Gadabout - the final chapter

I'm on a mission. Time is running out and I have sightseeing to do, rain or no rain. I tuck my camera under my wafer-thin top and in commando fashion, I disembark from the truck, ducking for rain-cover intermittently along the quaint shop fronts of seaside villages. First mission is Mahone Bay and the scarecrow festival.  I duck and dive through front porches and yards, shooting photos with swiftness and stealth. I snap all manner of scarecrows, some drooping in the rain, and others with neat plastic bags tied over their scarecrow heads. I see the Royal Family, wrapped in plastic, and I see myself  - weaving and positioning to get the shot, I realize the absurdity. I feel like a CSI snapping the workings of a serial killer, their victims wrapped in plastic and duct tape.  Richard drives my rescue vehicle, maintaining a slow and steady pace, angling for the best (dry) rescue point. I remember I have another 'mission', and I bolt into a the pewter shop, go straight to the counter, dreadlocks dripping, camera wedged under the armpit of my top, and to the sales assistants suprise I say, 'Have you got any cat earrings'? I must have looked like a seaweed creature dragged in by a fishing boat. 'Ah, pardon me?' 'I need cat earrings'. I think she was used to non- Aussie accented 'browsers'. I do in fact, leave with some earrings, and when Richard scoops me back into the vehicle I am sopping  wet, cold and he says 'You're one crazy Aussie'. 

We continue along the coast, defence force style, picking recruits Ethan and Vina  for the extended tour. Vina provides an excellent bargain shopping adventurer and we leave the factory outlet stores with more plastic bags in the truck tray than the bag-wearing scarecrows of Mahone Bay. 

Peggy's cove is our final must-see destination, and as we near the white and red lighthouse, the clouds and rain magically clear and the icy blue Atlantic rolls and smashes against the rocks. I am Australian, I have seen plenty of coastlines before, but there is something hauntingly beautiful about this place. This patch of the Atlantic holds the bodies of all the passengers and crew of Swiss air flight 111 which crashed in 1998, and many of those from the Titanic. But historical significance aside, I am mesmerised by the swelling ocean-crashing waves, which pound and withdraw from the flat, rocky headland. We watch the sun sparkle on the sea until an ominous fog descends and the ocean water disappears, the rain resuming again.  

The fog follows us home, and full double rainbows frame the road ahead as we say goodbye to Nova Scotia,  the garbage bag covered shopping purchases flapping in the wind. When we pull into a truckstop for 'supper' , starving, bedraggled, and exhausted, dogs in tow, and a truck load full of 'stuff', we look like we have hailed from a trailer park ourselves..