If you read our post concerning our broken windshield, The kindness of strangers…., you know that we had to make some last-minute changes to our travel schedule. We were able to extend our stay at Shubie Campground to Thursday morning and Speedy Glass in Halifax was able to replace our windshield a day earlier than originally promised. We had a reservation starting Friday in Lunenburg, but no place to stay Thursday night. We could have stayed another night at Shubie but decided after staying there for six nights it was time to explore a new venue.

We always look to Harvest Hosts for locations when we need to stay for only a single night. We especially search for locations that serve food. Unfortunately, there were relatively few Harvest Hosts nearby. We were heading for Lunenburg (southwest) and the Lightship Brewery, located in Lunenburg, had no availability. There were two other hosts, also close to Lunenburg, but they did not serve food. So we decided to travel 52 miles northeast, away from Lunenburg, to Horton Ridge Malt.

Horton Ridge Malt is located near the town of Wolfville, which boasts a population of about 5,000 people. This brewery malts locally-grown, two-row barley using an old-style floor malting process. Malting is the process of starting the barley germination, which produces enzymes that break down starches in the grain during the mashing process of making beer.

The brew pub is located in beautiful farmland, which provided an incredible view from the taproom.

This is the third brewpub we have stayed at (so far) on this trip and the beers were the best we have had yet. Perhaps malting your own barley ensures that the main ingredient in your beer is extra fresh.

The title of this post is “Serendipity”. So where is/was the serendipity? The night we visited there were about a dozen locals and two other RVers in the brewpub. Normally, that would make for a quiet night with very little “people-watching” to go with our beer. But not tonight, because it was Music Bingo Night!

Neither of us were thrilled to play but there were so few people in the bar it would have been awkward to leave, so we stayed. Tonight’s Music Bingo, in honor of Canada Day, would feature all Canadian Artists. We were a little worried as we thought we knew so few Canadian Musicians. As it turned out, participants were allowed to use Shazam to help identify the songs. All we needed to do was fill out our BINGO cards. (More difficult than you would think after a couple samplers. 😊)

We were surprised by how much we and the crowd were getting into bingo. Much of the enthusiasm was due to the woman running the event. You can see her in the background at the end of the video below.

We were also shocked by how many songs we knew (and loved) but did not realize that they were by Canadian artists. Bands such as Men Without Hats (Pop Goes the World and Safety Dance), Randy Bachman (You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet), Barenaked Ladies (If I Had $1,000,000), Steppenwolf (Born to Be Wild), Feist (1234), Nick Gilder (Hot Child in the City), The Guess Who (American Woman), Rush (Tom Sawyer), and others.

We had a super-enjoyable night, engaged with folks we didn’t know, but we were all sharing a fun evening together. Our food-truck dinner was good, too. This was completely unexpected and we were only there because we had to make a last-minute change to our plans.

But Horton Ridge Malt was only the first serendipitous discovery on this detour. As we were driving to Horton Ridge we saw a sign advertising nearby Windsor, Nova Scotia as The Birthplace of Hockey!

At the Museum, which is housed in the historic Thomas Chandler Haliburton home built in 1833, we learned that hockey developed from games played in England and Ireland, such as field hockey (and older games such as hurling and shinty), that were originally played on grass and then moved to ice.

While the claim to be the birthplace remains contested, the museum has a very impressive collection of early hockey equipment and records of early games being played there. We also had a terrific docent accompanying us on the tour who was very enthusiastic and spent a lot of time with us.

If you are wondering about the “featured image” for this post, it’s a display of a collection of early hockey pucks, which are simply sawed off sections of tree limbs, signed by popular hockey players. Rubber pucks did not come into regular use until the very late 1880s and were made by slicing rubber balls into pucks. The earliest hockey pucks are believed to be frozen cow dung, which are much more difficult to sign. 🙂

So our shattered windshield necessitated a change in our travel plans and resulted in us having two unexpected, and truly delightful discoveries.

If you are looking for a little serendipity you might want to glance at some of our early travel posts from 2022, 2023 or 2024. Hopefully, you will find something that speaks to you.