car wash (which was prob not the best plan on a rainy day anyway)
• 9:07 am: Drive to the Alderney Ferry Parking lot. Get stuck in a tiny 20-car lot that is half full.  Do a 10-minute 21-point turn to get out of parking lot, with only one witness
• 9:18 am: Give up on the idea of the ferry.  Sit at the exit to the parking lot and think
• 9:22 am: Set directions to return to campground with a stop at what turns out to be the only Tim Hortons in Dartmouth without a car park.  Squeeze past the cars & trucks lined up for the drive-thru (think the Tim Hortons at Thompson & Steeles) and give up on a bagel
• 9:27 am: Pull into my campsite as the heavens re-open, and hook everything back up
• 9:32 am: Sit down to write this and re-think today.

More to come.

When I started RVing, I bought a little whiteboard to hang by the door.  Each day, as I arrive at a new campsite, the first thing I do is write down the address of the campground and my site number.  That way, if something should happen, if I ‘fall and I can’t get up’ (yes, I’m getting to that age), I will be able to tell 911 where I am. 

When I left for the summer, I enabled the tracker setting on my phone so my sister can always check and see where I am – I may have watched one too many British crime dramas, but this seemed like a really good thing to do.

And, I use What 3 Words.  Do you know it?  It’s an app that assigns a unique combination of three words to every 3 metre square in the world.  So if you don’t know your exact address, you can use W3W to pinpoint your location.  Halton Emergency Services has used it more than once to locate people who have gotten lost up on Rattlesnake Point and Kelso.  So after I’ve written down the campground address, I look up W3W and write that down, as well as texting it to my sister (she finds this whole process quite entertaining and has sent back some rather rude 3-word combos herself – she thinks she’s hilarious – we humour her).

Well today’s three words seemed less like a location marker and more like a bleak, minimalist, existential poem:

Oh my gosh, Cape Breton is beautiful.  And the campground I’m staying at!  The New Harris KOA is tucked under the tallest, the reddest, the most dramatic cliffs – and it overlooks a spectacular bridge spanning the equally spectacular Great Bras d’Or Channel.

I checked out Sydney & North Sydney – both cute towns.  The boardwalk along the waterfront in Sydney is absolutely lovely – I had great weather and thoroughly enjoyed that afternoon.  (Lunch was so-so – I ordered seafood chowder at Flavor on the Water – meh – why do people put flour & cornstarch in chowder? – I left most of it.)

And . . . . I completely forgot to take a picture of the Big Fiddle!  It was massive and I was sitting right behind it at lunch – I am so used to travelling with people who take lots of photos – it’s made me lazy & forgetful.