Maritime Expedition # 8: Peg o' My Heart

She's the Peg of a great many people's hearts, not just mine.  Her face, from every angle, is a familiar sight in many regions of the world, and meeting her in person is the dream of thousands upon thousands of eager travellers.  And that's just the point where the problem comes in.  But anyway... if you haven't guessed yet who this "Peg o' My Heart" is, here's a photo to give you a hint.

 

 

Okay, now we're all up to speed, right?  Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia.  According to Wikipedia, the name most likely originated from the use of Peggy as a nickname for Margaret, since the cove opens off the larger ocean inlet of St. Margaret's Bay.

 

As you can see in the above photo, it's a very narrow cove with a very narrow outlet to the ocean.  Why, then, would fishermen choose to set up shop here?  This map gives a hint.

 

 

Peggy's Cove is neatly located on one of the outermost edges of this rocky southern coast.  This location gave the fishermen a clear edge in getting out to the best fishing grounds as soon as weather allowed.  Since the weather on this shore can be both violent and capricious, being located that much closer to the fishing grounds was a huge advantage, whether getting out fast when the weather cleared or getting back just as quickly when storms threatened.

 

Peggy's Cove has been renowned for well over a century as a place for artists, photographers, and tourists who flock here to see the weathered old fish sheds in the harbour, and to visit the famous lighthouse out on the rocks.

 

But change inevitably comes.  Peggy's Cove is not a museum reconstruction, but a living, working village.  In the course of time and bad weather, old buildings crumble and must be rebuilt or replaced.  Fishing neither can nor should be restricted to the techniques of the nineteenth century for the sake of picturesqueness.  And the unending and growing swarm of visitors poses its own problems.  This post focuses on the changes that have come, and are still ongoing, to help Peggy's Cove deal with its own popularity.

 

The narrow, twisting road into the village climbs a short hill, drops down a steep grade to pass around the inner end of the cove, and then climbs steeply up again to the parking lot around the Sou'wester Restaurant and gift shop, and the iconic lighthouse.  Just over the crest of that first hill, there's a new visitor's centre on the left side of the road, with public toilets next door, and a sizable parking lot.  I recommend parking here for one simple reason.  The parking lot up by the lighthouse is half closed off by the current expansion project, which (when complete) will include more parking and an accessible viewing deck.  

 

Right across the street from the centre is the Fishermen's Memorial, carved by William E. deGarthe on the 32-metre long rock outcropping behind his house.  It's now a provincial park.

On the day of my visit, the lighthouse lot was a madhouse of cars going around and around, hoping for a space to open up, while the lot by the visitor centre was half empty -- this on a Monday morning in late September.  Also, there are currently no spaces at all for motorhomes and trailers up at the Sou'wester.  The visitor centre lot is the only choice for them.

What's that you say?  You want to be "close"?  The visitor centre lot is actually a lot closer to the famous picture-perfect views of the cove itself and its fishing sheds.  And Peggy's Cove is not a big place.  I spent 20 minutes walking from the visitor centre down past the cove, then up the hill, around the restaurant and the lighthouse view, and back.  That's a 20-minute round-trip with numerous photo pauses.  Do yourself a favour -- park by the visitor centre and save yourself the hassle.

Also, the lighthouse itself is currently under repairs and so not accessible.

 

 

To help with all of the above walking, a nice broad sidewalk has been added along the road to connect the two parking lots.  It's about 4/5 done now, the last stretch up the hill to the Sou'wester being the next item on the work order, I think.  Some parts have been made of close-fitted, squared wooden timbers where the walkway is at or near the water's edge.  Walking around Peggy's Cove just got 99% easier and safer thanks to this improvement (view from the visitor's centre down into the village).

And now, a photo gallery of a few more pictures from around this legendary fishing village.

By the way, this is only the second time in seven or eight visits that I've seen Peggy's Cove in the sunshine, without either clouds or fog.  That was a result of the perfect weather: northerly breeze blowing from the land to the ocean, high pressure, moderate temperature.

Other helpful hints for visiting the Peg o' My Heart:

[1]  Go early, before all the other tourists in Halifax are awake.

[2]  If you want to eat at the Sou'wester (and it is good), make an advance reservation.

[3]  Give yourself an hour to get there, and an hour to get back.  

[4]  Highway 333, like most Nova Scotia secondary highways, has very few warning signs for sharp curves.  Keep alert to all the bends.  If they do put in a warning sign, they really, REALLY mean it!  And don't try to beat the road just to get there a minute or two earlier.  Peggy's Cove isn't running away any time soon.

