For our last night in Nova Scotia (for now), we stayed in a private campground close to the ferry terminal instead of the HHost we were planning on; they never responded. That has been one of the downsides of Harvest Hosts; the hosts can be amazing and get back to you in minutes, hours, or days - or not at all. The campground was probably the cleanest and best maintained that I have ever stayed at, so no complaints about the shift in plans.
We had to be at the ferry terminal around 10:00 am for the 12:15 pm sailing so we did a lot of sitting around today. We had to leave Pete in the van for the day which was probably more stressful on Mandy than Pete, but he was a champ and slept through the day without too much fuss. That said, when we were off the ferry that boy had his 'business' to do and boy, did he. The loading process was fairly routine but what was different than BC Ferries is that they had anchor points in the car decks to secure your vehicle if needed. Motorbikes and some freight trailers were secured this way. We were on deck 3, and took the elevator to deck 7, and there were two more levels above.
The day dragged (sailing docked at 6:15) but walking the decks was a bit of a desperate exercise. At one point while looking out the front windows from the coffee area, the view would be all waves or all sky as things were pretty choppy. Walking around had us walking like we had a few too many drinks so sitting still was the best bet. Mandy focused on her knitting; she started a sweater when we left Calgary and I will likely be wearing it by the end of the weekend.
We got off the ferry on schedule, and filled up the van and gave Pete his desperately needed rest stop, then we went to the tourist info for maps and the local to-do things. We hadn't made any plans for accommodations as we had read that there were a number of good places to pull off the road and park; we stopped at a pull out called Wreckhouse that apparently is the windiest place in Canada, so much so that they post the wind speeds on a road sign (36 kmh when we were by). There were five other rigs parked up, so things looked pretty safe to us.
The wind noise masks the highway noise, so we will take it as a win. We had a walk on a paved trail, crossed under the TC Highway and were watching waves crashing on the shore and sea lines playing in the waves. In our minds, the holiday has officially started, oh boy!