The Nova Scotia Loop Story, Part I
On August 17th, 2020, myself and three other geocachers set out to do yet another trip by the “4 Guys in a Car”. We had originally intended to head to Seattle, Vancouver, Alaska, Edmonton, and the Rocky Mountains this year. Due to the pandemic however, we had to change our plans and decided to do a lap around Nova Scotia. Like our 48 state adventure, we had a specific geocaching target in mind. Nova Scotia had become filled with a special type of geocache known as an Adventure Lab geocache. We had around 180 we wanted to get, and they were all over the province.
What you see above is the result of our live tracking map dropping pins as we went around the province. If you’d like a closer look, you can check out this Google Maps link, or go to the actual live map page itself. Just be aware if you load the map from the 4 Guys site, it takes a LONG time to load.
I had never been to a large portion of NS so for me, this was a really nice treat. We opted to do the loop within a five day period. Starting out on Monday and returning home on Friday. Because of the Atlantic Bubble, going to NS was easy and thankfully we had the chance to see a lot. Here was our itinerary:
Day 1: Moncton to Yarmouth
Day 2: Yarmouth to Halifax
Day 3: Halifax to Sydney
Day 4: Sydney to Port Hastings
Day 5: Port Hastings to Moncton
At the onset of this trip, we assumed the trek from Moncton to Yarmouth was going to be the one with the most driving. Based on the map, it seemed clear as day that beyond day 1, we’d be spending more of our time out geocaching than anything else.
We started the trek from Aulac after having some breakfast. A quick stop at the border, we were asked a couple of questions then were waved on through. Expecting our first day to be long, we hit up a handful of geocaches around Amherst and then made our way to Truro.
In the world of regular geocaching, you typically have to find a container, dig out the log sheet, sign it, and then replace the container. With our focus on lab caches, the experience was quite different. These types of geocaches typically have no physical container and only require you to enter a codeword into a mobile app.
As we zipped around Truro, we picked up quite a few before having to make our way to Victoria Park. The caches there were a bit more difficult as we had to do some walking through the park. One look at this park online and you’ll spot the gigantic set of steps that can be found. Yes, we did have to do them, but thankfully it was going down and not up.
The photo shown here was along one trail at the bottom portion of the park. We were quite thankful that after going all the way down, we didn’t have to climb up again.
From Truro we made our west traveling along the northern shore. Since the caches we were looking for fell along the lesser highways, we found ourselves getting the most scenic view of Nova Scotia.
Zipping in and out of places like Maitland, Moose Brook, Burntcoat, and Walton, we really got a good look at the shores. By the time we got towards Windsor and finally back to the regular highway, we had a chance to see a bit more civilization.
I had been to Wolfville many years ago but had no recollection of the town at all. This time through, we spent a little bit of time going around the university trying to pick up caches here and there. But with so much more distance to cover, and so many more caches to snag before we called it a night, we blew through there and made our way down to Annapolis Royal.
The drive to this spot again, took longer than we expected. We had to drive all the way down to Port Royal and then come back. We stopped at Fort Anne to grab another geocache and snap this great photo. Although the sun was going down, and we had been driving all day, it was a great little break.
Yarmouth was still over 90 minutes away and we had more caches to find. Ken called the motel to let them know that we were not going to be there when we had originally expected. Our original intention was to try and be in Yarmouth by 6pm. It was somewhere in the vicinity of 10:30ish, maybe 10:45 before we pulled up and checked in. A not-so-much quick drive-thru McDonald’s later, we stuffed our mouths and crashed for the night.
The first day was long. Even though it hasn’t been all that long since we did that first day, much of it is a blur. Countless fields, beaches, bodies of water, churches, and graveyards all littered that entire day’s worth of geocaching. When I finally did get some sleep, I was anxious to see what the second day would bring.