A Gorgeous Victoria Day Week-end

The beginning of our week was pretty usual except that we went out for lunch on Tuesday (our 47th wedding anniversary) and on Thursday we inspected a missionary apartment and then went out to lunch with the two Elders from the apartment.  One of them is Ken and Ruth Hudson's grandson (Jim's son) from Raymond.  The Elder whose place he took was Elder Moore from Magrath.  Lots of southern Alberta missionaries in the Halifax,Nova Scotia mission (Elder Redd from Cardston, Elder Proux from Lethbridge, Elder Hill from Medicine Hat).

In striking contrast to last May 24th week-end which was wet, windy and cold,  we had beautiful weather this year.

Saturday we were at the temple until later than usual because of a busload of PEI people, but later Nathan's family came to our house for a weiner roast.  Sunday was great as well, but we didn't go anywhere.

Today we set out about 9:30 a.m. to "The Valley" (Annapolis Valley) to look at the apple trees in bloom.  We followed Nathan's van.  An older member of Nathan's ward has wanted to show Nathan the valley so he was the guide.  The apple orchards weren't what I had envisioned (or Nathan either) so we passed them all waiting to stop and take pictures of the big apple trees totally covered in blossoms, but we found out that all the orchards had small trees with not many branches and so we never got any pictures.

We drove to Aylesford to visit the zoo.  There were tons of people at the zoo.  While there we ran into the Pillings who are leaving this summer to live in Raymond.

I saw a zonkey for the first time.  It is a cross between a donkey and a zebra.  It is the animal on the right in  the following picture.  It looks like a donkey but has a striped back leg.

The two things that impressed me were the tortoises and the panther.  I couldn't get a picture of the tortoises because they moved so fast.  I was surprised.  For some reason I didn't take a picture of the panther.

The boys had a great day, although I did hear the word boring from one of the older ones.

We left the zoo and drove back to New Minas and had dinner and then left the valley and drove towards Chester.  There we visited the Ross Family Farm Museum.  They had all kinds of old style farming equipment, a wood working shop, a cooper shop etc. but the one that most interested me was the blacksmith shop.  My great great grandfather who came to Pictou County, Nova Scotia in 1831  was a blacksmith and my great grandfather followed the same trade.  It was surprising to hear that oxen were still brought in to the blacksmith shop for shoes.  There had been one that day that had come from Windsor, but we got there after it had left.  I would have liked to see it.

We drove back by way of Halifax and arrived home about 7:30 p.m.