Across the Country to the Maritimes: Day 29 - Annapolis Valley with Andrée and René

Note to our readers: We have a contributing writer for today's post... My sister Andrée. We are presently sitting at Tim Horton's in Wolfville, on a 7:00 AM date to be able to publish yesterday and today's post.

As discussed the night before, we all actually got up at 8:00 AM, ready to make our plan for the day.

Up on time and ready to go... almost

We had coffee and enjoyed our toasted soldiers' bread, purchased at Louisbourg a few days before. It's supposed to last for months, so we were quite sure it wasn't gone bad yet... Everything always tastes so much better outside. Great breakfast and fun chatting for a while before heading out.

Is it 12:45 already??? Oops!…maybe it's time to finalize that plan. So we then got ready, packed our picnic and left by 1:30 or a little later.

Is it already 12:45????

We headed out in René and Andrée's new Corolla to explore the amazing terrain and history in the Annapolis Valley.

"Grand-Pré was founded in about 1680 by Pierre Mellanson an Acadian settler who traveled east from Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons's original settlement at Port-Royal (see Annapolis Royal and theHabitation). "Grand Pré" translates to "Great Meadow". Pierre, an Acadian of French Huguenot and English extraction, had arrived in Port Royal with Sir Thomas Temple in the 1650s when Acadia was under English control. The fertility of the soils and wealth of other resources in the area had been known to the French since the early part of the century when Samuel de Champlain, de Mont's cartographer, had surveyed the region. The settlers quickly employed their dyke building technology to the vast salt marshes; effectively reclaiming several thousand acres of productive farm land. The farms and the population grew quickly, making Grand Pré the principal settlement in Acadia. Settlements spread from Grand Pre around the Minas Basin, collectively becoming know as Les Mines or Minas after the copper deposits surveyed by De Monts at the entrance to the Basin. By the mid-1680s the population was sufficient to support a church and the parish of Saint-Charles de Mine was formed."