Dogs bark, caravans move on - and slowly the stories on the other side of the road come into focus.

Rick Zenkner was at work when the Olympic torch rolled into this 300-year-old former shipbuilding town near the Bay of Fundy.

The main celebration was directly across the street from his Westside Studio, but the artist had projects to finish and Christmas lights to string across the gallery storefront. Much too busy to go.

He did, however, offer one small consolation: He opened an upstairs window, leaned down and listened for a while.

For just as long as it took his wife, Caroline Bosley, to sing the national anthem.

"Tell you truth," he laughs, "I don't even watch the Olympics."

It takes a lot to impress a town that can bill itself as "The oldest permanent settlement in Canada."

Thirteen times during the French-English hostilities of the 17th and 18th centuries, Annapolis Royal was attacked, and survived.

There were 1,500 Acadians expelled here in 1755 because they had trouble pledging allegiance to a Crown they'd never see; and not only did the town survive but some of them returned in later years, French names still common all along the shores.

Usually it's so quiet that the local weekly can run a headline - as happened this day - announcing "a week of missing puppies and lost cows" in the police-and-crimes page.

But it was also, the paper proudly declared, time for "our stop on the circus tour" as the relay that will cover 106 days, 45,000 kilometres and 1,030 communities wiggled along the Annapolis Valley.

Ian Lawrence was at work on the Dawn Till Dusk, in drydock at the Annapolis Royal co-operative shipyard, when he heard the sounds and saw the flashing lights and realized this "torch" thing he'd been hearing about was coming through town.

The man they call the Boat Doctor - Lawrence's father was once the real doctor - kept on punching cotton and oakum in between the new planks to seal up the old scallop dragger, but he couldn't resist a quick look all the same.

"Sort of an overrated event, far as I can see," he said between punches. But what did he think of the torch? "It was bright."

At a somewhat worse-for-wear motel on Cape Breton Island, a thirsty member of the media asks at the desk if there is a pop machine.

"Yes," he is told. "But it's out back - I'll have to show you."

The photographer is led back through a back yard to a patio, and there, in the dark, stands something tall and rectangular that is covered by tarpaulin and tied tight by bungee cord. The cord unloosened and the tarp folded back, a bright, clean Pepsi machine awaits his coins.

"Why is it covered?" he asks.

The clerk shrugs.

"We were told that if any of the torch relay team stayed here, Coca-Cola [a sponsor] would insist."

It was not much of a demonstration put on Wednesday by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

They set up their protest along Spring Garden Road in Halifax, but all media attention went to local hockey hero Sidney Crosby carrying the torch to Citadel Hill while thousands of Haligonians cheered wildly.
They had hoped to stake out space across the street, near the gardens, but when that didn't work out they retreated to a space around a statue dedicated to Robbie Burns, the great Scottish poet.

You know, the one famous for the grace that goes: "Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, Sae the Lord be thankit."

It makes some sense on a long, long, long road trip to have one of those GPS gizmos suction-cupped to the front windshield, especially when navigating city streets to leap ahead of the travelling circus - or to find a quick "alternate" route in the country to avoid the traffic pile-ups.

But there can also be disadvantages.

One is being endlessly scolded by a woman with a stunningly strict voice - she has a nickname, of course, and you may feel free to guess it - telling you to "turn around at your first opportunity" after you miss turns she has carefully mapped out and mentioned are coming up.

Another is that she sometimes gets her own co-ordinates, let alone yours, confused. Perhaps its faulty satellite data, perhaps she drinks. . .whatever.

But at one point while going through a dirt-poor reserve, she ordered us to take the next right, then the second left, leaving us hub-deep in mud and surrounded by four snarling reserve dogs.

The caravan moves on and four dogs are still barking.

"Turn around at your first opportunity." "Turn around at your first opportunity." "Turn around at your first opportunity. . ."