Rainy Day = Flexible Plans

When we go someplace, I typically have a list of things that look interesting and then my wife gets on Trip Advisor and tosses out 20 or so more things. We do have some must sees and everything else is open depending on how the day unfolds.

We had planned to go see a zoo today. By zoo standards, the one here is small but it has animals and we aren’t going to pass up an opportunity to see animals. Except we are sitting at breakfast and it starts to rain. The zoo is about 25 minutes away and we figure why not just drive out and see what happens. Yeah – it rains harder.

So the zoo is not going to be an option. The rest of the things we had discussed were all outdoor activities. I had read about a military museum that was close by and since it was indoors, we figured it was the best option. Plugged the location into the GPS and it was right down the road so off we went.

And now comes a lesson in why you can’t just turn your life over to the GPS navigator. It had certainly plotted the most direct route but that route lead to a back entrance to the airbase which had all kinds of signs about restricted access and various warnings about not trying to enter and that we were under watch. So we backed out quickly before they sent someone out to investigate why we were sitting at the back gate to a restricted space.

We followed the map and eventually found the right entrance since the museum was not in the restricted area. And it turned out to be a very nice and informative place to go. They had some aircraft of various vintages in the parking around the building and my wife went crazy taking pictures. Didn’t know she was so into military aircraft but there you go.

And it was still raining when we left so we decided to find somewhere for lunch. This part of Nova Scotia does remind me a lot of the fruit growing areas of Michigan by the lake where Dad now lives. The hills here are rollier and the plots of land area bit smaller. In Michigan, we learn all about lake effect and why it is such a good place for fruit. I suspect some of the same things to be true of this area.

The small towns here do look like the small towns in that part of Michigan except that the store names are different. Towns grew up before there were tourists so you have a main street that used to have all the shops a town would need. Now you have building that have been turned into places that seem to cater more to out of towners. We stopped for coffee at one such place.

After some more driving around on the back roads, the rain stopped for good and we did circle back to see the zoo. Mission accomplished.

But now it was later in the afternoon and the rest of the things we wanted to do would have to wait. Just started driving some of the smaller roads to see what we could find and suddenly saw a sign to a provincial park that my wife had found on Trip Advisor that morning. So we followed the signs and found the place and took a short path down to the rocky shore where we got some great views of these red cliffs with the sun hitting them.

We used the GPS to get us to a largish city where we figured there would be restaurant options and we had a nice dinner and then called it a day.

So we only accomplished one thing that we had planned to do that morning but it turned out to be a very nice day. The unexpected stuff is sometimes the best part of vacations.