Road Trip - Fall 2012

We spent a three-day weekend in Halifax, most of it at Hal-Con, a great fan-run science fiction convention. Our friend René was there as a guest, signing autographs to raise money for charity, and we helped him with that. We also found time to eat at several nice restaurants, explore a couple of the city's parks, and stroll along the waterfront.

On Monday morning, October 29, Mike and I left Nova Scotia and turned south, heading into Maine. As we drove, we heard more and more alarming updates about Hurricane Sandy, which was expected to make landfall that evening on the U.S. East Coast. Fortunately for us, we were more than 400 miles north of the storm...though we agreed that we had never imagined that we would find ourselves in a situation where we would spend a day purposefully and knowingly driving toward a hurricane! For most of the day, the weather was gray and rainy, but nothing unusual. During the final hour before we reached our hotel (in York, Maine), we started to encounter harder rain and strong wind, similar to what we often get in Midwestern summer thunderstorms. But we got to our hotel safely and found that the building was fine, with working heat and electricity; all they'd lost was their Internet connection (which stayed down the whole time we were there).

Halifax Public Gardens	Mike with Dalek at Hal-Con	At René's autograph table
View from waterfront to Citadel Hill	The "Mar" in Halifax harbor	One of our favorite finds: The Choco Café!

We spent Tuesday visiting with our friend Leslie, wandering from her home in Rollinsford, New Hampshire up the Maine coast to Ogunquit and Wells. Parts of some area towns had lost power due to high winds and fallen tree branches, and the storm surge from the hurricane was obvious along the shore, but as visitors just passing through we didn't encounter any real problems. On Wednesday we continued with our planned route, and had lunch with two of our nephews in Boston before continuing on to Batavia, New York for the night. The next morning, we took a half-day side trip to Niagra Falls. We've been there before, but the theme of this vacation was, "Since we're in the neighborhood, we might as well...." so we couldn't resist going to take a look.

Heavy surf on Maine coast	Grounds of Ogunquit Museum of American Art	We liked this sculpture
Leslie and Mike	American Falls, Niagra, NY...	...impressive even on a gray day

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