Day 5- Balmoral Mills & Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia - July 17, 2010

Beautiful day again, very hot, but not overbearing with the cool ocean breeze.
Cooked up ham, eggs, hash browns and fresh rolls with Tatamagouche butter for breakfast. John, Chris and I were going to see the sites. Chris shoffered us in the Crapalier, as he has been back to this area a few times. Our first stop was the Balmoral Grist Mill, which I had heard about from Ruth. Balmoral Mills is just another beautiful part of Nova Scotia.











The admission was $3.60 each, but they gave us the family plan for $7.95. Unfortunately they didn't have enough funding so we couldn't see it under full operation. The girls who were on staff that day knew the Kennedys well and since we pretty much did the self guided tour, they tried to give us our money back, but we told them to use it for a donation to the mill and said next time we come, we expect to see it in full operation:-)

Now we were back to tour the town of Tatamagouche and the Tatamagouche Creamery was the place to start.

The Creamery was in operation from 1925 to 1992 and advertised in the 40's as the best butter in the world. The first thing I noticed when shopping at Foodland Mikes was the Tatamagouche butter and it truly is the best butter in the world!

This door reminded me of the old cheesehouse we would visit near Westport, Ontario. This would be the door to the refrigerated section of the barn or house where they stored the cheese.

The Creamery is a museum about everything, culture, history, fossils, mining, archives and more.



This mining exhibit below caught my eye, as my Dad was a coal miner in Pennsylvania, before he moved to Delaware. The Davy Lamp in the photo, was used to detect methane and other poisious gasses in the mines. I did a report on one, I think it was 5th grade, and took the davy lamp my Aunt Marie had made into a real lamp for her home.

John, below photo, looking from the upstairs of the cremery out onto Tatamagouche Bay.

In my opinion, the biggest attaction of the Creamery was the Anna Swan exhibit. Anna Swan was born and raised in the Tatamagouche area on the North Shore.
She was well known as the "Nova Scotia Giantess" and was employed at P.T. Barnum's American Museum in New York City for several years before touring Europe with a troupe of entertainers. At age 4 she was four feet in height, and by age 6 stood as tall as her average-sized mother.Anna reached a height of 7 feet 11 inches and weighed almost 400 pounds.





Above photo shows the Farmers Market in Creamery Square and the rare grain elevator. These grain elevators were common in the Praires of Canada (Mid-West) and from what I hear it is the only Prairie-style grain elevator left standing east of Manitoba.

Finally what I was looking forward to was visiting the shops of the downtown area of Tatamagouche.



After a recommendation from one of the shop owners, we decided to go to Big Al's Acadian Restuarnt & Lounge for a late lunch. By this time we were sweating from the heat and needed a cold one. The beer was cold, the restaurant was comfortable and the food was ok. There was a room in the back that people kept going in to, and coming out sweating as it wasn't air conditioned. We found in Nova Scotia they have slot machines, but they call them video lottery terminals. Nice name to legalize gambling:-)

Since Big Al's was on Station road, I walked down the road to get some photos of the Train Station Inn & Restaurant. Some of the train cars are actual hotel units you can stay in. I think I would like to stay here sometime. The gift shop was great and very inexpensive.




An enjoyable town that I very much want to visit again! We went back to the cottages, the Kennedy sisters were having a swim in the ocean as they did together years ago and we watched the local fishing boats returning for the evening. We ended the night watching the stars and sitting around the campfire. Brother Chris headed back to the Halifax Airport Hotel in preparation for his flight home to British Columbia the next morning.