We left Halifax yesterday after spending Saturday at Lunenberg, a little port town just south of Halifax.  It’s won a big deal UNESCO award for being one of the best preserved historical towns in the world.  Lots of sweet late 1700s and early 1800s architecture, and a beautiful working harbor, that includes a replica of the Bluenose, the famous racing schooner from the 1800s.  Very cool and despite a very rainy day, it was worth going.  The Bluenose was an amazing ship.  Still manned (on the government dole) by 18 crew members who sail her from port to port.  Unfortunately, we went on a day when they weren’t offering the $30 cruise around the harbor. 

Miles and Kell on the Cape Sable in Lunenberg.

Lunenberg Harbor

 That was our last outing before pulling out of our campsite in Halifax, the first long stay of our trip finally ended.  Another day another campsite.   This time on Lake Charlotte, very lovely.

Kell at the Train Museum.

Kell makes it to the top of Gibraltar Rock.

When we arrive at a campsite, Miles checks for Satellite clearance, Kell checks the playground and I check the laundry … how domestic we’ve become!  Like the roving modern-day Cleavers we are .. NOT. 

As it turns out however, and as many of my working at home friends have sympathized, laundry can be very therapeutic.  Take today, for example.  After a loooong (but fun) day with Kell (Railway Museum, 3 mile hike up a big cliff which I had estimated would be about a mile – oops), I came home and decided to do laundry.  Kell and Miles joined me since it was right next to the playground.  After awhile, we all went back to start dinner.  But it wasn’t 15 minutes when I announced, I think I’ll go get the laundry – and Miles tried to dissuade me saying it wouldn’t be done but I insisted.  The truth is, while loading the washers up in the laundry room, I had noticed a stash of trashy magazines.  You know, of the People/In Touch variety.  Starved for my fix of supermarket checkout moments, I went up there to revel in the quiet hum of the dryers and the voyeurism inherent in reading such a rag.  I came back about an hour later… to find that Miles had cooked a lovely meal that Kell was already eating. 
 
It’s horrifying really, to think that I could relish such wasting of my time when I could be out walking by the lake, or forming word groups with Kell.  OK, maybe not the latter, but definitely the former!  But I guess it’s just a weird way of relaxing.  Not really doing anything useful at all.  I’ve been terribly useful on this trip … between cooking, cleaning, storing, driving, backing, hitching, unhitching, bathing, washing, reading to Kell, fixing, planning, shopping, sightseeing.  A lot if ing-ing.  Enough!  Meditating isn’t really even on my list yet, though I admit to salivating a bit when I think of spending a couple of days in the serene shrine at the Abbey on Cape Breton.  May that be a reality in a few days time…

We’ve been somewhat starved for news altogether since we left.  Haven’t found a Sunday Times yet and CBC radio is shockingly provincial (in this case literally focusing on news happening in the provinces) but not much else, all presented in an overly PC way.  Lots of local stories … the most interesting so far being about a group of teens touring the country to raise awareness about how sex education in the schools is homophobic and ableist.  Sp?  Not sure,  but it means discriminating against the differently abled.  The young women representing the group in the interview explained that not enough is done to explain to the disabled how to have sex when you’re differently abled.  Very odd.  And the accent, of course, gets maddening after awhile.  So, we’ve resorted back to Satellite NPR.  But then we end up in a place like this campsite for awhile (no internet, no line of site for satellite radio) and we’re completely cut off.  But I like that too. 

One more trip into Halifax tomorrw to pick up some mail and then it’s off to Cape Breton – yippee!