On vacation, we all tend to go where everyone else goes. It’s so much easier to find those online reactions for good food and good service. The more people go somewhere, the more they talk about it. The more people will be attracted to that place. It seems to be a natural process for everything.
Yet, here I am, thinking (again) that there must be more than this. What if I go left where everyone wants us to go right?
Sure, I got skunked a few times by doing exactly that. But in a way, the places I was supposed to go to were not that interesting after all. Where people gather to party together, I find myself feeling”away”. Not miserable, but I must be somewhat anti-social. I feel better with one or two people around me, having a nice conversation or something than being in a place where one is supposed to dance, laugh and be merry. Because if you don’t feel like it, you are considered “weird”, to say the least.
Martinique Beach
Nova Scotia is a tourist magnet. I have been here only for a few weeks and already love it. If you talk about Nova Scotia, people answer “Peggy’s Cove”? or “Lunenburg”? Yet there is so much more to see and to experience. Right now, in the end of April, the tourists are not yet here. With this pandemic going on, I doubt they will be here anytime soon. That is just the time where we should support “local” when we are allowed to do so.
Owls Head Harbour
But since “local" business” is not allowed to do anything for now, the experience was quite anti-social 
. No places to get a local coffee, only drive-throughs of a certain type. No place to get a drink, other than with curbside pickup. As if we all have that virus and not know about it. The personal experience is down the drain for now.
Little Harbour, NS
That leaves me with that same experience I was looking for before. Be alone or in good company, walk outside, talk to nobody who doesn’t want to listen, take pictures and record sounds. Since there is nobody around to mess that up, field recording is going well right now. In photography, the saying goes: “If it’s not in the frame, it does not exist!”. That saying does no go well with sound recording, where someone coughing a mile away can still mess up your recording.
Tools of the trade in Little Harbour
A few weekends in a row now, I have gone out to places off the beaten highway. Whenever there is a sign telling me there is a small road going to some small place, I will be on it. The highway is only there to take me from one small road to the next. Backroads are my friends. Well, most of the time, until they start to no longer be paved, full of holes with deep water .
Handy little bridge
And then there are places just off the highway that you zip past without noticing them. This was one of those places. I turned around and went back to discover that there had been some previous activity. A hidden parking spot, probably leveled for a future house. A bridge over a small stream next to a bigger river. The little bridge turned out to be strong enough to carry my weight with ease.
Musquodoboit Rapids
I walked a few hundred meters along the Musquodoboit river, to get the above shot. Rapids in a small river. Upstream, there are plenty of people fishing in some way or another. Fishing is not my strong suit, I prefer to shoot and move on with my catch.
Seats for weary souls
Walking back to the car, there was a small space to rest a weary soul or two. The chairs looked sturdy enough, but my soul was not weary enough to feel the need to try them out.
The rougher side of the province is on the east side toward Cape Breton. I haven’t set foot in Cape Breton just yet so comments will have to wait. This side is rougher in the sense that there are no big hotels, only small motels and plenty of campgrounds, hiking trails and more. Unlike the South Shore that has every comfort on every turn of the road, this side wants you to be one with nature. Both sides will receive my undivided attention in the future.
Until next time…