Continued from here...

Cutting across Hants County and along the Minas Basin, I took turn after turn to keep up into rural Nova Scotia instead of heading down to Halifax. This was a new part of Nova Scotia for me, and the village of Walton was home to a lighthouse I hadn't yet seen.

Pulling on to a gravel road, there were houses and cabins with lights on and eventually the road had a chain across it. Trying to check this lighthouse out at 10 at night, I clearly hadn't done enough research to know what was going on here.

To add insult to injury, I successfully made it to the second lighthouse I targeted amidst the strong winds of Burntcoat Head, but approaching the lighthouse, an informational board told me it's a replica and therefore I don't count it.

Good thing I stayed focused and didn't stop for dinner back in Windsor, haha.

Leaving behind the small village of Burntcoat, darkness had now completely fallen. The drive was partially illuminated by Canada Day fireworks, as I cruised along the Bay of Fundy until the eventual bridge heading towards Truro.

It's in Truro that I was actually happy I held out for dinner, as it was time to eat glorious chili cheese burritos in the parking lot of the Truro Mall. When I posted about this trip on facebook, multiple old friends knew that Taco Bell was a priority.

Thankfully it hadn't been much more than 487 days since I'd had Taco Bell, since I was in Ontario right before Covid. The Taco Bell gap was something like 492 days, which obviously is still a Herculean challenge.

Recently I'd been reading this blog where it seems like the author makes decent money, but still does things like sleep in a tent in winter instead of paying $10 for a room in the Balkans. Or the other time where he slept in his car a whole bunch of times, in order to save on motels and get earlier starts on Colorado & Wyoming mountain peaks.

There was no reason I couldn't take inspiration to tighten up my own belt. Therefore I didn't detour or waste money on a motel, but instead pulled into the New Glasgow Wal-Mart parking lot and reclined my driver's seat as rain obscured the windshield.

A few hours of lousy sleep made for drowsy struggles along the road, so I was happy to finally pull into the McDonald's in Port Hawkesbury for some quick breakfast. Following that, I muscled through the 45 minute drive to the two L'Ardoise Range Lighthouses, located just east of St. Peter's.

(Thankfully in recent years I've discovered that podcasts are the key to keeping me awake and alert on long and/or tired drives. Brendan Kelly & Matt Marti's They Come To America podcast was a godsend here, and I actually listened to so much of it on this trip that I got that feeling of leaving an old friend as I was leaving Nova Scotia.)

Anyway, back to L'Ardoise where the front lighthouse was easy enough, but I knew that the rear lighthouse was on private property. Heading up a driveway until I met a farm gate, I hoped someone would pop out of the nearby house and I could plead with them to let me take a picture. Standing out in the light rain for a few minutes to give anyone a chance to come out, unfortunately no one showed and I was unable to count the Lower l'Ardoise Harbour Range Rear Lighthouse.

This was especially frustrating because the lighthouse is clearly endangered. Also, this was a lot of driving and a lot of work to only get one new Nova Scotian lighthouse, lol.

Only a few kilometers up the road, this boarded-up general store in Grand River stopped me right in my tracks.

I lamented how these places are all disappearing, thinking back to the tiny gas bar I stopped at on my Nova Scotia cycling trip where the owner came out of the attached living room. One thing I covet about Nova Scotia is how they still have some backroad places that hearken back to yesteryear.

StreetView shows this store closed and with fading paint all the way back in 2012.

Standing here today, I noticed there was an awfully shiny metal roof on the store portion and a fresh traditional shingle roof on the warehouse portion.

It's unclear when this general store closed, but it was the epicenter of Grand River and many people remember the dock with faux lighthouse out back, hand-cranked gas pumps out front, and the smell of the goods inside.

It was purchased by a family of artists in 2010, who then put out a call on facebook to hear community input as to what they'd like to see happen with the structure. The family planned to renovate it, with the metal roof coming in 2016, but a tumble while installing another part of the roof put things on hold in 2020.

The family was successful in renovating the building, but I sadly only know this fact because the general store is now for sale at $249,000. With how many Ontarioans came to Nova Scotia after remote working became more acceptable, I'm curious why this place hasn't been snatched up.

From Grand River, I couldn't score another serving of Taco Bell via Sydney since it was only 9am and I needed to return the rental car. It was now pouring rain, so I rolled along the North Sydney streets looking for somewhere covered to take my bike apart.

This little gazebo down by the shore was just big enough that only my butt got a little wet when I bent over to remove the pegs and pedals.

Dropping off my bike bag at Marine Atlantic, the crew there had a surprise for me.

"Haven't you seen your email? Due to sea conditions, your sailing has been cancelled and you've been rescheduled."

This was another one of those spots where people assume you're a millionaire and can afford email on your cell phone.

So now I had to figure out what to do with a full day in North Sydney in the pouring rain. First things first, I was dead tired and I had my sleeping mat and sleeping bag, so a nap in the ferry terminal was in order.

Except that with the length of my body, as I laid on the chairs a security guard immediately appeared and told me I wasn't allowed to lay down there because that meant touching two separate Covid-separated chairs. Looking around and seeing only one other person in the terminal, I picked up my stuff and moved it all outside where the ferry terminal had a bench under an overhang, allowing me to sleep out of the rain.

The security guard started walking over. "You shouldn't sleep out here, it's rainy and you'll catch cold." I stared at him incredulously, tired enough that I didn't really care about the risk of a common cold.

Moving inside, he finally didn't have a problem with me sleeping on the floor.

Collapsing into slumber, the rain hadn't totally let up by the time I awakened. I was hungry though and sick of the ferry terminal, so I sized up whether my laptop I brought to avoid the ferry's lack of proper television, as well as my one change of clothes, could survive a rainy walk down North Sydney's harbourside road.

I covered my laptop with my rain jacket and rushed out into light rain, also covering myself with some garbage bags I soon bought at the Canadian Tire. I then scurried along to get to a new Korean BBQ & Grill restaurant that looked promising.

Lo and behold, it was closed even though Google and Facebook both said it was open. Facing the slim culinary options of North Sydney, I walked a good kilometer down the road to Bette's Homestyle Cooking, but they were cash only and take-out only because of COVID, and it would take me forever to get back somewhere to eat this food outside under an overhang.

It's around here that I had an epiphany with regards to how much my life would be easier if the damn ferry just landed in Sydney instead of stupid North Sydney. Better dining options, more car rental options, cheap accommodations, no trying to solve the conundrum of how to have beers at the hockey game and get to North Sydney, no need to rely on the infrequent and insufficient Cape Breton bus system. Hoo Nelly, how can I make this happen?

In the end, I got some spaghetti from the mediocre pizzeria I've always thought about trying, but immediately left with my bagged order because there were ten old timers in there gawking at me. My mood soon improved though, as the bartender at Duly's said I was free to eat outside food in their establishment.

I opened up some BRN work and shed my wet outer layers. My laptop and one dry outfit had survived.

I eventually stepped back out into the night, simply because it was North Sydney and you have to take advantage of being able to see anything new when you find yourself outside Western Newfoundland.

Eventually it was time to run out the last few hours back at Dooly's and minimize my time at the ferry terminal.

Going into this, I wasn't sure about the ferry and car rental cost and whether it was worth it for a 24-hour escape, but my God was I refreshed and revitalized after escaping the island after 487 days.

So worth it.