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Published: November 2nd 2008
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As I am journaling I've found that the map module on travelblog is no longer working. Every time I try to access a map or make a new one the whole website crashes. Grrrrrrrr. I'm hoping this will be fixed soon because I keep forgetting where I am without the map.
We had breakfast with another couple from the US. They were from New Jersey and had also traveled to CBI and Baddeck to look into purchasing a summer home there. I'm jealous.
Today we will head west to Digby. As much as I wanted to go around the southern part of Nova Scotia I have to admit I lost that battle and without that much of a fight. I think I'm getting a little toured out and am starting to set my sights on home..... BUT....not before we go whale watching.
The Digby area is supposed to be the ideal place to whale watch since it is at the mouth of Fundy. Digby neck is just like it sounds, a long peninsula type of land mass connecting by ferry to two islands, Long Island and Brier Island. Digby is sort of at the "shoulder" of the peninsula.
Digby itself is situated in the Annapolis Basin. It is one of the most noted places for scallop fishing as well as lobster and other types of fish.
We will try to go whale watching today so that we can take the Digby ferry tomorrow to St. John and start heading back towards Massachusetts. Cal wants to see a little of the Boston area before we fly home in a few days. So we headed west fairly early this morning. I did the driving on this leg of the trip. It was kind of a convoluted route and about half way through it we stopped in a very small town for gas and a bathroom. Shortly after we arrived our housemates from last night also stopped for the identical same things. If Digby is as small as I think it is this won't be our last encounter.
Before we left Bridgewater we drove around a little to look at the town. It is very pretty. It is a perfect place for me. A river runs through the town and the location is close to the coast without getting the horrible storms they probably get closer to the coast.
I really liked this place!
We got to Digby at about 12:30 and immediately stopped at the big question mark on the main street. We were told that there was a whale watching trip at 1:30 in Welshpool which is at the very end of the first leg of Digby neck and that if we hurried we'd just make it. So we were off.
Got to Welshpool at about 1:00, bought our tickets and waited for the whale watching boat. As we were waiting we watched the small ferry make several trips back and forth. A couple of interesting things about this ferry. Rather than tie up, it has side thrusters, like cruise ships, that keep it firmly pressed against the wall of the jetty. Also the current in this particular place is very strong and mostly they just follow the current to get from one place to another although they have to use a little muscle not to get carried past where they need to dock.
Here came little blue boat. It looks like it used to be a lobster boat because it looks very similar to others I've seen only this one has been equipped
with seats, etc.
There weren't a lot of us. I'd guess about 20 at most which was nice. We all boarded. We had a guide as well as our pilot? captain? whatever those guys are called. We were told that the water was very rough (oh joy) because of the vestiges of Hurricane Ike but that there had been whales spotted earlier in the day. And we were off.
On the point on Long Island is a very pretty lighthouse that we saw from our boat as we entered into the Bay of Fundy. As we got further out into the bay away from the protected land we started to really bounce. I thought about getting seasick but naaaaaaah, I have too much to see and do to spend time hanging over the side of the boat. I will say that by the end of the trip I was black and blue all over from being bounced around on that boat and decent photos and video were almost impossible. It was all I could do to hang on to the camera.
But. We saw whales! Humpbacks. In particular a mother and baby and another who has been
named "Notch" because of her unusual dorsal fin. Our guide said that Notch was one of the biggest humpbacks that they've ever seen in all their combined years of whale watching. It is hard for me to tell since you never see the whole whale. Notch got her name because it looks like a big chunk was taken out of her dorsal fin somehow and it looks a lot like a jigsaw puzzle piece. We were able to get quite close and between Cal and I we got some great movies and still pictures.
We were out about an hour and a half and it was just a great experience. The guide was very knowledgeable and our boat driver ... pilot, captain...whatever was very invested in us seeing as much as we could. They seem to be a lot less strict than they are in Alaska. When we went whale watching in Alaska we were not allowed a certain distance from the whales and if the came towards us we had to back up. There was also a time limit as to how long an individual boat could stay in the area. That wasn't at all the case here
Evidence of Whales
This "mist" basically consists of whale breath and whale snot and doesn't smell too great. although the captain was very respectful of the whales and didn't chase them, the whales approached us and actually swam under the boat more than once. As I nurse my bruises, it was great and well worth it.
After we got back to Welshpool we decided that we were both hungry. We had spotted a couple of restaurants on the water in Digby that looked promising and so we stopped at the first one and had an early dinner. The food was good...big surprise, I had scallops.
By the time we finished it was getting late and we hadn't found a place to sleep. All of the motels & B&B's along the waterfront street looked to be too expensive or already filled for the night. We drove around the town, checked our guide book and found a B & B that was not on the water and so fairly reasonable. The place was Nova's Bed & Breakfast
. They had a room that was clean and the price was right so there is where we stayed.
Their internet was spotty at best. Nothing in our room but if you went downstairs or out on the deck in the back of the house you got a good connection.
Typically we were in bed and asleep early.
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