#3: [21-May-17]

#2: [03-Oct-08] (incomplete)

05-Aug-2001 -- Our weekend didn't go entirely according to plan.

Our original plan for the weekend had us flying from Boston to Halifax and then driving around Nova Scotia and New Brunswick attempting at least three confluences.

We left work on Friday, August 3rd and headed to Logan airport for our 5:55 pm flight. The flight ended up being delayed for close to two hours and when we arrived in Halifax, we found that our rental car was no longer available. It was a long weekend in Canada and there wasn't another rental car to be found. We even tried unsuccessfully to rent a moving van.

We took a bus downtown to our hotel and began planning a weekend in the city of Halifax.

We spent Saturday wandering around Halifax. It was enjoyable, just not what we had originally planned. Throughout our day in Halifax, we frequently telephoned rental car agencies or stopped at those we passed along the way, but to no avail.

At 7:00 am on Sunday morning, we finally located a rental car agency with an available car. We had to be back at the airport in Halifax at 6:00 pm for our 7:00 pm return flight to Boston, so we had to decide what one confluence we should attempt. We decided to head north to New Brunswick and attempt 46°N 65°W.

We grabbed a cab to the airport and picked up the rental car shortly after 8:00 am. It was about a two and a half hour drive north from Halifax to Moncton, New Brunswick and then another half hour or so to the southwest until we were in the vicinity of the confluence just south of the town of Salisbury. The maps I had printed from MapQuest appeared to show a small road heading west from Route 895 to within a few hundred metres of the confluence. At first, we could find no such road. The area was a mixture of residential, rural and wooded areas. We were roughly 2 km east of the confluence; parked on the 895 at eleven o'clock in the morning.

Earlier, we had driven across a stream a few hundred metres to the north and decided to try to follow it west toward the confluence (see photo #6). We were only able to follow the shore of the stream for a couple hundred metres before the shoreline turned into a steep overgrown embankment. We attempted to crash our way through the brush, but were quickly stopped by dense forest and swarms of mosquitoes. We headed back to the car and looked again for the road that was supposed to lead us closer to the confluence.

On closer inspection, what we found was not a road, but a narrow trail leading west from Route 895 beside someone's house. Hanging over the trail, almost obscuring it, was a line of laundry (see photo #5). We knocked on the door of the house, but were greeted by only a loudly barking dog. We decided to venture down the trail into the woods beyond.

We had hoped the trail would lead us at least a few hundred metres of the roughly 2 km we had to travel. In fact it led us west for at least a kilometre and a half. At that point, the trail split. One path headed southwest while the other path headed northwest. We first tried the southwest path. It led us to a point roughly 300 metres directly south of the confluence. We then doubled back and tried the other path. It led us to a point roughly 300 metres east of the confluence. Out of easier options, we headed into the dense forest toward our final goal.

It took at least a half hour to fight our way through the thick undergrowth and thicker mosquitoes until we finally reached the confluence. The confluence point itself looked remarkably similar to the acres and acres of dense largely coniferous forest that surrounded us on all sides.

Since the view in all directions was essentially the same, we've included only the views south and north from the confluence point (photos #1 and #2, respectively). With the dense cover overhead, it was difficult to get GPS readings as we moved around in the exact vicinity of the confluence. The third photo shows the closest reading the GPS was able to receive. The fourth photo shows Elda and me standing at the confluence (the camera is facing north). As noted earlier, the fifth photo shows the trail leading west from Route 895 toward the confluence (with a line of clothes hanging out to dry across it). The sixth photo shows the stream just north of the trail (the camera is facing west toward the confluence). This stream may provide an alternate route to the confluence. It travels west and may take you to a point a few hundred metres north of it.

After taking our photos, we again fought our way through the trees and mosquitoes to get back to the trail. When we got to the car, we realized that we may have succeeded in our fight to reach the confluence, but we had clearly lost the battle with the mosquitoes. Elda, especially, seems to be a magnet for them and swells up noticeably when bitten. She counted at least 27 bites on her right arm alone. More noticeable were the two bites on her right eyelid and the one on the left side of her chin. She looked a little like Sylvester Stallone in the final scene of Rocky.

We had gotten back to the car around 2:45 pm. This gave us just enough time to stop for a quick late lunch and then drive back to the Halifax airport for our 7:00 pm flight. Of course, in keeping with the general theme of the weekend, our 7:00 pm flight didn't take off until 9:30.