Monday, July 6, 2009 – Day 32

Nova Scotia greets you with Highway tolls. As we drove from Moncton to Halifax we were greeted with the traditional provincial welcome sign.

Of course we had to stop for a photograph by the billboard and inland lighthouse that greeted us. The next greeting came an hour or so later when we saw a sign saying, “Highway Toll Ahead”. Yes, the main route to Halifax had a $5.25 (for motorhomes) highway toll. Nova Scotia greets visitors with Highway Tolls. There were no visible alternate roads for us to take so we were kind of stuck. Unfortunately only cash is accepted so we had to raid our kids’ piggy banks to find the change we needed.

The $4 Wrong Turn
The real surprise came an hour or two later when we reached Halifax.

We were looking for a campground and called around before finding one close to the city. We plugged the coordinates into our trusty GPS and it indicated for us to cross the bridge into the city of Halifax. This bridge into Halifax however had another Toll! From a distance I saw 75 cents and so I reluctantly went onwards before a crossing guard motioned me to go to a special lineup. The person at the booth let me know that since I had a large vehicle it would be $2.00 to cross. Once again we had to raid the kid’s piggy banks to cross. That’s when the irritating thing happened, our GPS gave us a turnaround route before telling us to go back over the bridge to get to our campground. A bit frustrated I decided that I would tell the booth operator our situation so that they could have some compassion on us. When we explained our predicament she was entirely unhelpful or compassionate. She simply asked me, “Did you use the bridge. Well if you used the bridge you have to pay.” My receipt with the time stamp on it was not good enough. I simply got a lecture on what to do the next time I really did not intend on crossing the bridge. It is a rather interesting video you can watch.

We eventually did make it to our campground. As has been typical for us around Nova Scotia they were extremely helpful, welcoming and warm. Apart from its many tolls, Nova Scotia is a great place.