Idyllic

  Idyllic. A one word title that describes our current digs.

  Sun, water, a beautiful house, two great dogs, great food, strong drink, family nearby... I must be missing something. We haven't played golf yet so I'm sure that will be added to the list.

  We're in Nova Scotia, in a place called the Head of St. Margaret's Bay, specifically, Todd's Island. The island connects to the main highway by means of a short causeway so, for those of you who are familiar with me and boats, no need to worry, we can drive to this island. Our house has a

dock of the bay. I was watchin' the tide roll in, thinking I had

my ducks in a row. Then I ran out of musical connections and tired cliches. So I went back to watching the tide roll in. It went up about three feet in an hour. We're on the south shore of Nova Scotia so these aren't Bay of Fundy tides (for those of you who aren't familiar with them, they're the World's Highest... more about capital letters later) but they go pretty high and fast.

  Before I go on about this place let me catch you up on our travels. We left Newmarket last Friday and took two days to drive here. The first day of our 1,900 km trek took ten hours: five crossing Ontario and five more across Quebec. We passed an egg on a stick somewhere on Quebec's south shore so that satisfied the "things on a stick" portion of the trip.

Our day ended in Riviere du Loup, where we stopped for the night.

Editorial time.

  Riviere du Loup isn't a bad place. It has some interesting things to see, nice restaurants, a few questionable motels. And it's very French. Now, Canadians know this isn't French like France French. It's Quebecois French, which means they turn their collective noses up at anyone who doesn't speak their particular lingo which, by the way, is unlike France French to the degree the Toronto Maple Leafs are unlike a hockey team. It's almost like they don't want non-Quebecois to come and spend money in their province. Well, we took our English and our money and left town as soon as the sun was up. We couldn't wait to get to New Brunswick, which doesn't treat the use of English as a crime. Not exaggerating. Look it up.

  Day two started with New Brunswick which also took us five hours to cross (I'm seeing a pattern here) and we didn't encounter anything on a stick. We found better stuff than that. First, the World's Longest Covered Bridge, in Hartland.

It's capitalized because it's the World's Longest Covered Bridge. If it was the world's second longest covered bridge it would get lower case letters. When you have the world's longest/biggest/tallest/heaviest... thing, they throw in the caps. Really.

  Shortly afterwards we happened upon the World's Biggest Axe (re caps, see above) in Nackawic.

  "Why", I can hear you ask, "did someone decide they needed an extraordinarily large axe?" Well, let me illuminate you. New Brunswick's geography is the epitome of all things Canadian. There's not much there except lots of rocks, trees and water. Since there's so many trees and not much else, the forestry industry employs a significant portion of the province's small population. In 1991, Nackawic was designated Forestry Capital of Canada (caps again) so, of course, the town fathers (there's never town mothers) decided to commission said sculpture to celebrate their newfound notoriety.

  For those of you who have faithfully followed our adventures, you should know these guys didn't try to buy any obelisk plans from that shady Washington Monument guy. They focused on originality and talked to an axe guy. I'll bet you won't find any smaller copies of this anywhere else. Yay for originality!

  From that point on, rain settled directly over our car and followed us all the way to my sister-in-law, Wendy's, house where we spent the night, not being required to start our house sit assignment until the following afternoon. And that brings us back to our idyllic spot here by the bay.

  Between Saturday night and today we managed to pay a visit to my niece, Cassie's, place of employment for the summer, in Lunenberg. She's working in the storefront of a craft distillery where she seems to spend equal parts of her time serving customers and sampling the company's wares. She seemed to be enjoying it so we bought some. I love it when people enjoy their work. That was followed by a little grocery shopping excursion which yielded some fresh lobster that we turned into lobster rolls that evening. I much preferred spending $30 on grocery store lobster to produce four lobster rolls than $23 each at the nearby waterside lobster shack. Win.

  Speaking of groceries, it's actually more expensive here than at home. A rotisserie chicken I'd spend $8 for at Costco was $13 at the supermarket. Of course, there's no comparison between the two as the Costco chickens are the size of small turkeys while the one I was shocked by here was the size of a squirrel. I may be exaggerating but you know you love it.

  Back to our current piece of paradise. We're in charge of two dogs, a border collie, Jax, and a shih-tzu named Charlie. They're both great and very closely resemble our two dogs of yore, Indiana and Tinker. Well, sort of. Indy was a kind of border collie/beagle cross while Jax looks like he's straight border collie. Well, I'm assuming he's straight.

  He's three years old and chases tennis balls, sticks, frisbees and whatever you care to throw his way, just as Indy once did. I took him for a 5 km walk today and he was just getting warmed up by the time it was over. Here's the view from the trail:

  In the two days since we arrived he's attached himself to me and follows me everywhere. He may be the Best Dog Ever (see above re caps).

  Charlie doesn't suffer from Tinker's bad breeding so his butt doesn't stick up in the air and give him the profile of a bad 1970's British sportscar. He does have the breed's protruding lower jaw that gives him that "You talkin' to me?" look.

  He's ok but he's twelve going on thirteen so his running and chasing days are long gone. He seems happy in his spot on the couch beside Penny and still manages to walk once a day, for as long as his stubby little legs will carry him. He's a good dog too.

  So here we are until the end of June. We'll spend the next few days seeing the sights, playing some golf, visiting with Wendy and Cassie, eating the food, soaking up the sun and watching the tide roll in and out.

  By the way, how does anyone get off having Muskoka chairs here? Why don't they have Musquodoboit chairs, eh? A question for another day.

PS, I just realized I didn't include Yvonne Vandergugten in the last episode's list of people we visited with last year. And her son, David, and his family. Apologies to all.