We left Prince Edward Island and traveled back to Nova Scotia. We stayed on Cape Breton Island at the Keltic Lodge. It was set on beautiful grounds within Cape Breton Highlands National Park. As we walked the grounds, we were treated to beautiful scenery and also saw several lobster boats setting and retrieving their traps. These are pictures taken at Keltic Lodge. These pictures were taken at a quick photo stop at Black Brook, part of Cape Breton Highlands National…
Before we left Nova Scotia for Prince Edward Island (PEI), we learned a little about the First Nations people, especially the Mi’kmaq. For a long time, their stories were passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth. A missionary, Reverend Silas Tertius Rand, spent about 40 years with the Mi’kmaq and other First Nations people, making one of the first written recordings of some of their stories and legends. The Mi’kmaq people believed that Glooscap was the…
A highlight of our Maritimes trip was visiting the Bay of Fundy where we could walk on the ocean floor at low tide. Tides are caused by gravitational forces exerted on the earth by the moon and to a lesser extent, the sun. Fundy’s tides are the highest in the world in part because of the funnel-shape of the bay which forces the water into a smaller space. At its fastest, the water level rises 13 feet in an hour….
We also explored a few sites near Halifax. We first headed to Lunenburg by way of Mahone Bay. The town of Mahone Bay has just over 1,000 people. It is a fishing village and a well-known tourist destination. Pictures of three churches along the bay, similar to the one below, are popular photographs on postcards. We also saw colorful homes. The paint used for these homes may have been left from the paint families used for their fishing boats. We…
We traveled with Tauck on their Canadian Maritimes tour which began in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The British military founded Halifax in 1749. The Welcome Dinner for our tour was held at the Citadel in Halifax. The Citadel, situated at the top of a hill – later known as Citadel Hill – was in a perfect position to defend the harbor. One of the first buildings constructed was a wooden guardhouse at the top of the hill. Settlers built their homes…
After leaving Sequoia National Park, we went to Yosemite National Park and stayed on the property at The Ahwahnee. The hotel was commissioned in the 1920’s in the hope of drawing affluent visitors to Yosemite. It was felt that affluent and influential visitors would encourage continued support of Yosemite as a national park. The Ahwahnee was named a National Historical Site in 1987. The Ahwahnee was positioned close to cliffs with a goal of making it “part of the scene…
As part of our Tauck tour, we drove to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. They are adjacent to each other but became national parks at different times so have different names. They have been jointly managed since 1943. Sequoias grow in both parks. Giant sequoias grow on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, between 4,000 and 8,000 feet in elevation. They are closely related to the coast redwoods we saw at Muir Woods, but there are differences….
I want to start this post with a bit of an overview of the three national parks we visited on our America’s Canyonland tour. Each of these parks are part of the “Grand Staircase,” an area beginning at the Grand Canyon, going on to Zion and ending at Bryce. Our itinerary was a bit out of order as we ended our trip in Zion. The Grand Staircase is a sequence of sedimentary rocks that ascend from the Grand Canyon to…
We traveled next to Bryce Canyon National Park, another highlight of our trip. On our way, we made a quick photo stop to see Balanced Rock. It is near Lee’s Ferry in Marble Canyon. The National Park Service explains how it came to be: Thousands of years ago a huge rock boulder broke from the cliff above and tumbled to a stop here. The hard conglomerate boulder compressed the softer dirt directly beneath, making it resistant to erosion. The boulder…
After leaving the Grand Canyon, we drove to the Glen Canyon and Lake Powell area, where we had a half hour flightseeing experience. We were on a small plane holding about 12 passengers, each of us with a window seat. The afternoon before, we had visited the Carl Hayden Visitor Center adjacent to the Glen Canyon Dam. The Visitors’ Center was named for Senator Carl Hayden who at the time was the longest serving member of Congress – in fact,…