Birthday Week - Days 5 & 6

On day 5 we drove back to New Brunswick for the start of our way home.  We had about an 8-hour drive to get to our hotel for the night in Amherst, New Brunswick.  Even though the scenery is beautiful, the road is very winding with low speed limits.  And on top of that, it started raining.

View through the buggy windshield.  By the way - we have a rental car for the summer.  This isn’t our truck.

To break up our long drive we stopped at the Balmoral Grist Mill Museum in Balmoral Mills, Nova Scotia.

The museum is a restored 1874 water powered grist mill.  This was a one-man operation.

I love these old grinding stones!

The Mill processed a variety of grains including oat meal, wheat, and buckwheat.

The grinding stone is enclosed so the flour doesn’t fly out.

This is a grinding stone without the cover. 

Uncovered grinding stone.

There are two stones.  The grain is poured into the whole in the middle of the top stone.  As the stone turns the grain is ground between the top and bottom stones and makes its way between the stones via grooves cut in the bottom stone.

There are different size stones for the different grains.

Mark had fun making flour on this small stone.

We spent some time talking to one of the guides (who was very familiar with Texas) before heading to our hotel.

We spent the night in the Comfort Inn in Amherst, New Brunswick. 

The next morning, we had a 5-hour drive back home.

It was a wonderful birthday week!