So a week late but wanted to do a post about our whirlwind tour of Atlantic Canada.  This time we visited 3 cities, Fredericton, St. John & Halifax and we had a great time.  First the environment is much nicer than Southern Ontario, rolling hills, forests and large parks available within a short driving distance, if you like nature they have lots of it out East.  Unfortunately for us it rained 4 of the 6 days we were there, at times quite heavily but we made the best of it.

We first drove to Fredericton to spend for one night then to Halifax where we walked around the city and saw some of the local sights.

Brandon loves the water and that’s pretty much the theme around the vacation, water and activities that we did on it lol…

The next day we went whale watching with Mariner Cruises, it’s on Brier Island and that was quite a drive but so worth it.  Had to take two ferries but the hump back whales put on a show and they swam right next to the boat!

There were a total of 4 hump backs that we saw and at times they got so close that I couldn’t even take photos anymore.  Due to the salty air, I didn’t switch lenses so 100mm was the shortest focal length I had.

Here’s some slow motion 4K video I took with the Canon EOS R5, this was going on for a good 5 minutes before I started to take the video too!  What amazing creatures and I’d totally do it again, the staff was friendly, boat clean and it was just an overall great experience.

The next morning we visited Peggy’s Cove, it’s iconic and it was scheduled to rain hard starting around 12 so we made the best of it.

I took these two drone videos (I checked with the tourist office first) and it gives you a sense of scale and how large the rocks are.

It was pretty darn windy but the DJI Mini 2 handled the wind like a champ and had no problems staying steady.  I actually came back at night when it wasn’t raining but there’s absolutely no lighting and with it damp I didn’t get much farther than the board walk.

The next day it rained most of the day letting up in the late afternoon and we walked the boardwalk at downtown Halifax.

The air just smells fresher, yeah I’m leading up to something. 😉

Maggie wanted to learn how to surf so we took the opportunity for them to learn.  I was tempted to go too but frankly I want to take photos of the family more so while they were having their fun I did my thing. 🙂

It’s definitely harder than it looks, Maggie is more athletic than I am and she had trouble standing up.  Brandon was lazy and just laid on the board but he had fun so that’s all that mattered.

We loved it so much that we started to look at houses in the area.  We drove by a few in Halifax, drove back to Fredericton to look at some and to St. John as well.  Real estate out there isn’t crazy like it is here in Toronto and doing some quick math, we think that if we sold just our principle residence in Toronto we could buy a very nice house out there (paid off), buy another investment property in Ontario to generate income, buy a vacation property in Florida and both of us could retire immediately!  Man that’s mighty tempting, not something we’ll do on a whim but yeah it got us thinking about our options.

The median income out there is quite low, even if I didn’t retire I could make Toronto money while living in a cheaper place so that’s also very enticing…  We’ll think about it long and hard, I told Maggie we should rent an Airbnb for a month, work from there and see how it is.  May do that next summer but all in all we must have seen like 12-15 houses so yes we’re seriously considering it.

We ended the trip with Brandon going for a swim in one of the local rivers, that kid loves the water and yeah why not let him do one last swim right…

It was a great trip, we had so much fun and are seriously considering moving out there and exploring our financial options.  When I was younger, I never thought I’d be able to retire but now here I am with an option to retire if I wanted it bad enough.  I guess we’ll see what the future brings. 🙂