Outside the Cows Plant

We took the tour along with a number of other visitors, including four guys who were members of the Harley Davidson club in Idaho Falls, Idaho. They brought along with them their fake snake Chester. It turns out they hold a 50-50 raffle each meeting. The winner not only gets 50% of the money paid into the pot but they also get Chester who (which?) they are obligated to take around with them until the next meeting where they hopefully will not be a repeat winner.

Ellen on Tour

Dan on Tour

Someone a picture of Hell’s Angels didn’t come to mind when talking to four guys on an ice cream tour with one holding a toy snake.

One other product that Cows makes is tee-shirts. They do lots of them with silly slogans. However, even here the conflict between the Washington Caps and Pittsburgh Penguin hockey stars rages on, as the Moovechkin and Cowsby tee-shirts are evidently big sellers.

Second Rate Parody About Second Rate Hockey Player

Moovechkin is the Man, or well, Cow

After the tour and the free sample all tour members get at the end of the tour, we spent the rest of the day wandering around the Eastern part of Prince Edwards Island. We saw many (many) beautiful beaches, almost no stop lights, and little traffic. We had a wonderful lunch at Windows on the Water in Montague, http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g499319-d710689-Reviews-Windows_On_The_Water_Cafe-Montague_Prince_Edward_Island.html, and spent an hour learning about life on PEI looking through the Orwell Corner’s historical site, http://www.gov.pe.ca/peimhf/index.php3?number=1015696.

At The Historical Site in Orwell

Lunch in Montague

This evening we had another great fish dinner at an Italian restaurant, Sirenella, http://www.sirenella.ca/. Our final event of the evening was to get our last ice cream from Cows and then watch the PEI light show telling the history of the island and the beginnings of the country of Canada; the confederation movement started in PEI, http://www.walkandseacharlottetown.com/pei-sound-and-light-show/.

Tomorrow we head over to Halifax stopping to have a maple syrup and pancake brunch at the Sugar Moon Farm.

Interestingly when we asked people in Cape Breton about PEI, they almost always said that it was pretty nice but they rarely visited there. One person described PEI as a potato field surrounded by water which we thought pretty funny. We found when we landed in PEI, the reverse was equally true. There they all said that Cape Breton was very pretty, but rarely went.

For one thing it is free to drive over the very short causeway to Cape Breton. It costs between $40 and $60 to take the ferry, or drive over the bridge, from PEI back to the mainland one-way. It is free to enter PEI. So once there, the trick is to figure out to sneak out and avoid the toll. 

Returning to our day, we started with a nice breakfast at the Inn at Glenyer in Mabou and headed to the PEI Ferry. We dropped by some craft places but found nothing of great interest. The ferry takes about 75 minutes to cross over to PEI.

While on the ferry we saw our first Canadian Mounted Police which do have a striking uniform. For some reason recalling the moose warnings from the Cabot Trail, I kept thinking of Rockie and Bullwinkle, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rocky_and_Bullwinkle_Show.

Once off the ferry, we stopped for a quick lunch at Tim Horton’s which is a chain of quick food restaurants all over Canada. For those who haven’t gone it is a combination of a stripped down subway and a Dunkin Donuts. For example I ordered a chicken salad combination which came with a sandwich, a drink, and a donut. While we both felt this was an important check the box moment in our trip, like our visit to Lik-A-Chik, not to be repeated.

After checking in at our B&B in Charlottetown, Heritage House, located in the center of PEI, we spent most of the afternoon wandering around, and seeing all of, downtown Charlottetown.

I was very shocked to see a remnant of my life from some 20 years ago, a Microage Computer Store.

I was one of the early Microage Computer Store franchises during one of my first entrepreneurial crashes and burns. When your franchisor enters chapter 11 two months after you open your store, it ends up being what we might call today ‘a teachable moment’.

We had dinner at one of the very trendy PEI restaurants, Lot 30, http://www.lot30restaurant.ca/index.php . We both had fish, it was truly wonderful.

Afterwards we attended a show we wandered by during our walk, a local production about the life of a local radio announcer Loman McAulay who broadcast on station CFCY, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFCY-FM, for 44-years. Among other local artists he discovered were Anne Murray and Gene MacLellan. The latter wrote Snowbird and Put Your Hand In the Hand.

It was what one might call ‘very local’. The singers were pleasant and it gave us a sense of the love the residents have for their home institutions.

