The bad weather confined us within the next few days, while we passed the old Woolen Mill in Barrington, it was still dry but suddenly heavy rain poured down and made our bird watching tour at Cape Sable Island impossible, heavy fog covered the lighthouse at Cape Forchu but just a few hours later Gilbert’s Cove Lighthouse showed up in a few shafts of sunlight and the evening at Digby promised nicer weather for the next day. Along with sun we drove to Westport at Brier Island, but arrived there – again fog was against us and took away all chances to see any whales here as our tour was cancelled.
We drove back to Tiverton tried our luck at the Balancing Rock Trail but still heavy fog was around. Unfortunately our schedule is tightened up with a lot of things to do and changing plans would start like a domino effect and would cause a heavy load of work. But this is Nova Scotia life hiding some precious gems to keep us coming back again and again.
At Bear River we learned that the Dutch Mill had to be tiered down, another check mark to our list that holds our itinerary. But we were able to visit Frank Meuse Jr. at the Stone Bear Tracks & Trails, a master guide and avid outdoorsman, who escorted us for a few hours on our travel. He opened up our minds and sharpened our spirits with a lot of stories about the Mi’kmaq and showed us some plants that offer fruits and roots to eat we never expected.
When we arrived at Keji that day the cloudy sky made us have our Dark Sky experience virtually but not less interesting as we learned a lot about light pollution and were introduced to a story about Muin and the seven bird hunters, an exciting story about the changing seasons told by the Mi’kmaq using the star constellations of the night sky.
Our canoe outing was cancelled due to high wind gusts but we encountered the endangered Blanding’s Turtles on land and learned how the volunteers Sue and Norm Green at Keji keep track of hatchlings and how they study their habitat. Amazing that those turtles as big as a tooney (a Canadian 2 dollar coin) may travel about 80 meters a day and more.
Along with the third day at Keji the weather turned and sun was following us to the petroglyphs we would run over and not noticing them at all as some of them are very tiny. How sad that these carvings will be lost in the future as the weather and water will wash them out and how bad that some of them have encountered many thoughtless people that carved their own things over into the soft rocks on the Keji Lake. They have found carvings at different places in Keji that they now try protect and only guided tours are allowed to see a few of the over 500 found petroglyphs that are supposed to be carved a long long time ago by the natural inhabitants of Nova Scotia the Mi’kmaq.
