BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

Imagine booking your vacation around a yard sale.

Or picking up and driving across provincial borders to check out other people’s “junk.”

“People call me,” says the organizer, Cindy Crocker, of the 3rd Shoreline Yard Sale along the Bay of Fundy.

“They want to book their vacation so they can come, and we had a couple here from Prince Edward Island who’d seen it in the provincial paper and they just decided to come!”

While communities from Morden through to Black Rock can’t keep any kind of tally on the crowds of yard salers coming through their mountain back roads and halls, “we sell out,” Crocker says.

Her Jolly Workers Sewing Circle in Black Rock ran out of the featured strawberry shortcake last year, and she knows Burlington did, too. There were 500 maps available at halls in Morden, Harbourville, Burlington and Black Rock: ‘they were gone, and you figure maybe three or more people in a car...,” Crocker says.

Add to that the people who picked up maps in advance at community tourist bureaus, and this community-driven event has become a success.

Crocker says support comes from the hall associations in Morden and Burlington, the Harbourville restoration Society and the Jolly Workers. Volunteers work on a map, attracting early sellers to become an X on the routes marked out between communities. There are two dozen on the official map, but Crocker says more will spring up the day of, and there are also tables for rent at Burlington,. Black Rock and Harbourville halls.

While there is no “right way” to tackle the Shoreline Yard Sale,” experienced yard salers will plan their day around the food: breakfast in Morden, with that community’s regular menu of fish cakes, baked beans, pancakes, eggs and more; a hot dog and canteen snack in Burlington later in the morning, a lobster roll at the Harbourville hall for lunch and - leave room! - hot dogs and strawberry shortcake in Black Rock.

“And we haven’t advertised it, but last year we had a carrot cake on our bake table and we cut it up and just sold it by the slice,” Crocker says. “We’re going to do that again!”

There are canteen and washroom facilities at the halls, and admission to hall sales is free.