The fishing villages appear out of the gray like something from a half-remembered dream at a specific point on the road between Halifax and Lunenburg when the Atlantic fog hasn’t completely lifted. The boats have already departed. The smell of salt, engine oil, and a hint of life permeates the docks. It’s not a picture-perfect coast. It’s the real thing, which is better than that.
American tourists don’t give the Canadian Maritimes—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island—nearly the attention they merit. The majority of people who travel north in search of seafood make a stop in Portland, Maine, call it a day, and then take a plane home. which is acceptable. Maine is a good place. However, the Maritimes are quite different, and it’s difficult to understand why more Americans haven’t realized this yet.
There are more than 13,300 kilometers of coastline in Nova Scotia alone. That figure sounds almost fictitious. However, it begins to feel real as you drive through it, passing one fishing village after another, all of them seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are perched atop scenery that travel magazines would gladly pay to photograph. The ideal place to start is Halifax, which has a waterfront boardwalk, a pub on every corner, and eateries serious enough to silence a food critic while managing to feel both authentically urban and almost suspiciously laid-back.
A whole itinerary should be changed to accommodate the 5 Fishermen on Argyle Street. Although the lobster is the obvious order—Nova Scotia’s lobster is well-known and reliable—the scallops also merit consideration. Barely cooked, local, and sweet in a way that flash-frozen seafood is never. People seem to eat this way because it’s Tuesday rather than because it’s fashionable.
Photographers have been pursuing the 102-year-old lighthouse at Peggy’s Cove, which is located on a granite headland, since before Instagram. The Lighthouse Route south winds past this location from Halifax. It’s best to arrive close to sunrise because the crowds haven’t arrived yet, the light is doing amazing things, and sometimes you’ll strike up a conversation with someone who has been fishing those waters for forty years and has weather predictions that are probably more accurate than any forecast app.
Traveling north eventually brings you to Cape Breton Island’s Cabot Trail, a section of road that often causes people to reevaluate their decisions in life. At angles that seem implausible from an architectural perspective, the highlands descend to the water. Offshore, whales emerge without much fanfare. There may not be a single drive in North America that combines the sounds of the ocean, mountains, and weird Celtic music coming from local pubs.
Then there’s New Brunswick and the Hopewell Rocks. The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world, and standing at the base of those sea stacks at low tide, knowing that the water will be fifty feet above your head in six hours, creates a very particular kind of humility. The coastline of Prince Edward Island, on the other hand, is dotted with lobster shacks that function according to what appears to be an honor system of freshness. The island is quieter, redder, and more pastoral than the others.
Driving the entire loop, which takes ten days or possibly fourteen if time permits, is not difficult. Every stop has seafood that makes you eat more slowly than usual, the roads are good, and the people are genuinely friendly in a way that feels unrehearsed. Americans should drive north and continue past the border if they want a road trip that offers something genuine rather than something staged.
