Tag: luminescent algae

Lunenberg food tour

After a leisurely morning, we drove to Lunenburg for a walking food tour. We met our tour group at the Bluenose Lodge, where we had seafood chowder.

Next, we walked down the street to the Tin Roof Distillery, where we sampled some 15 different flavors of whiskey.

While we were there, our guide had us try some traditional Lunenburg foods: Solomon Gundy (pickled herring), Lunenburg pudding (a really dense sausage), sauerkraut, and rum cake.

Over the next hour and a half, we tasted bacon and cheddar scones with cranberry juice, chicken salad with cranberries, haddock bites, lobster rolls and fresh potato crisps.

While we ate, our guide told us about the history of Lunenburg and some of its notable citizens. I learned that Lunenberg is best known for fishing, ship building, and rum running. Its colorful buildings make it one of the prettiest cities in Canada.

The bump-out on the front of the building is called “a Lunenburg bump.” It was a way for homeowners to showcase their wealth. The house in the photo below also has one.
The lobster rolls
Our tour group. (From left: Greg, a freelance journalist from England, a couple from Seattle, and our tour guide.)

Lobster and Luminescence kayak tour

Later that day, we headed to Blue Rocks, a small fishing village, for our Lobster and Luminescence kayak tour. The weather was threatening to storm.

The village of Blue Rocks.
Just as we were climbing into the kayaks, a rainbow appeared on the horizon.
The group, heading out. Once again, Greg and I were the oldest folks on the trip.

Usually, Greg and I are extremely prepared for whatever adventure we decide to do. This time, unfortunately, we both forgot to put our water shoes in the car. That would not have been a problem except for the fact that Greg’s shoes were almost too large to handle the foot pedals that controlled the tiller of the kayak. As a result, we were often heading off in the wrong direction.

You can see the rain falling in the distance. We experienced a couple of showers over the course of the trip.

As the sun was setting, we pulled up to a tiny island to enjoy our lobster roll dinner. Along with lobster rolls, we had potato salad and frosted chocolate brownies.

The little girl in the long-sleeved pink shirt talked everyone into playing a guessing game (she didn’t exactly take no for an answer), where she would think of an animal and we would have to ask her questions until we could figure out what the animal was.

Once it was fully dark, we climbed back into our kayaks and headed off for the luminescence part of the tour.

Let me tell you, it is not easy to kayak in the dark! Especially not under a new moon. We brought headlamps with us, but if we had used them, we would not have been able to see the luminescence in the water, not to mention the fact that the mosquitoes swarmed the light.

It became increasingly difficult for me to tell the difference between other kayakers and rocks jutting out of the water.

At times, I didn’t know whether to direct my eyes to the sky, which was filled with stars and the Milky Way, or into the water, where our paddles disturbed bioluminescent algae, causing bright sparkles to swirl through the water. It was magical. If we dipped our hands in the water, we could capture them in our palms.

Once back at the camper, we decided to take our cameras and see if we could get some photos of the night sky. Sadly, my camera refused to work at all, but Greg was able to get this photo of the Milky Way with some of the Perseid meteor showers captured in it. Better yet, we were able to catch one of the meteors shooting across the sky with our own eyes.

There are three meteors in this photo. Can you see them?