Greetings from a rainy day in Cape Breton Highlands National Park!
We set out to visit the Maritimes this summer, and it appears we’re gonna fail. When we started planning, we’d thought that all of island provinces in eastern Canada were considered the Maritimes. As you probably know already, that assumption was incorrect. Newfoundland and Labrador are not considered Maritime provinces – they’re eastern or Atlantic Canada. We stand corrected!
We took all the time we needed to see what we wanted to see in Newfoundland and Labrador. Having done that, and because of our scheduled music events in September, we’ve now left ourselves with less than 4 weeks to explore the actual Maritimes – Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick – along with the Gaspe Peninsula, which is also not a Maritime, although it is a part of Quebec that we wished to see. That’s not enough time for satisfying exploration of so many places. It’s time to come up with an alternate plan…
Knowing that our schedule was ambitious, we’ve had seeds of a Plan B in our back pocket all along. Most of the Maritimes are a relatively short drive from New England, so we could do a shorter trip (or several) in the future to visit anything (e-pushpins!) we’d missed. Time to pull out both Plan A and Plan B and make some decisions.
We’ve decided to continue along the northern shore of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Gaspe Peninsula. This way, we’ll get to visit 4 national parks, indulge our passion for hiking, and catch a few other e-pushpins. And it’ll leave us time to play music along the way. The biggest downside is that we won’t get to see many sights that are unique in each province outside of the parks, nor to meet many locals, but c’est la vie, eh? We can visit what will remain unexplored (by us) of the Maritimes in a future a 3-4 week trip from home. And we can visit the shore again if we choose. Wait. It might actually take 5-6 weeks, but that’s ok, too.