Nova Scotia: Fish, fog and ferries

Ten minutes into our ferry ride and we're enshrouded in fog. Not some light summer mist, but a soup so thick we can barely see in front of us.

My wife and I are on the high-speed car ferry from Bar Harbor, Maine, the first leg of a one-week trip to Nova Scotia thrown together at the last minute. The plan is simple: leave the U.S. and urban living in the dust.

The 2 1/2-hour crossing is on the Cat, a clean, spacious, well-run line where if the wonders of the North Atlantic are insufficient, there are movies, hot food, a duty-free shop and banks of slot machines. I prefer to sit still and be left alone. Let others feed the slots and throw down beers. If I can make it from launch to docking while keeping queasiness at bay, I consider it a successful journey.

Back home, the weather is scorching, with temperatures across the U.S. in triple digits Fahrenheit. Aboard the ferry, we're bundled in sweaters and sweatshirts and can't wait to turn on the heat when we get to our car.

Maybe this is a hint of fall, which is not far off. Summer visitors may pack up when the air starts to chill come September and October, but others come here in autumn just to see the blazing foliage.

We begin our visit in Yarmouth, once a great seafaring hub that depends these days on tourist dollars as well as its herring and haddock industry. After clearing customs, we want nothing more than dinner and a hotel before heading the next day to Wolfville, where we have booked a vacation home online. I make a few wrong turns in our rented Impala, and a hotel emerges from the fog. We check in and grab a meal, the first of countless bowls of chowder.

The three-hour drive from Yarmouth to Wolfville hugs the Bay of Fundy and is a feast for the eyes - sharp, sparkling waters and green, rolling farmland. We stretch our legs at Mavillette Beach where the tide happens to be low and the hard-packed sand goes on and on. Six hours later, this landscape will be altogether different. The tides, we soon learn, rule much of this part of Nova Scotia.

Up the road is Digby, one of the world's scallop capitals. It's also a prime spot for whale watching, but lunch takes priority. We find a place overlooking the harbour and the scallops arrive sizzling, succulent and reasonably priced.

The nearby town of Annapolis Royal, its streets lined with handsome Victorian homes, is as good a place as any to understand the tug of war in Nova Scotia in the 17th and 18th centuries between the French and British. Stroll by Fort Anne for a panoramic view and plot military strategy over what is billed as the most fought-over piece of land in Canada. Or head to the Historic Gardens and wander through trails of roses and open fields of tall elephant grass, which the Acadians used to thatch cottage roofs.

In Wolfville, population roughly 3500, we had to get with the program: recycling. We thought we were old hands at this, but in Nova Scotia, where some of the toughest recycling laws exist, it's not just newspapers and glass and plastics. It's everything.

Even on the street, garbage cans are divided into four slots. In some homes - like the one we stayed in - corn husks, for example, are tossed into the yard to return to Mother Earth. Food that ordinarily would be disposed of (carrot peelings, fish skin, etc.) is stored in a bin in the freezer and eventually used for compost. At first, this seemed odd, if not disgusting. By the end of the week, it made sense.

Wolfville's main strip is a few blocks long and dominated by Acadia University, a lush, green campus mostly empty during summer. There are top flight restaurants (Acton's, Tempest), a video store (Light & Shadow) that would put every big-city video outlet to shame, a farmer's market on weekends and a university pool that is open to visitors and just might meet the needs of an Olympic swimmer. There is also the Atlantic Theatre Festival, which is making a comeback in a renovated theatre.

Wherever we turned there was countryside to behold. Drive past the strawberry farms and bales of hay toward Blomidon Provincial Park and hike up a mountain trail. Walk in the red flats when the tide is out and let the Fundy mud get under your nails. Watch the shorebirds gather, rest and bulk up for their flight to South America - it's said they double their weight before the three-day nonstop haul.

For those who remember their junior high school English classes, Nova Scotia is the home office for the Longfellow poem Evangeline, the story of a woman left to search for her lover after the British deported the Acadians from these shores in the 18th century. So brush up on the "forest primeval" and the "murmuring pines and hemlocks" at the Grand Pre National Historic Site. And French most certainly is spoken.

An hour away is Halifax. The capital of about 130,000 offers enough in the way of restaurants, clubs, museums and music to satisfy any need for cosmopolitan energy.

This is a city with a revered nautical tradition, and the harbour and Maritime Museum of the Atlantic demand a look. Halifax holds a strong connection to the Titanic, with 150 victims buried there. Five years later, the city was rocked by the Halifax Explosion, a cataclysmic harbour collision that at the time was the largest manmade explosion in history.

Another day took us to the South Shore. Lunenburg has its own ocean heritage, and is also packed with art and photo galleries. Close by are the stately homes of Chester and graceful churches of Mahone Bay.

It's a 45-minute drive to Peggy's Cove, where fierce waters smash into boulders. This is one of the most photographed spots in Canada. Just down the road, above the churning surf, is a granite memorial to the victims and rescue workers of Swiss Air Flight 111. The 1998 crash off Nova Scotia left 229 dead.

In Lunenburg, we stepped into an old Anglican church to escape the sun and into a chamber music rehearsal. When we left, it was raining hard.

"Welcome to Nova Scotia," a church worker said. "Wait 10 minutes and the weather will change again."

And that it did. Fog and sunshine, wind and rain - each trying outdo the other all the way back to the ferry for the ride home.

If you go: