Nova Scotia 2.0

I returned to Nova Scotia in late June of 2018 to meet up with some paddling friends at Cranberry Campground near New Glasgow. One friend and his wife camp there frequently as they live close by, but the other was from Newfoundland, so it was special to see him again and catch up on his life and doings. I stayed a couple of nights there. The second night some friends from home parked their motorhome at Cranberry as well, so we felt like we owned the place!

The following day I headed south, passing Halifax and going down the eastern shore. I stopped at Graves Island near Chester for lunch and would like to camp there some day as it was quite nice. Instead this trip I headed on south to finally turn westward inland to Keji National Park where I had made reservations. I got fooled by the sign indicating a nearby gas station. It never appeared and I arrived at Keji on fumes! I was to discover that signage in Nova Scotia is not that useful and gas stations can be disguised as ice cream stands, so one must be careful!

Keji National Park turned out to be a delightful place with lots of trails, walkways, a nice beach or three and so on. I was there to attend the Mi’kmak solstice festivities which turned out to be interesting. I met a couple of people there, Janice and her friend Kim. Both are friends of the park and Janice and her husband own a Trillium camper much like Big Trill.

Keji has some geocaches, so I went off looking for some of them and found two. I also rolled my oarboard down to the water and went rowing. It was a bit windy, but I enjoyed myself. The showers were hot and clean, so I biked over for a hot one a couple of times during my four day stay.

After my four days were up, It was time to head out, so I steered a course for a gas station in Annapolis Royal and then headed up the Annapolis valley which turned out to be lovely. More about that later...

Running Down East

I finally decided it was time to part with my beloved little Go-Camp teardrop camper and luckily a friend from Nova Scotia was interested in acquiring it. She has some great ideas for updating it and is the kind of person who will utilize it to the max, so I was happy to run down to Nova Scotia and deliver it. One of the sweet spots I stopped at along the way was this little fishing community in the Fundy shore. The tide was out and the boats were high and dry.

Another nice stop on the New Brunswick Fundy shore is New River campground. It wasn’t open yet, being early in the season and the signs all said ‘Closed’, but the hiking trails were still there and I took advantage of the nice day to take a little walk. I wasn’t the only one in the closed park! 

The trails leads to several beaches as one heads out to the point and this was the view of one of them. There are several geocaches along the trails and I grabbed one on the return to the car. I didn’t go all the way out on this visit as time didn't really allow, but it’s well worth doing when there is time.

It’s always fun to pull in beside the big boys at a truck stop. I’m sure they get a kick out of seeing us little ‘pretenders’ as much as I do!

Bye, bye little camper! It was tons of fun...

Wine Bar!

The furnace on the 4500 sits above the wheel well on the curb side of the camper. I never managed to get it to light up let alone heat anything, so I decided to remove it and use the space for additional storage. My idea was to put in a drawer which would also be a wine cellar. To accomplish this I removed all the screws, both inside and out that held the furnace in place and disconnected the propane lead, which I capped, sealing it off. The furnace then easily pulled into the cabin and I removed it entirely.

A bit of measuring gave me the dimensions of the wine drawer and I began by building the frame which would hold the drawer in place. This was attached to the old furnace opening walls at the front and to the wheel well at the rear. 

I then made the two-level drawer to fit the frame, installed the slides so they matched up with their counterparts on the frame walls and slid in the new drawer! The holes are for the wine bottles at the front and other storage space is in the rear. Not shown is a separator so items in the rear don't roll forward and drop through the holes. Both the separator and the panel with the holes can be removed, making the space usable for a variety of things besides wine bottles.

New Orleans

Although not particularly private, the camp sites at Bayou Segnette State Park were spacious, clean and full service. We arrived in late afternoon, rolled onto our site not too far from the washrooms and free laundry - yes, free laundry - and settled in for the week. New Orleans lay just a short $1 ferry ride across the mighty Mississippi. We were anxious to explore!

View of a street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. 

Many intersections in the French Quarter featured street musicians.

As we were camped at the State Park on the West Bank of the Mississippi, we had to cross over by ferry every day to visit the city. parking cost us $5 for the day and the ferry which ran each half hour cost another $2, half that for seniors like us.

One pretty sight apart from the busy waterfront was this tall ship from the Netherlands. She was sailed by a few young crew as far as we could see, all very friendly and able to speak English.

This was also the end of the road for my traveling companion. After an early morning drop off at the airport I was alone again and began to make plans for heading back eastward and northward in the coming days. Next stop, Georgia!