Tomorrow we explore the north-central part of PEI, the home of the home of Anne of Green Gables, followed tomorrow evening by our seeing the musical Anne of Green Gables. So the question for tomorrow is, is there any other place where a fictional character is so visited outside of a theme park? To avoid the truly cynical answer, perhaps I will limit it to fictional characters written during the last few hundred years.

Breakfast at the Louisbourg Harbour Inn was great, if you are in Louisbourg, recommend going there.

You drive over to near Fortress Louisbourg and park at the visitor’s office. There you catch a bus which takes you to the Fortress.

Fortress Louisbourg was constructed originally by the French in the 1700′s to defend their interests in North America. Unfortunately for them, they built their guns facing the water where they expected to be attacked; not from the land which was in large part marshy. The English in the 1740′s waited until the ground was frozen and dragged their cannon over the frozen marshes to within range of the fort. They put in place a blockade in the front and had troops thus surrounding the fort, after a few month siege the fort surrended.

At the end of that particular war, by treaty the fort was returned to the French; the English were given land elsewhere. Amazingly the French repeated the same mistake in 1758. This time after the English captured the Fortress they demolished it so there would not be a third time.

In the 1930′s Canada turned the Fortress into a National Landmark and reconstructed a number of buildings, turning it into sort of a mini-Williamsburg with many locals dressed in period clothes; telling the story of the Fortress and details of the lives of the people who lived there in the 1740′s.

BTW, for those who wonder if the French finally learned their lesson, might read about the Maginot Line.

We were there for almost six hours, it was really great. We learned a lot about the Cod trade. The some 1000 fishermen who lived near the Fortress, almost 2000 people lived inside, caught on average 30 million pounds of fish per year. Cod was worth 3-5 times as much as the more well known fur trade to France.

We ate at a restaurant inside the Fortress which served period food. You put you napkin, really a cloth bib, around your neck. If I used such a thing at home I would clearly have less need to take ties to a dry cleaners. You are given a single spoon to use for all your food.

Next was driving over to where the first Lighthouse was built in Canada, across the water from Fortress Louisbourg, near the current town. A very beautiful area overlooking the water.

Afterwards we wandered around Sydney, where there was a Busker festival, and swung through Florence to have dinner at Lik-A-Chick where we had chicken (duh); really a bit too fried food’ish, but I really wanted to eat at a place called Lik-A-Chick. Once again Ellen, this time to a bit of regret, agreed.

We ended up at Baddeck at the Water’s Edge Inn, our second b&b of the trip. Tomorrow is the Cabot Trail, lots of crafts shops, ending up at Ingonish and the Lantern Hill & Hollow.

Many of our friends were surprised to find out that there are direct flights from Washington to Halifax, or at least there is one, a United flight. So off we went Saturday, July 31^st, early in the morning.

Last year we went to China to see a total Solar Ellipse. The relevance of this is because of that one flight I was able to qualify as a Premier flyer on United for the first time in years. United’s new policy is that whenever there are first class seats available then they fill them with their frequent flyers who are already on board. So Ellen and I were upgraded to first class. On the other hand, on a regional jet, which this was, the main advantage of first class was that you got served coffee or juice before you took off.

Our first day in Nova Scotia was mostly a driving day. Nova Scotia is pretty long, pointed from Southwest to Northeast. PEI is toward the north end and is itself due north of Nova Scotia. Unless you are going to spend more time than we had, you have to pick whether you will go to the south of Nova Scotia, Bay of Fundy and that kind of thing, and then PEI, or the north of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and then PEI. We picked the Cape Breton alternative.

We went from Halifax which is sort of in the middle of Nova Scotia and headed north and then to the east, ending up at Louisbourg on the Atlantic Ocean. Louisbourg is the home of the former Fort Louisbourg which we were told was a pretty interesting place to see, more on that later on.

On the way we stopped in Antigonish, a small town about two hours from Halifax. There we ate at the Tall and Small Cafe. The Tall and Small is the kind of place you would expect to find near a University. Really young, informally dressed wait staff; being pretty disorganized. Lots of strange sandwiches, not often you can get a peanut butter and banana sandwich in a restaurant; things with sprouts.

And happily for Ellen the book store she wanted to visit in Antigonish was next door. Ellen makes independent book stores wherever we visit happy.

The drive was otherwise pretty uneventful. Beautiful scenery, especially when we drove by the large internal lake in Nova Scotia, Bras D’or. We saw two hitchhikers, something I haven’t seen in many years in the States – in Canada, one refers to the US as ‘the States’.

