Flying Coast To Coast
This is where I started feeling everything I needed was ahead of me. We were a week away from flying to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The home we wanted, the businesses we were building, everything was there, out east, waiting for us. We were looking at flights to get us there, and hotels and a rental car to get us around. Since we’d made the decision to move to the east coast of Canada, we had talked about a central location to fly into for a house hunting trip. Halifax was the obvious choice. Even if we wanted to look at properties in the other Atlantic provinces, we would be centralized in Halifax.
We spent our second week in The Delta Ocean Pointe Resort as tourists. We walked down to Odgen Point and walked along the breakwater. We watched sailboats from a vantage point along Dallas Road with soft serve from the Beacon Drive-In. Each morning we’d watch the remediation project continue at Laurel Point, look at the spring blooms brightening up the city, and watch the harbour traffic come and go, take off and land, and paddle by. We watched the changing light from day to night, and never missed the Olympic Mountain range when it came into view.
This was a comfortable place for both Jamie and me to be. We were close to family and friends, and within walking distance of all the sights I knew as home. I felt something inside starting to shift. Ahead of us was everything we had earned, and I could feel this finally within reach. I also felt a combination of excitement and exhaustion each day.
We had to get our flights and hotel booked so we could set up viewings with the real estate agents in Nova Scotia. We were ready to make offers on a few we had been watching online. I’m glad we didn’t put anything in writing before arriving. There was so much more to the decision than what each property had to offer.
We made a trip out to Sooke to check on our trailer before flying out. We had to make sure we packed everything in the right vehicle. There were items we had to get out of the truck that didn’t need to be in the vehicle while it was parked for two weeks, and clothes and duffle bags in the trailer that had to be organized. The insurance on the trailer was expiring at the end of the month, so we paid for another year. We left relevant paperwork with our daughter, bought inflatable neck pillows for the plane, and bought more underwear so we didn’t have to worry about laundry while we were in Nova Scotia.
We joined up with our daughter at our favourite lunch spot, Orchard on View. Mei, the owner, always treats us with freshly made sandwiches and desserts. From there we went to the Royal BC Museum to see the exhibits and watch the IMAX about the Great Bear Rainforest. That evening we sat in the dark for Earth Hour. There were still lights on across the harbour and around the hotel, a perfect night for photos.
I was thinking about houses all the time, and getting anxious about our flights and finding a new home. What if we couldn’t find anything in two weeks? What would we do then? We were spread out between our trailer, the truck, the hotel, and I felt disorganized, overwhelmed, and forgetful about the simplest details. We wanted a regular routine, the right house to make an offer on, a better diet, and more time to relax and recharge without worry crowding out the special memories we were making.
There wasn’t time to look back and overthink what we’d done during the previous nine months. The time we had to travel and search for a new life was a blur. We focused on what lay ahead. We focused on finding a place we could come home to.