After the bus load of folks headed out for the ferry at 7:30 this morning I got a little bit more sleep. Surprising how much noise a bunch of golden agers could be that excited in the morning. Holy cow!
I packed for any contingency between the weather and things that I might do. I planned to drive along Digby Neck. This is a 60 kilometer spit of land that forms St. Margaret's Bay to the west from Digby. It is narrow and even has a fresh water lake in the middle of it. There are two ferrys that will take you to the farthest part of the Neck. Following the signs I headed to East Ferry which is the last point before the first ferry to Tiverton! No, not the Tiverton near the cottage but another one that hugs the side of a rocky cliff overlooking a very deep, very fast current filled break in the land.
The geography here is really dramatic with rock heading right to the water. I thought the seaweed made a neat picture.
The Tiverton ferry moved back and forth across the channel and actually went sideways just to handle the current. This shows just how strong the current is when the ferry has two transports as well as a handful of cars and it still is struggling.
I met a fellow traveller from South Carolina and she was commenting on the fact that it was so cold up here. I was wearing a sweat shirt and shorts and sandals. I think she would have had a winter jacket on if she had one. I said it was actually quite refreshing and pleasant. We laughed at what you can get used to! They headed over to the next island and I decided that what I had seen already on the trip there I didn't need to see any more so I headed back to take some of the side roads I had seen.
There is one lighthouse marking the entrance to the channel for Tiverton and East Ferry and I thought it looked really "east coast".
One of the side roads took me to Sandy Cove Beach. With the tide out the beach was huge! There wasn't really sand but very fine gravel of all different colours. It was tough to walk on but really neat to see how much stuff gets thrown up on the beach. There were miles and miles of rope and bits of lobster and crab traps and fish nets. This cove is a catching ground for all that floats through the bay of Fundy. I'm sure, again, that there was a time that this place was filled with boats and actions. Now, not so much.
Beach combing is fun and you never know what you might find. I did find this little fellow (gal?) and he was so well hidden at the surf line that I didn't even see him until he moved.
Off I went to the next cove which advertised as having a little more action.
Well, at least that's what the brochure said.
Ah, alas, not so much.
Gulliver's Cove is supposedly where Captain Gulliver and his band of pirates hung out and waited for unsuspecting ships to seek safe haven then pillage them. It is legend that Captain Gulliver was killed by his own wife because he wouldn't let her go home to the West Indies.
Right, that's one tough Mamma. I guess she was part pirate herself!
No one but me.
Oh yeah and the farm of emus down the road.
What??
Yup, emus in the middle of no where.
Off to Digby for lunch at the Fundy Restaurant. Nice view, fresh scallops and a lobster tank inside. I'm in.
Awesome overload of scallops in a chowder then sautee'd on top of a caesar salad. Right on! Support the local economy I always say. Lovely waitress gave me today's paper to read while I ate. Very nice! The view was great and the place was quite busy for 2 pm on a Tuesday.
Stuffed, it was time for a long walk. Off to the wharf for a look see.
Digby is a working port and the scallop industry will keep it going for a long time to come. I hope.
The boats, when I was visiting, were about 30 feet down from the level of the wharf. The tide makes doing even basic chores on your ship a challenge. I watched one scallop boat prepare to go out by loading on ice. The dock worker brings over a modified, beat up, pick up truck with a huge hopper on the back filled with ice. There is a sluice that is lowered from the back of the truck and hopefully the drop is perfect to get it into the hold. The noise you hear in the video below is the captain of the ship keeping the throttle up to hold the boat so the stream of ice goes in the right spot. Oh yeah, and there are two guys in the back of the truck shovelling the ice out. Unfortunately I did video this but I couldn't seem to download it onto the blog. Even after 3 tries... grrrrrr technology.
I'll give it a try at another time. Oh well.
There is little local fruit but blueberries are quite abundant. Yum! The little stand was unmanned and a little lock box for change was there so I put in the proper amount for the best looking, biggest blueberries I have seen. I also picked up some yellow plums too. These were AWESOME. Wow. Fruit and salad all in one day. What will my body do?
As I write I have finished the plums and most of the blueberries. Oh dear. I'm hoping to get some more before I leave the area tomorrow.
Interesting things learned today:
- The 20 huge "cages" suspended in the Basin just to the left of the Admiral Digby Inn where I'm staying are salmon farm cages. So if you see farmed Atlantic Salmon on a package it might have come from here.
- The Digby Scallop Rake is a patented invention just made to harvest the scallop beds around here and was created in the 1920's.
- Populations will ebb and flow as need arises. I feel that this is a down turn for this area and in another generation it might just pick up. How? I don't know but it might just.
- Scallop and all fisherpeople have a very hard life. When it's good it's good, when it isn't it sucks.
- Native born Canadians are able to handle the "cooler" temperatures of a Canadian summer. (I hear everyone in Ontario laughing at me right now). Hey, it got up to a whopping 20 degrees Celcius today in Digby.
Gee, I hope the weather is good for the ride.
Who knows around here.
Until later!
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