Hit and Run Repairs

While waiting for the light to change in Naples, Florida, a young lady who was mostly likely texting and not paying attention, smashed into the rear of my camper. Fortunately for her, my spare tire absorbed much of the impact and she suffered very little damage to her car other than some scratches and maybe a broken headlight lens. Instead of pulling over to the curb as I suggested we do to exchange insurance information, she took advantage once I was back in my car and left the scene of her crime! 

While attempted to pull over, another driver chose to ignore my damaged situation and passing on my right, clipped the right rear of the camper distroying the tail light and breaking the fiberglass on the rear curbside quarter. He at least stopped so we could exchange information! We then spent a couple of hours taping up the damage and fashioning a makeshift tail light to replace the damaged one.

Once home, I began repairs in ernest. I took the camper to a welding shop where the old bent rear frame member was removed and a new piece welded in place. The spare tire mount was also straightened and attached to the bumper. The next job was removing the improvised tail light as well as its streetside mate and ordering some new LED replacements. While the clearance light was working, it had lost its lens cover, so I acquired a new one for there as well. Next I removed everything from the locker and began pushing the fiberglass back to its original shape as best as I could. Someone doing a similar repair online gave me the idea to use small wooden strips bolted to each side of the cracks to bring them into place and stabilize them during the repair and this idea worked extremely well. Once the panel was stable in place, I sanded the inside and applied a layer of fiberglass resin containing glass fibres in the mix. This I did several times to strengthen the cracked areas and make them solid.

On the outside, I filled the larger cracks with the same fiber filled resin as well as the old holes from the tail lights. The small cracks I filled with PC-11, an epoxy filler. This I did several times, sanding everything down each time to bring back the original shape of the rear quarter. The final step was to to use Bondo paste to fill in the remaining scratches and other blemishes, making for a smooth final finish, ready to paint.

Finally satisfied that it was as good as it was going to get, I lightly sanded the whole lower section of the camper all the way around and then rolled on two coats of paint. The last step was to install all the lights. This proved to be interesting as the modern wiring colours don't match exactly the colours Trillium used in their manufacturing. However, eventually everything sorted itself out and began working properly.

The finished repair looks much like the camper prior to the accident. The only changes that are obvious are the new paint colours on the lower part of the camper, the new and slightly smaller, but much brighter tail lights and a very slight colour difference in the beige section below the red belly stripe.

Backtracking to New Orleans

Our time in Beaux Bridge was coming to an end as we had a reservation at the state park across the river from New Orleans. However, we headed one last time into Lafayette to take in the musical lunch in the park. A great modern zydeco band was playing and a ladies group was selling boxed lunches. What could be better than that!

In the afternoon we headed over to the Acadian Center near the airport to take in the musicians jam session. It was a great chance to meet some musicians, dance to some tunes and generally have a great afternoon. The traditional houses and other buildings on the site were well worth the visit. I even enjoyed towing the ferry across the water!

Then it was onward, southward with a brief stop at the Longfellow-Evangeline Musuem. While the story of Evangeline is exactly that, a fictional story, it does harken back to real events making the museum a worthwhile visit. The site and buildings is actually more Creole than Acadian, but nonetheless all very interesting and well worth the visit.

From there is back on the strangely rollicking roads of Louisiana towards our next campground. What is it with those roads? They were simply awful and even dangerous while towing anything large like an RV. I was more than a bit happy to arrive in one piece at our next camping spot where we planned to stay for the next five days or so exploring the French Quarter and nearby neighbourhood of New Orleans.

Paddling on Lake Martin

Just a few miles south of Breaux Bridge is Lake Martin where we discovered one can rent various sorts of kayaks or even take tour boat rides. We drove from the campground and soon had ourselves a double sit-on-top kayak to paddle about on.

 

Much of the lake's shoreline is a cypress swamp with what looks like drowned trees, but in fact this is their habitat along with lots of other things. The latter include the occasional alligator, but much more frequently we saw birds and fish. The water quality was questionable as it seemed full of green algae to the point of a serious bloom. I'm wondering if agricultural runoff is a problem here or whether it's natural having so much algae...

 

In the middle of the lake, there were several hunting blinds. It wasn't hunting season, but the blinds apparently are left up all year and are quite elaborate. The hunter's can drive their boats right inside the blind and then get out on an attached shooting platform. All of this is covered with vegetation which at this time of the year had gone brown and will likely need to be replaced before the next hunting season begins.

So a nice little adventure, especially for my partner who had not had much paddling experience in gator infested waters!