MS Bike Tour Preview

This past weekend I participated in my very first MS Bike Tour and it was amazing!!

I have lots of pictures and videos to share with you but they will have to wait until tomorrow.

Until then here is a sneak peak of some of the colourful people I hung out with on the tour:

New Specs

It's been about 3.5 years since my last new pair of glasses, and for something that I wear every day I was starting to get a little tired with my one selection.

I went with thick black frames, yes, it's a hipster move. But I like them:

I also got a pair of prescription sunglasses, my first ever, which I'm really excited about. No more fussing with contacts if I want to protect my eyes - hooray!

Visit to Deer Lake

**click the photo on the left for more photos**

Last week I spent a few days visiting my grandmother and uncle in Deer Lake, the weather was lovely and I came home very well fed.

I took a stroll around town and found an excellent chip truck...well chip, fish, wings and poutine? The Strawberry Festival was taking place on the weekend so I wandered down to where the festivities were taking place to check it out.

My uncle has one fine little veggie garden growing in the backyard, we actually ate some of the greens in a salad for dinner one evening and they were delicious! Next year lettuce and spinach might be on our to grow list. My grandmother has stuck to growing flowers, and they are as beautiful as ever this year.

I spent quite a bit of time on Friday morning at the Deer Lake Library. It really doesn't look like much from the outside, but it's bright and cozy on the inside. On Thursday we went to Corner Brook, and while the second picture has a snippet of a parking lot in it, there are some lovely low mountains beyond it:

While I've eaten (and blogged) about fish and brewis before I took the time to learn how to make it and took detailed notes! From left to right: onions, cooked fat back (scrunchins), uncooked fat back, nan stirring up the onions, cooked potatoes, the finished product. And I know, it doesn't look like much but it's SOOOO tasty!

An Excellent Weekend

**click the picture on the left for lots more pictures of camping and Pictou**

This past weekend flew by: we had visitors (Rick and Nick) from Friday to Saturday, an 80's themed birthday party on Friday night, a romp around Pictou on Saturday afternoon and camping on Saturday night. Sunday we even went back to the beach!

Here we are at the 80's birthday party - Greg went with a moustache and I went with a Molly Ringwald look....which is shockingly similar to what I would wear on any given day (minus the necklace) I also had on a jean skirt and chuck taylors.

Saturday morning we were up and at the Farmer's Market just as it was opening. I've never seen so many carrots in one place at one time! Greg had to water the flowers at the Library as well, Nick helped by posing with him:

Saturday afternoon, without a moustache, we went to Pictou to explore and grab a bite to eat. We went to The Stone Soup Cafe which was DELICIOUS! I had a lobster club sandwich and beef and vegetable soup - oh and a very pink drink with rum from Nova Scotia's Ironworks Distillery:

Exploring around Pictou was interesting, we spotted Nanny C's which we didn't stop in for lunch but I admire their modified Coke sign. We missed the Pictou Lobster Festival by a few weeks but there were fading lobsters on the sidewalks to remind us. And the ship is the Hector, apparently the first boat to the area full of about 200 Scots (which is crazy is you see how not big the boat is):

Yup, the lobster sidewalk again...whoopsie! This excellent sticker was spotted on a monster camper and was begging to be photographed. The last picture is of the lobster hatchery next to the light house, the had these four different stages of lobster as they develop. I must say until they get bigger the water really swirls these little guys and gals around:

We headed to Caribou Provincial Park for our camping adventure. Once we settled in we headed to the beach for some interesting dark skies - there was a bit of rain but it was still really, really warm:

Back at the campsite we were joined by more friends and got supper underway, lots of meat, salads and corn!

This lovely little girl hung out with us as well, looking adorable and acting like a puppy which included regularly rolling in the dirt and looking more spotted than black:

PEI For Canada Day

**click the picture to see many, many more pictures**

Greg and I took the ferry across to PEI last weekend to take in the Canada Day festivities and visit friends!

Before we got on the ferry we checked out the terminal which included lobster traps! There were also arcade games (which we played) and a portable library crate where people are invited just to take the books with them - forever! Greg was pretty happy about it:

The ferry ride to PEI was lovely, we both enjoyed coffee and read (and I didn't even get motion sick!). At one end of the boat there were a duo of musicians who were quite entertaining:

There were two used book stores side by side on Queen St. in Charlottetown, one (The Bookman) was much more organized and user friendly than the other one (who's name escapes me) but the other store DID have this great book Field Guide to Cows:

There was a lot of eating, and GREAT eating during the few days we were in PEI. We spend some time on Saturday morning at the Charlottetown Market where I had a DELICIOUS salmon bagel (with lemon, dill, capers and diced onion). On Sunday we went to an awesome coffee shop in downtown Charlottetown where we had a very yummy macaroon:

Here is a mish mash of photos, we went to Pets Smart on Saturday as Angela and Dave (the lovely friends we stayed with) wanted to get something for their cat. In the process we found HILARIOUS cat and dog outfits which Angela and Greg posed for oh so well. You should also notice the super cheesy "mussel shirt" and Greg hanging out in a hammock:

Again, there was a lot of eating and drinking. We stopped by the Gahan House, a micro brewery in PEI, and I had a delicious sampler. Another place we went to had their drink menu on an iPad - pretty fancy. They also had a seafood 'soup' which is something I haven't been able to eat since 2007 given that whole lactose intolerant thing so it was pretty much the most amazing thing EVER. Oh and we also went to an olive oil tasting spot where I had some interesting tasting oils:

The main reason we went to PEI was for the Charlottetown Summerfest that was happening downtown. Sadly not many other people were interested in this festival and the attendance was ridiculously low. The first picture here was pretty much the crowd for the second band (of 4) for the day. There were a few people behind us and about 20 more in the beer tent area but really this duo (who were really entertaining) played to an audience of about 50. The band...or rather guy is Michael Bernard Fitzgerald, who made the most of the small audience, talking to and sometimes taunting individuals in the 'crowd'.

After MBF played Mardeen took the stage and the crowd grew perhaps by about 20 people. Still pretty tiny. They played a great set as per usual and as soon as they cleared the stage a bunch of keen Hey Rosetta fans took their places at the front of the stage. It was like a magnet pulled them close. The time between sets the crowd still hardly grew, it wasn't until about 5 minutes before Hey Rosetta took the stage did it really feel like we were at a concert and people were reasonably close to each other:

At the time I thought these were two separate churches (in Charlottetown) but now after looking at them I think they are the same place. Regardless this is a beautiful church:

On the way back to Nova Scotia (again we took the ferry) we had some time between when we arrived at the terminal and when we had to board the boat. So we headed over to a field to play some frisbee and I took some snaps along the way of the fishing paraphernalia and the sandy beach:

We had a lovely weekend and are really keen to bike to PEI for our next visit.