This is a public service announcement to all Canadian
taxpayers: Your government has been stealing from you.
You pay the equivalent of over $4.50 a gallon for gasoline,
much of it taxes, yet you have the highway infrastructure of a third world
country. Either your government is full of waste, fraud, and abuse (more than
even the US government), or the Trans-Canada Highway (which, as far as I can
tell is not yet complete) is being built across the most hostile terrain ever
encountered by road makers. I’m skeptical about the latter, since they manage
to make roads out of ice every year. So boreal forest can’t be that tough to
build on.
Yet there I was, paying $63 for a tank of gas when I’d never
before paid more than $50, and yet every local road I took until mercifully
limping onto the big 104 was as unpaved as unpaved could be. I’d call them dirt
roads, but dirt would have been a welcome alternative to the ridiculousness I
encountered.
After once again failing to see a sunrise, despite camping
yards from the Bay of Fundy facing east...
I first decided to take a short detour
to see what I had missed last night at Cape d’Or (since there had been no
sunset either). As I had expected, like any headland requiring a lighthouse,
the road to Cape d’Or involved a steep windy
climb to a point several hundred feet above the undulating bay. However, I
didn’t expect that this well-marked scenic route would wind through the forest
by way of a rocky gravel path, barely wide enough for a single car. But the
road was relatively short and the car managed relatively well, and the view at
the end was relatively good, so I didn’t mind this too much. I did have my
worries about whether the road would have been passable in any form of
precipitation, no matter how light.
From there, it was off to Cape Chignecto
Provincial Park.
Note that it’s a provincial park. For those of you in the US, think of
the nearest state park to you. Now picture its access road. Probably pretty
user-friendly, since the park is probably frequented by families or, at the
very least, tourists with no specialized transportation. Not the case at Cape Chignecto.
The road to the day-use area – the only road – was truly a
disgrace. For tourists to visit a park that’s existed for nearly 20 years and
features some of the most spectacular landscapes in this half of Nova Scotia, they must
navigate a 20-mile field of orange boulders where any speeds over 40km/hr kick
up so many stones that one runs a real risk of damaging the sides of their
vehicle. Often, one is required to drive on the left side of the road because
the only passable route is to follow the ruts made by previous tires. Even
then, it’s still often necessary to swerve into the rocks to avoid some of the
larger obstacles.
This is how Nova
Scotia has chosen to welcome its tourists (who make
up 1 of only 2 industries keeping the province from complete destitution.
Fishing is the other). This is how Nova
Scotia has chosen to show itself off to the rest of
the world. This is how Nova Scotia
has chosen to prioritize the spending of its tax revenue. I’ve tried to think
of roads in the US that are
of similarly poor quality and, with the exception of the Monument Valley
loop, there are none that I could think of. But there are several reasons why Nova Scotia’s situation
is more unacceptable.
Monument
Valley is in a desert in
one of the poorest parts of the country. If the Navajo in the area had the
resources to pave the road, they likely wouldn’t be able to maintain it through
the extreme seasonal fluctuations. That’s assuming they’d even want to intrude
on a holy site by building up a road with outside materials. Monument Valley
is also a tribal park on tribal land and, unlike Cape Chignecto,
does not have the financial support of a powerful sovereign nation.
Furthermore, the Monument
Valley scenic loop is
just that – a scenic loop. It’s a road designed only for those who want a
close-up view of the desert landscape. It has no destination and travel on it
is, by definition, never necessary. The road from Advocate Harbour
to Eatonville is a thoroughfare – the only passage from one side of this
peninsula to the other. Any alternate routes would take hours and would likely
also involve rough unpaved roads.
In the end, when I finally made it to the Eatonville day-use
area of the park this morning, it was shrouded in fog and appeared to be
closed. At this point I decided that Nova
Scotia was dead to me. Of my last 4 destinations in
the province over my last 2 days there, I hadn’t managed to reach any of them
as I had planned (I only eventually made it to 1 – Cape
d’Or). The weather had been depressing and infrastructure nonexistent. I hadn’t
even managed to find myself any seafood. The few scattered buildings advertising
lobster were all seemingly empty and looked more like repurposed single-family
homes. Maybe if they had had lines of cars waiting outside I would have
considered trying one out, but I certainly wasn’t about to go into an empty
sketchy-looking building in a foreign country and ask for the type of food most
likely to make me sick.
Once I hit the Trans-Canada Highway (oddly, there didn’t
seem to be any construction westbound – like they didn’t want to impede your
ability to get the hell out of there), it was a straight shot into New
Brunswick, where Copina managed to get me lost in search of a post office (but
at least kept me on paved roads, which New Brunswick is much better with). By
the time MSNBC turned from straight news to opinion programming, I found myself
gladly waiting in traffic for nearly a half hour next to this friendly sign:
Once over the border I quickly changed my time zone back to
Eastern, reactivated my phone, and returned Copina to standard units. From
there, it was only a few hours to my final destination, a place with by far the
most badass name in the Northeast – Katahdin.
Less than an hour off of I-95, the tallest peak in Maine,
rising in prominence over 4,000 feet from the valley below and with a jagged
summit well above treeline, was too good to pass by. After all, when could I
expect to be so close by again? It’s not like I’ll be returning to Nova Scotia any time
soon.
So, thanks to my little yellow friend in Google Maps, I had
found a spot just south of the mountain that promised a spectacular view
without leaving the road. But even before I got to my spot, the views of this
towering yet isolated massif were pretty outstanding.
When I finally reached my destination, I decided to hang
around for the last hour of daylight to see if anything developed as the sun
set. Since I was facing north, I knew I wouldn’t get a true sunset, but after
days of disappointments in Canada,
I figured I had nothing to lose. So I finished the last of my cold cuts while
listening to the end of The Client.
Here’s what I saw over that hour:
After that, it was 5 hours down 95 before I hit 495 and
familiar territory. After a week that must have been exhausting for a 12-pound
poodle, Gordo slept the entire way home.
The final word on Nova Scotia
is that, with the exception of the west side of Cape
Breton Island, Peggy’s
Cove, and the Skyline Trail, the province is largely devoid of anything
interesting to do or see. While everyone in Canada is friendly, I found the
Nova Scotians to be less welcoming than New Brunswickers or Ontarians. There is
some nice scenery but most of it is either inaccessible or unviewable due to
summer fog. I’m glad I can say I’ve been there, but it certainly won’t find its
way onto a list of potential road trips any time in the near future. Places
like Acadia and the Blue Ridge Parkway are much more
deserving of a second chance.
Until next time.
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