Discover Nova Scotia: The Ultimate Nature Guide

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

These guides are tailored to the growing ecotourism movement: people who
want to observe the wealth and variety of nature without collecting
specimens or damaging the environment. The focus is the tourist family
traveling by car who enjoys leisurely side trips, observation stops, and
those unplanned extra activities that round out a vacation.

The nature guide starts with an overview of the spectacular geology of
Nova Scotia, then describes 16 driving tours detailing things to see and
do, side trips, and interesting tidbits of information. Discover Nova
Scotia for Kid highlights activities to supplement the tours detailed in
the nature guide. The emphasis is on fun stuff with educational
overtones and a slant toward ecology, history, and art. Simple,
inexpensive activities such as hiking, fossil searches, museum visits,
and dipping candles receive priority.

Both guides features lots of color photos. In the nature guide, these
tend to be too small to be really useful but through sheer quantity they
serve to create an impression of tremendous variety in landscapes and
endless interesting natural vistas.

The style of the guides is informal, with a light-reading tone that
lends itself to skipping about and sampling passages at random. Any
family vacationing in Nova Scotia should keep these first-rate guides
handy.