Hot and Rainy Summer

Once again, the season did not go how I thought it was going to go and I was not able to do some of the things I really wanted to do on my summer fun list but it was still better than in the spring. 

I spent quite a bit of time in the valley to visit with family and the summer weather was either heat wave or rain it seemed. With the relaxing of more of the restrictions, I was able to see my best friend a couple of times as she has been in New Brunswick and couldn't easily come home for a while. She and her family invited me camping one weekend which was good. My cousin who moved to Nova Scotia from Ontario spent a lot of time with me which I'm very thankful for. Not only did she go on a weekend getaway for my birthday but we went mini golfing and she put together a couple of bookcases. 

Below is my completed list for summer

Summer 2021 (Jun 14-Sep 19)
✔ Have a bonfire & s'mores

Nature themed scavenger hunt
✔ Birthday weekend trip
Watch the sunrise
✔ Check out a new beach - mom and I visited Martinique Beach which had even more surfers than I've ever seen at Lawrencetown
Sleep under the stars
✔ Visit a National Historic Site 
Take a bike ride
✔ Play miniature golf - visited Mastadon Ridge, more than just the mini golf course there but was nice to be outside 
Ice cream with cousins
✔ Do an in-person 5k race
Hike 3 new trails
✔ Eat some Digby scallops
✔ See what's new in the city - walked around downtown Halifax for a bit with my cousin, lots of new art and buildings
OnTree Fun & Adventure Park
✔ Go to the movies 
Travel the south shore again
✔ Visit a waterfall
✔ Have a yard sale - wanted to have this last May but the pandemic messed that up, nice to get rid of some stuff we didn't need anymore 
Make a summer photo album

First In-Person Race in 2 Years

In August, my mom and I did another weekend road trip because I had an in-person 5k race to do. I checked a few things off my summer fun list on this trip which is why I put them on the list. The race was the Annapolis Royal 5K which is as the name suggests in Annapolis Royal, a small town on the southwestern part of the province. It's about a 2 hour drive from Dartmouth so since the race was early Sunday morning, we made a weekend out of it. 

On the Saturday (August 21), we drove up in the morning and went a bit past Annapolis to a town called Digby. We had been to that end of the province before but only drove through it to get from point A and B so I wanted to actually tour the town. The first time we went a few years ago, we went for a walk on the Balancing Rock Trail which is on Long Island and is over three hours away from Dartmouth. To get to Long Island you have to take a short ferry ride from the main land and there is a restaurant before you get on the ferry. You can also get on a whale watching tour from there. We decided to take the extra half hour drive this trip to East Ferry and eat at the restaurant because they have a very delicious scallop roll (pictured) that my mom had the first time we visited and wanted to go again. It is seared buttered scallops on a grilled hot dog bun. I ended up having the haddock burger which had a lot of haddock on it that I actually had to use a knife and fork to eat it.

Before we went to East Ferry, we had visited a little village called Bear River and checked out the multiple art galleries that are there. It was nice visiting a new place that we had never been to before and it was a little bit on a whim as we hadn't planned to. We did some exploring in Digby, checked out a couple of lighthouses and had a nice walk on the boardwalk downtown. Supper was at a place called The Crow's Nest which was okay, I'm not sure what the hype is about it but I was able to check off a summer bucket list item in having Digby scallops. We spent the night at a B&B in Granville Ferry named the Seafaring Maiden Bed and Breakfast as it was pretty close to Annapolis Royal. 

Sunday morning I did the 5k race. Was a really nice walk and it took me longer than I wanted to but I crossed the finish line. I liked it so much that I would like to do it next year again. I got out okay but before I hit the 1km mark I had fallen to the very back of the pack. Between the 3 and 4km marks, the course was an out and back and one lady saw me all alone and asked if she could walk with me to finish the race which was nice. My official time was 1 hour 3 minutes and 8 seconds. We finished the weekend by visiting the Port Royal National Historic Site.