Labor Day Weekend

(I'm about a week late with this, but if I don't do it now, I'll never get it done.)

This was a busy weekend for us.  First, the snake training refresher, which many of you saw on Facebook--an awful and stressful, but totally useful and needed, event. Then, a wonderful, magical rest of the weekend!  Roadtrips, great food, rediscovering us, enjoying our dogs--it was incredible.  I didn't take any pics of the towns, restaurants or other people places we visited, but here are some of the natural highlights.

A view of the Texas hill country.

An angry cow, found on one of the numerous back roads we traveled which had loose livestock roaming around them.

A place that has become one of our favorite places in all of Texas.  

The ubiquitous cactus in bloom.

Obviously near a water source, as you won't find green like this anywhere else in this state at this scorching time of year.

Naturally terraced cactus.

The aforementioned water.  Surface water is a rare sight here in this drought.

More terraces.

DH, Don, intent on something.  :)

This might be my favorite shot of over 100 pictures.  Don, again, this time watching his step.

 Limestone cliffs near the bats.

 

Whole Lotta Stuff

I just realized I haven't posted anything here since I had the flu back in January (VERY sick for almost two weeks), followed almost immediately by the packing up of our household.   Since then DH and I have said goodbye to lots and lots of people we love in Ontario, taken the dogs, and moved back to Austin, Texas.  We had to give up the cats, a topic which is almost too painful to even mention.  We're in temporary housing now, waiting to hear on an offer we've made on a house, and are busy reconnecting with people and a city that was very hard to leave in the first place, some fourteen years ago.

I was worried about the puppies and the heat, given their thick winter undercoats, but we've been extremely lucky to actually have Spring here this year.  Temperatures are hovering around 60F (16C), occasionally dipping down to freezing or soaring close to 90F (32C).  The guys have started blowing their winter coats, which is messy, but otherwise seem to be doing okay.  They (and we) participated in the Mighty Texas Dog Walk this past weekend, a charity event to benefit service dogs.  Next weekend, they're going to Snake Aversion Training, to keep them safe from rattlesnakes and copperheads.  Later they will participate in more training involving coral snakes and maybe cottonmouths.

The drive down was mostly a lot of fun, though finding truly pet-friendly hotels on-the-fly was sometimes challenging.  We took time out to visit the Wild Turkey distillery in Kentucky and walk barefoot (in February!) in Northern Texas.  Kai took an extreme dislike to a statue of Abe Lincoln in Cincinnati, and had to bark at it, a lot, every time he stepped outside of the hotel where we were staying.

DH and I, as I mentioned, are reconnecting with family and friends, exploring old haunts and new attractions, and enjoying the food WAY too much.  It's a bit disconcerting that Austin has literally doubled in size since we left, but we're adjusting to it.  We've spent the last month or so searching for a house.  We found one we absolutely loved, but apparently the owner didn't really want to sell, so our offer went ignored.  We've found another house we like almost as much, and should know by tomorrow whether our offer was accepted or not.

That's the last ten weeks or so in a nutshell.  I'll post pictures of the house if we get it, otherwise it's back to the drawing board.

Wish us luck!

Days 9 & 10

The last two days of our trip were fairly uneventful.  We drove the rest of the way through Maine, through a bit of New Hampshire and through Vermont, then into Eastern New York before driving back into Ontario.  We did a little shopping and took a few photos, but mostly we just wanted to get home.  I was starting to feel genuinely ill, and I was thoroughly sick of taking pictures--I'd taken over 1,000 in the last eight days!  (No telling how many DH took.)  I was wondering if I'd ever want to hold a camera again!

We took pictures of much gorgeous scenery:

Ran into some truly dismal weather (And that's saying something, considering the weather we'd already hit on this trip.):

And saw the tail end of a fall festival in Burlington, Vermont:

It was thoroughly enjoyable and thoroughly exhausting, and I'm  SO glad we did it!  We will definitely visit Newfoundland  next summer!


I expect our next big trip will in all likelihood be the move back to Texas.

