Bayfield Provincial Park

Nova Scotia has many, many small provincial parks. They are uniformly neat, well-maintained, beautiful and never crowded. Here is one of the tiniest, on the Northumberland Shore east of Antigonish.

I've added the weblink for this park. From there, you can browse all the parks Nova Scotia.

Today was sunny and the schools are nearing the end of the year so there were a lot of school buses heading to the beach. It's wonderful to think that somewhere people still believe kids ought to have fun experiences, outside the school building, as part of their education. 

 

This beach lies deep in a protected cove, so there are no waves to speak of. The water is shallow and warm. This is the first place we've seen children actually in the water in June. Great for small children.

These kids would have to walk out a hundred meters to get in water over their heads.

 

Right around the corner from the park is this small harbor. Again, it's afternoon, so all the lobster boats are in for the day. The building in the center, in the rear, sells fresh lobster right off the boats. Yum.

Tor Bay Provincial Park

One of our favorite places is Tor Bay, the provincial park on the Marine Drive along the Atlantic Coast near Larry's River, where the ocean stretches east to Europe. As you can see, there are wide beaches curving around beautiful inlets. The water is so clear and blue, you'd swear you were on a tropical island. Very inviting.

The inlets are separated by rocky outcroppings, where tide pools abound.

And the marshy spruce woods behind the beach is filled with lichens and these pink flowers (some kind of heath or heather?). The park features a long, meandering board walk through the woods, parallel to the beaches. There are picnic tables and little kiosks, so we sat in the sun and ate lunch.

You can also see how crowded this was on Saturday May 29! We only saw three couples there the entire time and - true to Nova Scotia hospitality - one of them struck up a conversation and soon took our phone number to invite us to dinner in the future.

Shaw Point Park, Isle Madame

Our first post!
Monday was Victoria Day in Canada, a national holiday and the unofficial start of the summer beach/cottage season. So, we traveled to Isle Madame with 3 friends and had a beach picnic.

What we imagined would be an obscure, out-of-the-way shore park turned out to be a highly popular beach retreat for locals.

Homemade pizza with salmon, goat cheese, dill and capers, plus fresh fruit, Gorgonzola cheese, ice tea and coffee. Then, a long walk on the beach, wading in water still in the 50s.

Best of all (for all the kids) was the swimming hole behind the beach, where the river wound its way to the ocean and the water was warm.