Reverie

Just after Day's end
Fireflies emerge to startle
Am I blinking
Or is it them?

Seized by the moment
Reverie

How to capture
To preserve for tomorrow's pleasure

No.

Reverie
is in the startle
in the discovery

Life Lessons of Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sweetness requires both light and dark.
A little vinegar mellows the mix.
Chocolate and nuts are a balancing act.
In heat, cookies spread and touch each other.
It's best if your nuts are toasted, but it's easy to get burned.

My Dancer

My dancer moved with grace
Twenty five years ago
First of many recitals
Grass skirt hula
Short bangs
Rouged cheeks

My dancer moves with grace
or not
Belly swelling
Tutu rising
Still on pointe
A dancer within

How could I have envisioned such joy?

Watermelon Smile

Watermelon smile

Lemonade laughter

Blueberry eyes

Sweet potato nose

A little melon mojo from

The girl with the strawberry curls

Fog and Other Frings

The theme of the last two days has been fog. Actually, it has been more than two days but I don’t want to count. Yesterday we drove down the Eastern Shore by the Marine Road. The picture above was typical of the ocean views. I took this around the town of Ecum Secum. That reminds me of a game that I used to play with my kids called “No Peekin’.”

The highlight of the day was the menu for Pace’s Place. I spotted a hand painted black on white sign in the trees that said, “Follow our menu to Pace’s Place.” I didn’t know what that meant but I soon would find out. For the next 10 km, at varying intervals, small white signs would appear, hanging in the trees. Most of them were normal fare: onion rings, then cheeseburger, then French fries. But there were some specialty items revealed as the kilometers clicked by: donairs, poutine, donair pogos and frings. Never had trees made me so hungry!

That night the local pizza store had donairs on the menu. I quizzed another customer about them.

“You’re not from Nova Scotia are you?”

Donairs are some type of meat (maybe beef) with special spices and a white sauce.

Poutine is French fries with gravy and topped with cheese. These people love to put gravy on fries. I think that the fries themselves have enough fat for me.

Frings? Her guess was an order of combined French fries and onion rings. I don’t like that answer because it is boring. I’m thinking fried telephone: fringgg. Get it?

She did not know what a pogo is. I think that a donair pogo is a shish kebab on a pole that you can hop around on after you eat. It would help with digestion.

After all that reading in the fog, it was a relief to visit a city: Halifax. Here it is in the fog. Is there any other way?

The next shot is of a famous Canadian landmark: the lighthouse in Peggy’s Cove. This may surprise you, but that is not smoke. It is fog.

It is time for us to go home and tomorrow we will take the high speed ferry from Yarmouth to Portland. Actually, they drag the motorhomes on little pontoons behind the ship. Here is a picture (in the fog.)

It will be nice to be home. Hopefully we will see the sun there.

Louisbourg Breakdown

I awoke yesterday, Sunday morning, in Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, in a weary state. All attempts and pep talks at self-revival failed. I was tired from two long days of hard driving and sightseeing. I needed a break. I needed some down time. We were scheduled to visit the Louisbourg Fortress, a wonderful reconstruction of an Eighteenth Century fort and town. I could not bear the thought of going to see it. So I negotiated a morning of golf – some nice relaxing down time.

This goes into the category of “be careful what you wish for.” We drove the motorhome about three hundred yards up the street and it just died. Died. Several hours later we were towed back to our campground with a problem in the fuel delivery system. No one works on vehicles on Sunday.

It turns out that no one works on big vehicles in the rain on Monday either. The only garage in town was very nice, but they were not big enough to bring the motorhome inside. They were unwilling to work on it outside in the pouring rain. Can’t blame them for that. They are scheduled to work on it tomorrow which is supposed to be sunny. I hope that I am sunny by then.

Tomorrow will be our third day in Louisbourg. I could tell you way more than you want to know about the town. It was once thriving port for the shipment of coal, until that business collapsed. It morphed into a fish processing town until the cod fishing grounds were closed down in 1992. The town shrunk from 3300 residents to 880. Of course today it is 882 since my wife and I are now official residents. Everyone in town already knows who we are – the folks who broke down on Main Street in the motorhome.

My wife says that I “overshot” when I asked the universe for down time. I think that it is perfect. Here we are in the rain in our little motor home – ALL DAY – just loving our time together. I am reading “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” an upbeat subject. My wife is fascinated by everything that is going on around us.

She peered out the motorhome window and said, “Look at the seagulls lined up.”

I shot back, “I’m not looking at seagulls.” I would have had to turn around in my chair to see them.

“It’s fascinating,” she said. Fascinating and seagulls are two words that are not often used in the same sentence.

I started to laugh, “That just shows how bored you are.” But I also turned to look at the seagulls and they were interesting. You can see the picture at the top of the page. Fascinating? I’m not sure about that.

We are so bored that we are going to turn on Canadian TV and watch soccer in French. Could it get any worse?

I am not asking the universe for anything anymore. I am keeping my wishes and desires to myself. Tomorrow will be day 3 in Louisbourg. I really want to get out of here. No, I didn’t say or think that. Ignore that.

I think I’ll go watch some seagulls.

Meat Cove

For the last two days we have been travelling on the Cabot Trail on Cape Bretton in Nova Scotia. The Cabot Trail, about 180 miles long, is known as one of the most scenic drives in the world and it did not disappoint.

At the end of the first day we were in a crafts store near the top of the trail. The woman in the shop asked if we were planning to take the road which went off the Trail and up to the tippity top of the Cape. We were not planning to do it, but at her urging we changed our route. She said there were a couple of campgrounds out there.



I was a little concerned because the map showed that one of the campgrounds was in Meat Cove and the map showed that it was on a dirt road. My motorhome does not like dirt roads. But there was always the other campground.



The other campground was closed so we set off for Meat Cove. The paved road soon turned to red dirt. And it was not as flat as it looked on the map. In fact the road went up and down over mountains as they plunged to the sea. It wasn't long before I knew we were in trouble. Remember, this was all at the end of a long day of driving. I was not pleased.



And then we saw the moose. He was eating by the side of the road and took off into the woods when we saw us. Maybe this would be a special place.



We arrived and I knew that we had made a good choice. This had to be the best view from any campground in North America:

In the next picture look at the house on the top of the hill. Just below it is the road. That will give you some idea about the road in. Again, this picture is from the campsite.

We were mesmerized by the view. We set up our chairs and sat there until dark. There was no need to read. We just absorbed all that we could see. Here is later that evening:

I could show you a lot more pictures as the day wore on. They all are spectacular.



I was awakened early the next morning by rain on the roof. The horizon was a brilliant pink and continued to change color as the sun rose. A few minutes later, two bald eagles drifted by.



What a twenty four hours!