[5]  The safety signs on the rocks towards the ocean aren't just bureaucratic impositions.  They are there because other Darwin Awards candidates before you have lost their lives on those rocks -- and almost always when they didn't expect anything to go wrong.

 

Finally, a nice little bit of comedy intruded with an ironic but funny street sign about halfway back to Halifax.  The street, by the way, is a closed loop that connects to Highway 333 at both ends.

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

* * * * * * * * * *

 

Well, dear readers, this concludes my Maritime adventures.  By the time you read this, I'm already back in Ontario.  It was a great trip.  I covered over 2400 kilometres in my trusty Kia Soul rental car, and took many hundreds of pictures, of which over 300 were worth saving.  I put myself outside of a whole series of memorable seafood meals, and didn't touch a slice of pizza since I left home (although I did think about it on occasion).  Hope you've enjoyed my travellers' tales.  If you have, please share the blog's address with your friends.  And remember, all these blog posts live here permanently.  Use the index of key terms to go back and look at my former travels, from European river cruises to Caribbean ocean cruises, from Hungary on the east to New Zealand on the west.

 

In closing, I want to say that this whole trip has been hugely therapeutic after a year and a half of Covid-19 lockdowns.  Getting out and travelling is only half of it.  Getting back in the saddle of photography and blogging, sharing where I've been and what I've learned with my readers, that's been just as important to my well-being.  Hope all of you stay safe and well until the next time I'm on here!

Maritime Expedition # 7: Saint John, Not St. John's!

The title stakes my turf right away.  Let's be completely clear: the biggest port city in New Brunswick is Saint John, and don't you DARE try to put an "s" on the end of it.  The capital of Newfoundland is St. John's, and don't even think of spelling the first word out in full.

 

This business of naming places after saints -- I tell ya!  It's just like what I ran into a while back on a Caribbean cruise, when I spent a day touring the island of St. John in the U. S. Virgin Islands and then sailed through the night to dock at the capital city of St. John's on the island of Antigua.  Aaack!  What we really need is for someone in the Roman Catholic Church to name every single one of the 11,000 Holy Virgins who were martyred along with St. Ursula, and then we can really have a different saint's name for every place that wants one all to itself!

 

Here in Canada, convention has long since fixed the names in these forms:  Saint John NB and St. John's NF.  Say what you mean, mean what you say (as my father liked to tell me).

 

My two night (or 48-hour) stay in Saint John turned into about 44 hours of fog and some sun each afternoon between 4:30 PM and 6:30 PM.  This made it more than a little difficult to make a clear visual record of the city.  Nevertheless, here are a few pictures.

 

The most famous tourist attraction of Saint John is the Reversing Falls.  Strictly speaking, more a set of rapids than a waterfall, but the gigantic tides of the Bay of Fundy are more than capable of making the Saint John River flow backwards at high tide.  Here are two pictures, the first at or near low tide one afternoon, and the second about half an hour after peak high tide the following (foggy) morning.  The change in the action and direction of the river around the big rock outcropping is unmistakable.

 

 

Most of downtown Saint John today is a Victorian city, a series of streets full of brick and stone buildings dating from some time in the 1800s.  As in Charlottetown, there are a few modern buildings aggressively altering the cityscape.  But in the main, the look remains Victorian -- inside as well as outside.  

 

 

 

It's super-easy to establish an olde-style British pub in Saint John, and there's a great selection of pubs of all kinds to prove it. 

 

Like many harbour cities (Halifax and St. John's to name a couple), Saint John slopes steeply uphill from the water's edge.  Take this into account when planning walking tours.  My hotel (the Delta Brunswick) was a scant two blocks walking uphill from the harbour but this, by my calculation, adds up to about 45-50 steps in a staircase.

 

Down at the water's edge, the Market Square brings together a row of Victorian warehouse buildings with an indoor shopping mall behind the historic façades, and a chain of great restaurants with eye-catching patios outside the south front of the complex. I had a magnificent salmon dinner at Grannan's, a classic steak and seafood restaurant which I fondly remember from my last visit in 16 years ago.

 

Outside the Market Square stands this odd-looking bit of public art.  I didn't see an explanatory sign or plaque but I'm guessing it's meant as a modern-day comic interpretation of the traditional "market cross" found in many old English towns.  

