Off to Nova Scotia

2026-07-25
PA, NY, VT, NH, ME

It's time for another road trip. This time we're headed to Nova Scotia. This trip was actually planned for a couple years ago, but due to injury we were not able to take it at that time. So when we were planning this year, we decided to dust it off and try again. No sense letting all that planning go to waste.

The trip is mainly the same and utilizes most of the same hotels and hikes. However, we changed up a few things, such as adding a day in Prince Edward Island (PEI) and a stop at Quoddy Head. We will see how things work out. A plan is usually a list of things that don't happen...

Today was a fairly long drive from home to a hotel just outside Kennebunk, Maine. The hotel was chosen because it's close to the highway; the high price for a Saturday stay was just an annoyance. But you have to stay somewhere on the weekend, and this was about the right distance (9 hrs on google, 10 with stops).

We came up past Albany which ostensibly adds half an hour to the trip, but it makes it a lot more pleasant. We completely avoided New York City and the oddly worse traffic in Connecticut. But even in the wilds of New York, at least 1 in 100 cars wanted to travel at 30+ MPH over the limit and seemed perturbed that the rest of us weren't already traveling at that speed (or better yet parked waiting for them to go by).

But between stretches of interstate, there were country roads where life was more bucolic. For example, the lovely small town of Wilmington VT has a number of inns and an adorable downtown with food and shops. I'd love to spend a couple days there.

We need a few pictures, so here are some shots from when the largest steam locomotive "Big Boy" 4014 came through the area a few weeks back. The plus of seeing it at one of its stops is that I could take pictures when it wasn't moving, but the minus is that I couldn't get much of a clear shot through the crowd.

Driving Distance: 488 miles
Hiking Distance: 0