Seascapes and Woodland Waterways

Reward your senses as the traditions and legends of the sea come alive along the Marine Drive, Nova Scotia’s Seacoast Trail. Follow this special route through a land of pristine coastal beauty, where quiet shorelines roads lead through romantic seaside villages and the past is a colourful part of everyday life.
    
Experience the sights and sounds of Nova Scotia’s past in award-winning living-history museums:  a fisherman’s store and traditional cookhouse at Memory Lane, a 1940s village in Lake Charlotte; a blacksmith’s hammer ringing at his forge and a picturesque sawmill in a thriving 19th-century town at Sherbrooke Village.
       
Step back in time at the Acadian House Museum that is dedicated to the Acadian way of life as it once existed. This small seacoast community was established at West Chezzetcook – Grand Désert after the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755. The earlier settlers developed a thriving community through fishing and small-scale farming. The museum is located in a house originally owned by Joseph Bellefontaine and his wife Célestine. Very few changes have been made since it was built in the 1850's. The kitchen is similar in appearance with the original worn wooden floors, while the other rooms have interpretive panels depicting the Acadian way of life.
      
The Seacoast Trail, better know as Marine Drive is a playground for nature lovers – a world of magnificent coastal beauty where unspoiled beaches and tidal inlets beckon, and salt marshes teem with birds and wildlife. The ruggedly diverse coastline is a world-class destination for sea kayakers, and the seaside parks provide picnic facilities and superb hiking trails at some of Nova Scotia’s finest sand beaches. Inland, you’ll find a vast but accessible wilderness whose myriad lakes and rivers are legendary with anglers and paddlers.