Sometime in the 90s (experts disagree on the exact year), we made a trip to Nova Scotia in my red pickup truck. We drove from Florida, up through Kentucky to Columbus, Ohio for a convention. Then we went on through Pennsylvania to New England, where we discovered an enduring love of Vermont, and on to Portland, Maine. From there we caught a ferry that took us to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

Most of these pictures were taken on Cape Breton, an island on the east side of Nova Scotia and home to some of the most beautiful ocean and mountain scenery on the North American continent.

	We drove around the perimeter of Cape Breton in a day. The Cape is very mountainous, much like Acadia National Park in Maine, but bigger. This is the road into Cheticamp, the first real sign of civilization we came to.
	Our truck was brand new then, and we couldn't resist posing it for this picture in front of the beautiful panorama of Cape Breton Highlands National Park.
	This is the harbor in Cheticamp, where we caught a small boat to go whale watching in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
	If you've never been whale watching (I hadn't), it is quite an experience to see and hear these huge animals coming up for air. These were smallish whales that seemed totally unafraid of our small boat. They often surfaced right next to the hull, close enough for us to lean over and touch them.
	From the whale-watching boats, you can see parts of the park that you can't from land. This shot shows a waterfall on shore that is near neither a road nor any hiking trails -- the only way to see it is from water.
	We also saw large whales off of the Cape. They surface so quickly that it's very difficult to get a picture before they dive again, but Linda managed to get a few tail shots.
	Here's Linda sitting against one of the ubiquitous large rocks that line the shore. We had fun looking in the tide pools for little animals that have far more tolerance for cold water than I do.
	More whales that were too slow to evade Linda's lens. These look so small in the picture, but they were easily the largest animals I've been close to in the wild. Everyone on the boat was very quiet between sightings, listening to hear the telltale exhalation when one surfaces.
	After leaving the Cheticamp area and driving a little ways around the island, we stopped for a break at a small fishing village called Dingwall. I was hanging out when I saw a whale surface just off the shore. The black dot on the right in the water is the whale; the dot on the left is a boat.
	Linda took this picture at a city park in the town of Truro, which is on the west coast of Nova Scotia, on the way from the ferry at Yarmouth to New Glasgow. Truro is one of the few places in the world where you can see high tide come in in a wave, as water is forced into the Bay of Fundy and up into a very narrow bay called Minas Basin. We lounged in this park while waiting to see the tide.