#riverlodge

After watching another beautiful sunset yesterday evening on the shores of Fox Island and hearing thousands of seabirds make a lot of noise on the neighboring small island, we set off towards Halifax today in the morning.

The roads proved once again to be horrific and not worthy of the designation, so we could only drive rather slowly at around 50-60 kph. Luckily we got to the ferry 3 minutes before it left, so we could short cut about 60km of not-road with a 9 minute ferry trip. The motorhome just fit on it. So by noon we had only arrived in the historic town of Sherbrooke. The town, like a few others in the region, originally started with the discovery of gold in the area, which was mined in the first half of the 19th century or so, before the mines were exhausted. Today, there’s a large gas plant in Goldboro, which we took a quick look at on the way.

As we arrived in town, we saw a billboard for a Swiss-Canadian Bed & Breakfast and smiled. Little did we know that we would run into the owners truck with his Bernese and Swiss flags proudly put next to the number plate as many expats do here. As we took a picture of that, we met the owner and were immediately invited for tea and yummy cookies. We chatted about Bern a bit and he kindly explained to us what there was to do in Sherbrooke.

We could park our RV in his backyard and hook up to the electric, stay for the night and join them for breakfast tomorrow. So very friendly, I have no words to say! Many thanks to Fred and Ursula Schüpbach from the St. Mary’s River Lodge for putting up with us so spontaneously.

Sherbrooke was conserved as a town and surprisingly enough remains almost completely preserved to date thanks to having been turned into a living museum in the 1960s. Not only do they have the arguably best preserved apothecary (aka drugstore) I have ever seen, with all the original bottles, containers and packages including their content, they also have a blacksmith that works here year round in an original shop that shod horses, did general blacksmith work as well as tinsmith’s jobs such as stovepipes etc. a beautiful old shop and a friendly blacksmith. Thank you Tony Huntley and his assistant!

To top it all off, we had our picture taken at the photography studio. Or Ambrotype Studio, as I should say, as they still use the original AGFA Camera and the ambrotyping process using iodized collodion and silver nitrate or some such. I’m not much of a chemist. But it looks period perfect and was a lot of fun. Bec loved it too. Just have to get the glass plate back in one piece now. Better not put it next to the blacksmith’s tools.

We have about 200km to go tomorrow, so it shouldn’t be too much of a chore and we hope to take a bus to downtown Halifax in the evening for a few drinks and dinner.