Making life a holiday with interesting vacation and adventure ideas.

Nova Scotia Department of Tourism, Culture, and Heritage is reminding vacationers of the beauty of Nova Scotia in the fall. From golfing in the fresh, clear air of the East Coast, to plenty of exciting Halloween activities and fairs for the whole family.

Nova Scotia boasts around four million hectares of woodland rich with maple, birch, oak and mountain ash and in the fall they burst into an explosion of brilliant colour, For leaf peepers the Department of Tourism's website provides a Leaf Watch service, operational between mid September and the end of October.

The Department of Tourism website includes leaf reports, to assist in planning fall foliage outings, and new web cams which provide a sneak peek of the scenery at a number of locations throughout the province. Visitor Information Centres also offer pocket-size Leaf Watch brochures which include maps for 85 locations around Nova Scotia where fall colours are displayed at their finest, as well as a quick reference of tree types and their leaves, helping leaf watchers identify the most vibrant trees.

Active outdoor enthusiasts, might enjoy a guided 'easy walking' tour of the Annapolis Valley and South Shore which covers not only forest trails and coastal hikes, but also includes a Nova Scotia wine tour, tasting and dinner at an award-winning valley vineyard; that's my kind of hike. A more strenuous adventure, that lends a whole new perspective to leaf watching, is a six-hour kayak tour along the coastline of Cape Chignecto in mid to late October. Alternatively, Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site, offers visitors great hiking, biking, canoeing and camping, while viewing fall foliage. A final recommendation for that outdoor autumn adventure, is the incomparable Cape Breton Island, it is said that the Nova Scotia Cabot Trail and Cape Breton Highland offer tourists some of the best leaf watching look-outs available.

Visitors seeking accommodation for an autumn getaway in Nova Scotia, will find a complete listing of inns, cottages, resorts, and bed and breakfasts at the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism website.

Labels: Canada, fall, Nova Scotia, tours

Nature produces the ultimate tapestry of colour with every leaf fall. As noted in my previous post, the dazzling colours have fuelled a billion dollar tourist industry in America's north-east .

But it is not just the Americans that make 'leaf peeping' a national obsession. The Japanese have a special word, momijigari, which describes watching the changing colours of trees in autumn, and climate change has resulted in Britain experiencing riots of colour that match the legendary displays of Vermont, making 'leaf peeping' in Britain, every bit as big an activity.

To satisfy the demands of 'leaf peepers' to view the best displays of autumn colour, the Forestry Commission provides interactive maps of the best places to see foliage colours across the whole of the UK.

Autumnwatch in the UK has started for 2007 and the Woodland Trust are recording the first instances of seasonal events, this includes great interactive maps of the first autumn tinting and leaf fall.

Labels: 2007, Autumn Colour, Autumn Watch, fall, UK

Fall is an important tourist season in the USA,. To consider how important, consider that nearly 8 million visitors are expected to visit the state of New Hampshire alone, enjoying nature's annual color spectacular and of course, buying their Halloween pumpkins. There is a Pumpkin Carving Festival in neighbouring Vermont, which includes a world record attempt for the Most Pumpkins Being Carved Simultaneously.

I doubt they will be carving anything like the 3,000 pumpkins used at Van Cortlandt Manor, Croton-On-Hudson, NY, where Halloween is celebrated with the Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze in October. Artfully carved Jack O'Lanterns are arranged in different scenarios, including a bottom-of-the-sea aquarium and a scarecrow avalanche.

Just a 10 minutes drive south, in Sleepy Hollow, they celebrate Halloween with the tale of the headless horseman who rode through the grounds of Philipsburg Manor in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, written by Washington Irving.

Our listings contain many interesting activity holidays in the U.S..

Labels: fall, festival, Halloween, pumpkin, U.S.A.