In Louisbourg, we are staying at the Louisbourg Harbour Inn, one of the bed & breakfasts we will visit while on the trip. A beautiful old sea captain’s house. We overlook the harbour (well duh) in what was the old master bedroom – I try and get nice rooms, remember that Disneyworld goal.

Dinner was fish at the Lobster Kettle restaurant, a short walk away and also on the harbour. Sadly the less said about that the better. Overcooked Halibut, a steamed, sliced baked potato which annoyed Ellen, and slow service – like the old borsht belt joke, the food was terrible and the portions were small. We did finish up by walking around the very small downtown and buying an ice cream cup which helped a little. Ice Cream was advertised everywhere we drove, so the advertising worked.

The one big decision that Ellen agreed to dealt with Cape Breton. When you visit the north part of Nova Scotia you end up driving the Cabot Trail which is described almost everywhere as one of the ten most beautiful drives in the world. Now, for those of you who are height unhappy, I should point out that ‘beautiful drive’ almost always is a synonym for driving in mountains and looking out over beautiful vistas.

You can drive the Cabot Trail clockwise in which case you are on the inside lane on the generally two-lane road hugging the moutains, admittedly small mountains. Or you can drive the Cabot Trail counterclockwise in which case you are on the outside lane which often does not have things like a shoulder next to the beautiful mountain side. Not having realized all this, I had set us up to drive counterclockwise.

When I read all of the literature that talked about making sure you had strong brakes and how most people prefer the clockwise drive, I suggested to Ellen that we reverse the plan even though that would add perhaps an hour to the overall trip. She kindly agreed.

Two other quick things.

First, while we do not travel that much internationally, the last few years we have done a bit. Each time we come through customs on the other side is inevitably a country one needs to get used to with customs that are different – one of the reasons one does this kind of travel.

Today it felt strange for almost the opposite reason. We went through customs and almost nothing was dramatically different other than the currency and the metric thing. The relationship with Canada is so natural we really do take this extraordinary tie too much for granted.

Second, the owner of the Louisbourg B&B it turned out plays senior hockey where Sidney Crosby played hockey as a kid but is a big Washington Capitals fan. He was very disappointed, as of course was I, when the Caps were eliminated in the first round. We both are looking forward to this year’s season.

Firefly was a TV show created by Joss Whedon, who among other things was the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which lasted less than one season. It was shown on the Fox Network who evidently weren’t exactly clear on what to do with a quirky, character driven, space western whose principals ran around in a spaceship, used six-shooters, rustled cattle, and whenever feeling strong emotions would rattle off a phrase or two in Chinese. 

The end result is that only 11 of the 14 filmed episodes were ever shown on TV and the show was canceled. 

I never saw Firefly on TV during that season. 

However, Firefly fanatics, often called Browncoats from the color of the jacket that the Captain in the show wore as did other rebels during the losing war against the Alliance (don’t ask, rent the DVD’s), agitated and lobbied enough that Universal decided to authorize a film version of the show named after the name of the spaceship, Serenity. 

I saw Serenity in a movie theater and loved it. Rented the TV DVD’s and loved the TV show even more. 

Since then I have demonstrated the results of that passion in a number of different ways. I hosted a Firefly lunch once a month for the three years I was a the US Department of Transportation as the CIO for a small but equally addicted group where we watch one of the Firefly TV episodes, repeating the set when we finished the 14 filmed episodes. Getting dispensation from the DOT General Counsel that we were conducting Team Building exercises, we showed the two-hour movie, Serenity, twice, at the end of each cycle. 

I attend and this year worked at the annual showing of Serenity at the Arlington Cinema and Draft House which also servers as a fund raiser for Equality Now, a favorite charity of Joss Whedon. 

And here I am finishing up my Yangtze River cruise in China, getting ready for the eclipse we hope to see in Wuhan. The other day at lunch, I sat with members of a family from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. 

“Edmonton”, I noted, is the home of Nathan Fillion, the Captain in the TV show Firefly. Amazingly the response from the otherwise seemingly normal fellow members of the group, was the beginnings of a detailed discussion of which episode they liked best and which individual scenes illustrated the qualities of each of the characters from the show. They too had not seen the show on TV, were loaned the DVD set from a friend, watched the shows and joined me in wondering how such a great TV show could have been canceled. 

The family was even familiar with the Edmonton comedy group, Three Dead Trolls in a Baggy, a completely unexpected bonus. A conversation I rarely have been able to have anywhere and certainly unanticipated on the Yangtze River in the middle of China.