 

 

Now, look carefully at the corner where the glass atrium meets the brick of the original buildings, and you'll see a gent with his phone, tucked into the corner, doing his own comic riff on the sculpture -- except I'm willing to bet he was completely unaware of the resemblance.

The last leg of my trip took me from Saint John back to Halifax with two important stopping places along the way.  This was another single-day marathon that might better have been split into 2 parts.

 

The first leg took me northeast on Highway 1 towards Moncton.  This is a beautifully-built 4-lane freeway which swoops up and down the high hills of southern New Brunswick with insouciant ease.  At Sussex I met the first of two junctions with Highway 114.  I hung on for the second exit, another 13 kilometres east.  At this point, Highway 114 took me southeast towards the village of Alma.  After driving 20 kilometres, I came to the boundary of Fundy National Park.  As usual, there's a side pull-over lane with a ticket booth.  

Just past the ticket booth is Wolfe Lake, with a campground on one bank and a public picnic/swimming area for day visitors on the other side.  I was fascinated by the interplay of vegetation and water beside the beach.

A few kilometres farther into the park brought me to Bennett Lake, a reservoir contained by a sizable rock-faced dam (perhaps with an earthen interior).  I had a nice 25-minute walk here on two of the trails.  Again, there's a picnic and beach area, as well as some longer hiking trails leading to back-country camping places -- which must be reserved in advance.

 

 

On the beach, the park has adopted a noteworthy goose-control strategy.  It works because wild geese that have not yet become fully adapted to urban living do not like to be out of sight of their safety zone, the body of water.

 

You can see that it was a fairly windy day, both from the whitecaps on the lake and from the billowing of the goose screens.  

 

Behind the dam is the carcass of an old rusted spillway, long disused.  The modern dam includes a short, straight concrete spillway at the north end.  I wonder if this one could have been intended as a log chute?

 

As you continue southeast through the park, the road keeps rolling up and down hills, and on one crest I passed a sign indicating "363 m." as presumably the highest elevation on the road.  Not long after that, I saw "Slow Down" and "Steep Hill" warning signs, but none advising me to gear down. At the end of the first long descent, there's a curve to the left and a viewpoint that gives this view out over the Bay of Fundy.  I was obviously still a long way up, but definitely going to get all the way down in a hurry now.  Gearing down was essential.

 

The steep, straight grade below the lookout ended in a "45 km/h" sharp hairpin bend to the right.  Don't say I didn't warn you.  There follow a series of back and forth turns, and you'll be riding your brakes all the way if you didn't gear down.  

But then the road levels off, and there follow a whole series of turnoffs leading to the golf course, the visitor centre, and Point Wolfe Road.  Take that last one, and soon you'll see a road on the left marked "Swimming."  Fundy National Park has the last big outdoor swimming pool and change house built in a national park, and it's unusual to say the least.  The pool sits on a low bluff right beside the Bay of Fundy, and the bay's water is channelled into a pumping system to keep the pool's water level up, with the massive tides doing most of the work.  Obviously, then, a salt water pool, but a very refreshing stopover point if you're visiting the park on a hot summer day.  I'd have made time for it (I've done so a couple of times in the past) if it weren't closed for the season.  Sigh.  Here's an internet photo in the summer season.

A couple of kilometres farther along the Point Wolfe Road, there's a turn marked "Dickson Falls Trail."  Even if you don't want to walk the 1-kilometre trail, you should stop here for the viewpoint just off the parking lot.  It's as dramatic a seacoast view as I've ever seen anywhere.

 

If I'd gotten on the road earlier in the morning, I'd have kept going all the way to the end of the road, about 20 minutes farther along, where there's a beautiful wild beach along the mouth of a stream.  From the Dickson Falls Trail, I backtracked to the main road, and downhill past one or two more bends -- and suddenly, I was on the main street of Alma.  This lobster fishing village is also thoroughly conditioned by the tourist trade, with inns, restaurants, and shops, all right at the eastern gate of the park.

Highway 114 continues eastwards, mostly inland and away from the coast, through a series of farming landscapes and forested areas, until I reached the village of Hopewell Cape.  Keep alert here because you get only one brief warning sign, and then you're at the turnoff for Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park.  

The system here is very different from the National Park.  Parking is free, but then there is a per-person admission charge to the park.  As of 2021, this was $14.00 for adults and $12.00 for seniors and students, with kidlets at $8.00.  You should go as far along the road as possible before turning into the parking area, since the ticket office and entrance is at the very far end of the parking areas.  You'll also see a large sign announcing the high and low tide times for the day.  

