Sydney to Dammeron Valley

Our missionary service in Sydney Branch is coming to an end.  It's hard to believe 6 months have gone by since we started.  We had so many wonderful experiences with members and friends, and getting to know Cape Breton, its natural beauties, and unique history.  We're sad to leave our friends, but we are needed at home.  We make one last round of visits to say goodbye.

Sister Nelene and Sister Johnson share a tender moment.  Nelene is one of the faithful members, and has had a very unique life in local media (radio, newspaper).  She is also a creative artist and made a special sketch just for us:

We just love this drawing she did of us.  Its context shows some of the things we did after hurricane Fiona.  I don't know about the "spy" moniker.  She things I am one, though.

We couldn't leave Cape Breton without receiving a couple of freshly cooked lobsters from our friend Jim.  He gets these from his First Nation friends, who have an extra season in the fall after they lay eggs and molt to a larger shell.  The white fishermen don't get this extra season, and it creates some friction.

After I shell the lobster, there's not a lot of meat left.  I nibbled some of the claw meat in drawn butter, and the rest made a couple nice lobster rolls.  Sister Johnson is not a lobster fan, which just leaves more for me!

There is a nice Indian restaurant in town, and we take our friend Anjal, a student from India who we met at Church, to dinner at one of last nights in Sydney.  He was able to explain all of the dishes, their ingredients and tastes, and we made very good selections of dishes, and shared so that we'd all get to taste.

It's finally Wednesday, October 26, our moving day.  Our Touareg is loaded to the gills with all our items, and the other treasures that Sister Johnson has found and collected, as well as some gifts from our friends.  The inside if jammed with hanging clothes and tubs, the rear carrier has 6 tubs of 2 sizes, along with my shoes and other misc items.  The top carrier has 2 small tubs (sealed with duct tape), and our roller bags and Sister J's "products" bag.  It's a tight fit, but we get it all in.

This is the GPS road map we'll be following all the way back home.  Note:  the distance we've traveled since we started our mission in April, the road miles to home, and the hours behind the wheel.  We're not taking the absolute shortest route, we have some things we want to do and family to meet along the way, which aren't really big detours.  Our general direction will be south to Sparta, NC, then almost directly west to Dammeron Valley.

We make a last stop to see our dear friends Kenny and Anne, who give us a tray of delicious cookies and breads to nibble on while we drive.  We love them, and they have exciting things coming up in their future.

There's a unique country store on the way to visit our friends who live along the route that we take to drive off of Cape Breton.  It's got some unique items that Sister J can't resist, and we stock up on a few of them.

Anne and George live nearby, and we stop by to say goodbye to them one last time.  George is a surveyor, and has the niftiest GPS I've ever seen.  It you place it in a stationary spot, it will resolve the 3-dimensional location to a spot smaller than it's own size.

We stop by Truro and meet our mission friends Thaine and Terry Olsen, who have driven up from the Halifax area just to meet us, so we don't have to detour down there.  Due to a Mission President's seminar, our regularly scheduled Zone Conference was pushed back 10 days, and we'll miss it.  We had our official Exit Interview with President Harkness via Zoom a couple days prior.  We have some small gifts for the couples in our Zone, as well as the Harkness's, and I task Elder Olsen with distributing them at the Conference on Nov 10.

For dinner on Wednesday we meet up with Elder and Sister Calkins who are serving in Saint John, New Brunswick (not to be confused with St. Johns, Newfoundland).  They picked a nice Mediterranean restaurant with excellent food and service.  They are not in our Zone, and we don't get to see them very often, but they will be great after-mission friends when they return.  Our first night on the road is in Saint Stephen, NB, right across the border from Calais, Maine, where we cross back into the USA the next day.

We've decided to add Temples to our route home, and as Boston is on 2nd night on the road, we hit that Temple on Oct 27.  It is beautifully lit at night.

Day 3 we takes us to the Washington DC area near the Washington Temple, and we enjoy a visit there the next morning.  It has just been extensively remodeled and upgraded, and is exquisite inside, as well as the Temple grounds, which are always impeccably maintained.  It was a bright, sunny, warm fall day.  We've been surrounded by fall colors for more than a month at this time, from Cape Breton to all points south, it's a spectacular time of year.

Saturday night the 29th, we make Sparta, NC to see my sister Ann and her husband David.  They were very kind hosts, we spent 2 nights there, and went to Church with them in the Sparta Branch on Sunday the 30th.

We have been very fortunate with good health during our mission, excepting Sister Johnson's very mild bout with covid.  We have totally avoided the Canadian healthcare system, for which we are very grateful.  However, Sister J didn't waste any time in getting a flu shot and covid booster #2 as soon as we could get to a USA pharmacy.  Here she gets "shot" at the Walgreens in Sparta, NC.

We're making good progress, as we cross the Mississippi River at St. Louis on Oct 31.  We spend that night in Clarksville, TN, then on to Topeka, KS on Nov 1, and then to Denver on Nov 2.  

Wednesday we make it to Denver, CO in good time, and enjoy some time in the beautiful Temple there.  With a good push, and with (hopefully) weather cooperating, we will make 650 miles home to Dammeron Valley on Thursday, 3 Nov.