Posts In The “North America East Coast” Category
The Owls Head Transportation Museum is a half-hour drive south of Belfast, near Rockland, Maine. We visited on the recommendation of our friend Matt Baker. It seemed unlikely to James that a world-class museum would be found out in Owls Head, but this one is exceptional. It has everything from bicycles to Michael Schumacher’s Formula…
We departed Southwest Harbor for Belfast in a fog so thick we could barely see 100 yards in front of us. We ran at six knots with our big floodlights lit all around and the fog horn sounding. Dodging the moored boats and lobster traps in the thick fog was difficult, but the lobster boats…
The Hinckley company was founded at Southwest Harbor, Maine in 1928 and continues to operate there today. We spent two excellent weeks there at Dysart’s Great Harbor Marina, where the docks are full of beautiful Hinckley jet-drive boats. We completed several large boat projects, including changing our engine mounts, and also spent time visiting nearby…
Bar Harbor has been a popular tourist destination since the mid 1800s as tourists flocked in to experience Mt Desert Island’s incredible natural beauty. Thirty hotels operated in the town by 1880. Today Bar Harbor is the gateway to Acadia National Park, where over two million people from around the world visit annually. This year…
Between 1913 and 1940, millionaire philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. built 45 miles of carriage roads on Mt. Desert Island that were closed to automobiles and remain that way today. Rockefeller also financed the construction of sixteen stone bridges at gorge and stream crossings. The majority of the roads are within Acadia National Park and…
Acadia National Park is Maine’s most popular tourist destination, with miles of rocky coastline and fabulous mountain-top views. With clear and calm forecast, we spent the day taking in the highlights and natural beauty of this impressive park. Trip highlights from September 26th, 2016 follow. Click any image for a larger view, or click the…
From Lunenburg, Nova Scotia we made a 225-mile overnight run to Southwest Harbor, Maine. We initially were planning to stay at least another night in Lunenburg, but the weather models showed a storm system arriving earlier than previously indicated with several more following, so we decided to leave a day early. We timed our Southwest…
Historic Lunenburg was settled in 1753 and is home to the Bluenose II, a replica of the famous racing and fishing schooner Bluenose. The town has long had a major wooden-boat-building industry, particularly at the Smith & Rhuland Shipyard where hundreds of ships were launched between 1900 and 1970. The most famous include the Bluenose…
Peggy’s Cove is about 35nm by water and less than an hour’s drive from Halfiax. The lighthouse there is one of the most accessible, well-known and photographed in Canada. We spent two final days in Halifax and attended a Davis Cup tennis match, then stopped off at Peggys Cove en route to Lunenbug to add…
Halifax Harbour is one of several that claim to be the second largest natural harbors in the world. Other contenders include Port Jackson at Sydney in Australia, Cork Harbour in Ireland, and Poole Harbour in the UK. However, Halifax Harbor is most definitely home to Canada’s largest military base with respect to posted personnel, and…
As soon as we realized that we’d be in town when the Halifax Mooseheads Junior A ice hockey team was playing, we put it on our calendar. It’s been ages since we watched a live hockey game—probably not since the Seattle Thunderbirds Junior A team moved out of downtown Seattle in 2009. We started the…
We loved our Halifax berth at the Maritime Museum, right downtown within walking distance of the city’s many attractions. One of the most memorable exhibits at the museum covers the 1917 Halifax Explosion, the largest man-made detonation prior to the development of nuclear weapons. On December 6th, 1917 the explosives-laden SS Mont-Blanc collided with the…
Halifax proved to be a real challenge for us. The city has so many pubs and breweries that we couldn’t possibly get to them all, even limiting ourselves to the highest rated ones. But we gave it a strong effort. The pubs we visited from September 13th through 19th, 2016 in Halifax, Nova Scotia follow….
Halifax is the capital city of Nova Scotia, the economic center of Atlantic Canada and home to Canada’s Atlantic naval fleet. The city has done a wonderful job in rejuvinating its waterfront while keeping the flavor of its commercial and maritime heritage intact. After a run south from the Liscomb River, we passed through Halifax…
The Liscomb River Trail has two excellent features. The first is a suspension bridge overlooking a waterfall where you can cross the river and return on the other side, and the second is an excellent restaurant at the head to enjoy a drink or a meal after the hike. From Guysborough we passed through Canso…
One of our reasons for stopping at Guysborough was to visit the award-winning Rare Bird Pub, one of Nova Scotia’s many excellent craft breweries. After passing through the narrow entrance channel, we found good anchorage in Guysborough Harbour just off the pub and the public dock. We of course stopped in at the Rare Bird…
St. Peters Canal, built in 1869, connects the south end of Bras d’Or Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. In most locks, the water flow is unidirectional, with one side always being higher than the other. The typical doors close into the shape of a ‘V’, with the point of the ‘V’ oriented upstream. But Bras…
A marble quarry operated at Marble Mountain between 1888 and 1921. When the mine was in operation, several hundred people lived in the area and Marble Mountain was one of the most prosperous towns in Cape Breton. The old quarry dominates the scenery here and has several good viewpoints back into the bay. Trip highlights…