Hopewell Rocks is perhaps the only place I've visited where "rush hour" happens at a different time every day.  That's because large numbers of people want the thrill of walking on the ocean floor at low tide, and the tide times keep shifting every day.  I arrived about an hour and half after high tide and the park was correspondingly not very busy.  I was able to park very close to the entrance.  Another four hours and it could have been a very different story.

The walking trails give access to several different viewpoints over different areas of rock formations.  This picture from the park's signboard shows what the entire dramatic stretch of coastline looks like in an aerial view.

 

 

The park runs golf carts on a reserved gravel roadway, to carry visitors who need or want assistance from the ticket office down to the most northerly set of formations.  I used it, again because of time shortage.  I had to pay $2.00 extra each way for this service, on top of the admission fee.

So here are my pictures to show what the rocks look like at about 3/4 of full tide.  I was able to walk down all the stairs except for the final flight down to the actual beach.  The last picture shows how the supporting structure for the stairs has been neatly fitted into a sizable crevice between one of the newer formations and the mainland.

 

From Hopewell, it takes about 40-45 minutes to drive to Moncton.  Since your admission is good for two consecutive days, this would be a good excuse to stay in Moncton, come out to the Rocks for high tide one day and for low tide the next day -- or something of that sort.  Tide times can be easily found online, and not just for this location.  I used this online site to pin down the tide times for the Reversing Falls at Saint John too.

 

 Bay of Fundy Tide Times

 

After I left Hopewell, I made a beeline for Halifax via Moncton and Truro, with only a brief Timmy break for a late lunch in Moncton.  I arrived in Halifax right on the mark of eight hours after I'd left Saint John, whereas the direct time by the fastest route is supposed to be under 4 hours.  A long, tiring day, then, but absolutely worth it.

 

Maritime Expedition # 6: The Resort Most Canadians Forgot

As I left Prince Edward Island, the same way I arrived, I managed to get a couple more pictures on and around the ferry service.  Here's a view of the bay just west of the Wood Islands ferry terminal, obviously at low tide.  Much of PEI's south shore, facing the Northumberland Strait, looks like this at low tide.

 

 

And a couple of shots from the approach to Caribou in Nova Scotia.  The ferry has to sail well to the east of the dock, then turn 90 degrees to starboard to enter the long, narrow channel marked with buoys.  Only after sailing for some time past the low-lying sandbanks of Munroe's Island before altering course to port does the ship at last approach the pier.  

 

Nova Scotia was a lot less meticulous than Prince Edward Island about checking inbound travellers.  As soon as I showed my pre-approval pass, I was waved through, with no questions.  

 

Even after I was ashore, it took me another four hours of steady driving to reach my next destination, far to the southwest.  I followed the 104 freeway back to Truro, then went west on the secondary highway 236 (a narrow, twisting scenic route) down to Windsor, and there picked up the 101 freeway for the rest of the trip.  My destination was in the small southwest Nova Scotia town of Digby.  Say hello to the Digby Pines.

 

I first learned about the Pines as a child, from a brochure my family had (probably dating from some time in the 1950s) which illustrated the names and locations of all the hotels across Canada belonging to the Canadian Pacific Railway.  One of them was the Digby Pines Resort.  As a young'un, I often wondered just why this hotel needed such a huge bell poised up on the roof (see below).

There's a whole history to why the CPR would purchase a hotel here in a small town in southwestern Nova Scotia.  The CPR's route to the east coast of Canada followed the so-called "short cut" across the state of Maine from Montreal to Saint John, New Brunswick.  From there, passengers for Halifax boarded the CPR steamer across the Bay of Fundy to Digby, and then completed their journey on the Dominion Atlantic Railway, a subsidiary of the CPR, from Digby to Halifax.  This peculiar hybrid route also explains the story of the other hotel on the east coast owned by the CPR, the Algonquin at St. Andrews-by-the-Sea in New Brunswick.

 

Before the 1950s were over, the CPR had sold both properties as tourism increasingly meant overseas travel for Canadians.

 

The upshot of this whole history is that very few Canadians outside of the Atlantic Provinces know today that places like the Digby Pines and the Algonquin even exist, let alone anything of what they are like.  It's too bad, because the Pines at least is an impressive property that deserves to be better known.

 

While it's long since ceased to be a railway-owned property, and the railway to Digby is long gone, the Digby Pines is still here and -- to judge by the number of guests on the property in a midweek in mid-September -- still popular.  I've had a delightful stay here, enjoying the classic elegance of a luxury resort at prices that don't break the bank.