The Rest of Day 8

After the tide chased us away from Hopewell Rocks, we continued our journey back.  Next stop was in the hometown of a friend of ours.  In the foreground you can see the town's famous covered bridge.

She gave us clear directions to where she grew up, but we got a little lost, so we're still not sure we got the right house!  Is this it, Angie?

 

If so, it now comes with a dog.  :)

We're fairly sure we got the correct high school, at least according to the locals, it's boarded up now, and it got to late for us to look for the new one.

 We drove into Maine late in the evening.  It was too dark to get a picture, but the Maine woods really ARE creepy at dusk.

We were so exhausted by then that we basically stopped at the first hotel we found.

Day 6 & 8 - Hopewell Rocks

I'm determined to finish this before moving on to anything else!

We visited Hopewell Rocks, a tourist site on the Bay of Fundy, while the tide was in on Day 6, and then again when the tide was out on Day 8.  It was truly amazing.  (If you want more info you can check it out here, as well as any number of other sites.)

Some of these pics are tide in/tide out pairs, some of them show us exploring what is the ocean floor half the day.

These are the actual rocks for which the site is named, right in front of the steps leading down from the land above.

 

To give some scale, here's one with people walking there.  As you can see, the water would be well above their heads at high tide.

Here are the steps you climb down, when the tide is OUT, of course:

 

This pic of my DH shows how chilly it can be down near the water.  (He almost never wears a sweater or jacket.)

 Here's a back view off those steps.  Notice how dry the sand looks in the tide out pic:

 

 We spent most of the afternoon wandering the "ocean floor" with our fellow tourists.

There are dire warning signs all over the place to make sure you don't get trapped somewhere and drowned at high tide:

And a safety platform about halfway between the two access points, just in case.

These are quite scary, actually.  They certainly made us keep our minds on the clock!

All in all, it was an extremely impressive natural display. You can see those tides come in and out all around the bay.  In narrow places it looks like a fierce whitewater river flowing first one direction then, a few hours later, the other.

Well worth the time to see.

Day 7--Halifax

(I'm not skipping Day 6, it's just being delayed to go with Day 8.)

We decided there was so much to do in Halifax that we wanted to devote an entire day to it, instead of just the evening we'd originally planned.  That, and we had some extra time due to the Newfoundland thing. . .

After driving into town, the first place we stopped was the Citadel.

With its historic artillery,

impressive costumes (even if the actors are bored, lol),

and commanding views of the city and the harbor
.

After we left there, it was well past lunch time, so we headed down to the waterfront.  After all, we were in Halifax, so we felt we MUST try some seafood.  It was a gorgeous day, so we ate outside and then wandered down the waterfront.

  

 We visited a couple of museums, including the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, where we saw many interesting, impressive, sometimes disturbing things.

One of them was a deck chair off the Titanic:

 After the museums all closed around five or six, we headed back to the hotel to rest up. We were really looking forward to enjoying the Halifax nightlife we'd heard so much about!

 Boy, were we ever disappointed!  We got back downtown around 7:30, only to find out that most businesses closed at around eight!  This includes pubs, music venues, and many of the restaurants!!!  Not to mention tourist attractions, of course!  Granted it was a weeknight, but GEEZ!  Eight o'clock?  You've got to be kidding.  This was worse than PEI!

We managed to find a restaurant that was open until (gasp !) ten, and were quite lucky to do so, as we were starving by then.  Afterwards, we headed back to the car, since everything else seemed closed.  We took a few night shots along the way:

(You can just see me sitting between the 1 and the 2.)

As we got to the car, we heard faint strains of music.  Interested to see what was open at this ungodly hour (of 8:30 or so) , we followed the sound to a bar that was still open!  We spent a very fun and  pleasant hour or two at a place called the Lower Deck.  A live band (Signal Hill) was performing covers to a standing-room-only crowd.  And no wonder, since it was the only place open.  (Don't get me wrong, the band was really good, but I can't believe it didn't have something to do with the hour.)

At least we got some sleep, if only due to the enforced early night, as we were planning to get up at dawn the next day.