Wayward Newlyweds – Day 19: Evangeline/Sydney

Oh the 11:45pm Ferry is a Very Sleepy Ferry

Today’s mission: Get tires fixed and get to Evangeline Beach! We got up for a 9:00am breakfast which was very nice. French toast, bacon eggs and toast. Yummy yum! While we were having breakfast a gentleman came over and introduced himself as one of the owners! We had a nice chat, and found that we had something in common. His daughter had lived in Vancouver for several years! After breakfast we got packed up and said goodbye to our beautiful room. We checked out by about 10:30 and started our half hour drive to get new tires.

Luckily there were no explosions. 15 minutes and $300 later we were back on the road, feeling much safer, heading to Evangeline Beach. We got there at about 12:00pm. The tide was way out, so you could easily see the mud flats spreading out to the water. We wandered down to the beach, took off our shoes, and started a very squelchy treck to try and make it to the water. Sadly we did not make it, but we did get good and muddy. So now we had to find out if Tofino sand plus Evangeline mud mixed together would create a spatial paradox in the car. Luckily it didn’t. We got some ice cream (apparently Grape nut Ice cream is a thing??) and headed away from the beach to the Evangeline Historic site.

 

We had a really good wander around the historic site and got a bit eaten by mosquitos, but learned a lot of cool things about the Acadians and that they basically created fertile land by blocking off the tides from part of the mud flats and making fields. Really neat stuff! We had a good poke around the gift shop as well, got a few postcards and some souvenirs. We then headed for lunch at a small café that had our next lobster lobster roll, and butterscotch pie. Once we were there we thought it might be time to book our ferry trip to Newfoundland, as we had been foolish and didn’t book before hand.

This began a bit of a saga as we were not really expecting a 11:45pm ferry to be full, but it was. Dodd ended up booking a ticket for the next evening, and a plan to call every hour or so in hopes of a cancellation that we could fill. With that plan in motion, we started back on the road to try and get to Lunenberg, which is where the Bluenose II docks. We drove for about an hour, and Dodd called the ferry to check for a cancellation, and they had one. So we changed our tickets, and were good to go! To ceck our timing Dodd asked me to check how long it would take to get to Sydney, where we catch the ferry. Google told us that it was going to take 5hours to  get there, it was about 4:00pm, and we had to be there by 9:45pm…right time to turn around. Lunenberg will have to wait! So we turned around and headed our way to Cape Breton Island.

 

We made it to the ferry in good time, and had to plot out what we wanted to bring up with us, because we couldn’t go back to the car during the crossing. The experience was rather different from BC ferries. We started loading around 10:00pm. When we got up on deck we found a little café, and there was a restaurant as well, but only the bar was open at the time. We got some food from the café and found a pair of seats. I had brought my pj bottoms up, so I changed into those and we settled in for making ourselves comfy.

I’ll leave it here for now, and say more of the crossing in the next post!

Cheers

Sláinte

Skol