 

Let's start with a couple of pictures of the hotel itself.  This one is in the back, showing the main entrance and the stone turret which contains the main staircase.

 

Now I just wonder why the architect felt that a fieldstone tower with that odd bell-shaped roof would  fit in with the rest of the building's architecture.  

 

Here's the view in the front, looking up at the rooms with a water view.  The hotel is perched up on a hillside, giving the front rooms a dramatic view of the Annapolis Basin, a 30-kilometre-long offshoot of the Bay of Fundy.   

Many other accommodations are available in a series of detached cottages, spread across the property. 

 

 

Down the hill in front of the hotel is a spectacular, large, deep, heated outdoor pool.  I had a great swim there in the afternoon.   

 

Another CPR hotel with a near-identical pool enclosure was the Chateau Lake Louise in Alberta.  The pool there is long gone, although the enclosure is still standing and may be developed in future as a function space.  

 

The grounds of the Digby Pines are adorned with many flower gardens, all well-tended and full of seasonal blooms which put on a beautiful show.

 

Inside the hotel, you can see instantly the old-time vibe which makes the Digby Pines a virtual time machine, taking you back at once into the middle of the last century.  It's there in the main lounge off the lobby.

 

On the corner of the lobby, the main stairs curl up the inside of the stone turret.

 

 

The restaurant, too, goes long on classic elegance, without making anyone feel that they have to dress up for dinner (in the old days, they undoubtedly did).  Last night, I saw people entering the dining room in everything from jeans and sports shirts to suit and tie or cocktail dresses.

 

And now, a word to the wise: it's true what they say, that reading is fundamental.  I read the notice on the resort's website which said that reservations were required for the restaurant, and I called a few days ahead of my arrival to reserve space for dinner for my two nights' stay.  On my first night, I went down for dinner at my reserved time, confidently expecting to be escorted to a table near the back of the restaurant, or by the kitchen door -- this is often the fate of us solo diners.  But no.  I was led to a lovely table right by one of the windows, with a view of gardens, trees, and water.  I had the same table, and the same server, the next night too and for breakfast on my final morning.

A good deal of the elegance is supplied by such gracious touches as linen tablecloths and napkins, and centrepieces with real flowers.  Not to mention that the service staff have been well-trained by someone who definitely knows the ins and outs of quality table service.  The food lived up to the atmosphere in every respect. 

 

The restaurant is called Churchill's, but the reference is not to Winston -- it's to Digby businessman Harry Churchill who built the original Digby Pines on this site in 1909.  The current main hotel dates from 1929.

What else is there to do here?  The hotel has its own excellent golf course nearby, and offers free shuttle service to the golf course and into town.  The resort does have a spa, although this facility is currently closed.  There are many sites and places nearby which will repay your efforts for scenic excursions, hiking, fishing, and other outdoor pursuits.  Digby itself has a waterfront promenade and walkway along the harbour, and assorted shops and restaurants on the main street, many housed in older wooden buildings.  

 

 

In the outlying parts, the town offers many more services than you would expect in a town of about 2,000 people, because it is the central town of a district with many smaller villages. 

 

One of "my kids" (a former student), on hearing that I was in Nova Scotia, sent me a message to say that I was now in God's country.  Certainly, Nova Scotia is that for fans of the nationwide Tim Hortons coffee shop chain.  Halifax is said to have more Tim Hortons outlets per thousand population than anywhere else, but I think Digby has to be the real champion.  With a population (in 2016) of 2,060 people, Digby has not just one but two Timmys!  Halifax/Dartmouth Metro area would need well over 300 Timmy outlets to beat that record.

 

But back to the harbour.  That big fleet of fishing trawlers is employed in season in fishing for scallops, and the Digby scallops are renowned as the finest in Canada and among the finest in the world.  

 

 

Not too surprising, then, that any restaurant here which serves seafood has scallops on the menu.  I went for lunch to the Shoreline, one of the half dozen or more restaurants which face the harbour.  And here are two excerpts from the menu.  The first shows the diverse range of Nova Scotia wines on offer.  Not many people would think of Nova Scotia as wine country, but I found out about Nova Scotia wines right from my first trip to Halifax on VIA Rail, which always features them on the Ocean.  I've certainly enjoyed both old favourites and new discoveries during this trip.  I was also amused by the title "Sociables" (as distinct from "Beverages").

 

 

The next page shows the scallop dinner.  

 

 

Here's the actual meal.  

