Off to see The General

Today we took a boat from Shelburne out to the lighthouse, and to McNutts Island, where The General lives.

The General is a very large sheep, who lives on the island with around 140 other sheep. It wasn't that we'd gone mad after a couple of days in the seclusion of rural Nova Scotia. It's that we had been reading stirring tales of The General over the last few months, and I was so excited to see an ovine commander, ordering his army of sheep around.

Sadly, we didn't have time to land on the island and wander around in search of The General, as we had to be back in Halifax by evening time, so after sailing past the island and seeing a couple of lighthouses, but no General, we went back to the dock.

While we were out on the water we saw several salmon farming cages. The salmon were so excited to have visitors that they kept jumping out of the water, and I defy anyone who has never before seen a fourteen pound salmon in full flight not to be impressed. We also got to see a cormorant, and a loonie or two, flapping around, but it was a cool day and so there weren't many animals hanging out.

Afterwards, we got back in the car and headed back towards Halifax. I think the Charger has a turbocharged engine, or some other thing that makes it go very very fast, about four seconds after you've stomped as hard as you can on the accelerator pedal. There's a loud vrrrrrooom and then the world goes backwards, but only in a very straight line; because it's also about as wide as two normal sized cars, it doesn't do this so great on bendy roads, but never mind. We drove down the freeway for a few million miles, then stopped off somewhere in Queens County to visit the photographic museum (filled with hilariously ginormous camera equipment from the nineteenth century), and then pootled back to Halifax at a great speed, until I got bored and we trundled on the back roads, which are bendy but at least prevent you from falling asleep on the way home.

Back in Halifax, we went out to dinner, where my wife ordered fish with chips and mashed potato, and the jokers in the kitchen sent out two plates: one with fish and chips, and one with fish and mashed potato, which she made fairly short work of. No wonder there's a lot of plus-sized people in this country, if the poor things are supplied with extra meals at random intervals.

After dinner, we had another dinner, and then we came back to the house to pack. This could possibly be the most stressful part of getting married, as various lovely people have performed the fairly evil prank of giving us presents for our wedding, which might not seem so bad until you remember we have a finite amount of space in our bags which is around one cubic metre less than the volume of clothes we brought with us.

Somebody is going to be spending a lot of time at the post office tomorrow...