My husband and I and his brother and sister in law are planning on trip from 9/18 to 10/2 from Boston to Nova Scotia. We plan to fly into Boston and depart from Halifax. We will have a rental car. We are mid 60's and enjoy history, good food and photography and nature. My initial plan is to spend three days in Boston area. Then we will travel to Portland and spend two nights in Portland before heading to Bar Harbor. This is where I get confused...not sure how many days in each place we should stay. We also have St John and Halifax on out list - but when looking through the forum it looks like there are many wonderful places to visit. Would there be a good base where we could stay several day and take day trips? I want to see the beautiful rocky shores and see lighthouses as well. Any advise would be very welcome.

Are you planning on taking the rental to Canada?
That would likely be very expensive if even possible.

Are you planning any hiking or other outdoorsy stuff?

We were going to take the car to Canada. Maybe we need to rethink that part? We can do some hiking - we walk a lot here.

Perhaps we can fly back out of Portland instead of Halifax