 

 

Thirteen scallops, beautifully sauteed to the just-right moment, and accompanied by a massive serving of perfectly crisp house-made kettle chips.  In Halifax, I have paid the same amount or more to get five scallops.  Five.  Moral: get thee to Digby, scallop lovers of Canada! 

As all good things must come to an end, I had to check out after my second night.  Pity.  But I had a reservation on the 11:00 am sailing of the ferry across the Bay of Fundy to Saint John, New Brunswick, and the ferry company sent me a reminder email that I must check in no later than 75 minutes before departure.

I took this ferry on my last trip to New Brunswick, nearly two decades ago, and the ship that was then in service was definitely getting a bit long in the tooth.  The MV Princess of Acadia was the very last in a long line of CP-owned Princesses which provided coastal ship links and (later) car ferry services on both the Pacific and Atlantic coastlines of Canada. This vessel served the Digby-Saint John route continuously from 1971 until 2014, a good long run for an ocean-going vessel.  Even at the end of her career, I always felt that this Princess was a very smart-looking ship with stylish lines.

Internet photo

 

The replacement ship, MV Fundy Rose, was built in Greece in 2000 for service with Blue Star Lines among the Greek islands, and then bought by the Canadian government for the Bay of Fundy service in 2014.  After refitting and renaming, the "new" ferry entered service in 2015.

Internet photo   

The curious thing is that, despite the newer ship's much boxier profile, the two vessels were almost exactly comparable in length, width, and tonnage.  But the newer design makes much better use of the space within those dimensions, being able to carry considerably more vehicles and nearly three times as many passengers.  The other huge difference is in speed.  The old Princess of Acadia was timetabled to cross the bay in 3 hours 15 minutes, so a 3x-daily schedule in peak season could only be maintained by having one departure from Saint John at an absolutely ungodly hour -- and the return from Digby at an even worse time of the night.  The Fundy Rose is timetabled to take 2 hours 30 minutes, and today completed the crossing, dock to dock, in 2 hours 10 minutes.  I was actually off the ship and into Saint John with time to spare at the 2-hour-30-minute mark!

 

The Fundy Rose is named for the bay she crosses, and in honour of a most remarkable woman from Annapolis Royal who has just come to my attention for the first time.  Here's a photo of the sign about her on board the ship.

 

 

So there I was on the dock at Digby at 9:30 am for the 11:00 departure.  And I still almost missed the ferry's arrival, because the ship came charging in just before 10:00 while I was doing some updating on my phone!  I was in time to get one picture of the ship slowly backing into the berth.

 

The famous super-high tides of the Bay of Fundy aren't quite as extreme here as they are farther into the bay, but still noteworthy.  The long blue steel bridge truss known as a "linkspan" is moved up or down to match with the height of the vessel's car deck in the prevailing tide.  Even at the most extreme tides, the great length of the linkspan ensures that vehicles will have no more than a gentle slope without any really drastic ups or downs while getting on and off the ship.

 

The fog that had hung over Digby all morning was just starting to dissipate as we pulled away from the dock in the Digby Gut, then turned 180 degrees and sailed out through the Gut into the open bay.

 

 

It was one of those delightful sea days where you can sit very comfortably on the upper rear deck, facing the stern, with the sun on your face and the wind at your back.  After a while, I went down and headed inside to explore the very roomy indoor passenger deck.  There's a huge lounge at the front with a bar (not in service today) and numerous groups of tables and chairs.  On either side in the midships section are two lounge areas equipped with airline-style reclining seats.  One side has numerous video screens and has a movie playing, the other -- partly enclosed -- is a quiet rest space.  Towards the rear, there is a snack counter and a cafeteria, where I had lunch.

 

After lunch I headed back outside, to find the world blanketed with fog again and the captain sounding the ship's horn in a single long blast every 2 minutes.  The horn had been completely inaudible inside, so the soundproofing is excellent to say the least.

 

As we entered Saint John Harbour, the sun came out on the east side (the heavy-industry area) but still stubbornly blanketed West Saint John, where the ferry terminal is located.  The vibration was remarkable as the Fundy Rose was running the engines full astern to take off the edge of her express speed across the bay.  Once we were docked, unloading proceeded very briskly, and I drove into the city, ready for the next stage of my adventures.

 

The ferry is such a great way to reach Digby that Bay Ferries actually sells getaway packages of round-trip ferry fare, transfer to and from the Digby Pines, room and breakfast.

Here, in closing, is the latest update of the map of my travels.