On The Road to Cape Breton

The Cabot Trail, a long and winding road through the Cape Breton Highlands, is a feast for the eyes any time of the year. There are many interesting places to see and things to do along the way, including arts and crafts shops, golf, camping, hiking, whale watching and nature cruises. Main towns at the start and end are Cheticamp and Baddeck, each busy and each with their own flavour.

On to Cape Breton in the sunshine. And the dust.

September19

Up early today. Peter is cooking breakfast but has invited us to the restaurant where he's using the facilities there. It's not open for breakfast, so it's just us for a private dining experience with our eggs and bac'. I was sure the eggs were different somehow, they tasted so good but I guess it's just like that when someone else cooks it for you. In butter. The sunrise was beautiful and the day was going to be sunny and clear with a little cool breeze. Perfect for traveling.

Put in the tunes and away we go, taking the direct route back to the ferry which takes about 30 or 40 minutes tops. We made it with 13 mintues to spare, or so we thought. The boat was 9:30 not 9:00. Misread the brochure. Well it's better than missing it by a half hour! We paid our fare to return to the mainland and then headed left for Cape Breton up the Trans Canada Highway.

We crossed the Canso Causeway but took the wrong turn off the rotary. We'd wanted to take the 19 all up the western shore but instead found ourselves on the 105 Highway. There didn't seem to be a way to cross over so we stayed there until Whycogomah where we stopped for gas and had lunch. We bought fresh made sandwiches at a Farmer's market (bakery and deli) which were the size of doorstops! From there we sorted out the correct turn off to go over to the scenic route.

Mistake. There was construction in two separate sections and the road was a bit rough otherwise, too. The construction areas had us stopping to wait for a pickup truck that would escort us down the dusty dirt road to the other end of the section. Escorted because it was safer, with the heavy equipment moving around. Well, that was different! Something tells me I have had this happen before but Graham had never heard of it and then encountered it twice in one day! The first stop found us chatting to a wizened older man who held the Stop sign. We couldn't really make out a lot of what he was saying. I wondered if that was because he had been drinking or, no, maybe it's because he was missing a few teeth! He got very chatty and the F-word started slipping into his rhetoric which had us stifling a giggle. At the next stop, there was a larger, tall woman, (though we weren't sure about that at first) who looked extremely bored with her job. She was uncommunicative. The truck arrived and out lumbered her replacement. A larger, taller woman with a cigarette hanging off her lips. Again, tough call as to the gender at first. This struck me funny and i had to hide behind my map!

We finally got on our way and out of the worst of the roads, heading through the beautiful Margaree Valley and around the coast into the Cheticamp area. We spotted Joe's Scarecrow Village and Flora's, noted for later visits. We found our motel, the Ocean View Motel and Chalets, at the other end of the village, checked in and headed for the wharf. We were hoping to catch a whale watching cruise, you see, and were told there was a 5 o'clock cruise going out.

The only problem is that mid-September is heading into off-season. The company we were going to use had a white board out front which said the last tour was at 4. It was 10 past, the office was shut and the boat was docked. Guess there wasn't enough people to go out. They'll only go with a minimum of 6 people to make it worth their while. Fair enough with the cost of fuel these days. We found another company and waited for them to return with their busload of tourists. Bad luck again. We were the only 2 who wanted to go so that was off. We were advised to try in the morning.

Instead, we drove back out of town to Flora's for a gander through the craft shop. Cheticamp is known for it's hand hooked rugs and there was a woman at the shop doing them and demostrated how it's done. I was surprised because there's no knotting at all behind the wools. It's only the closeness of the weave where the wool is pulled through each hole, making it a tight fit, that holds it all together aside from the border sewn down around the edges. They do lovely work, too. There's all manner of hooked rugs available in the shop from small things the size of bookmarks or coasters to large area rugs for the floor or to hang on a wall. All done so evenly and with such lovely colours and patterns, too! Rugs are available in most of the gift shops here but Flora's has the biggest selection. There are lots of other nice things there too and we gathered up some items for gifts and souvenirs.

We headed back into the busy town of Cheticamp and stopped at the 100+ year old stone church, Saint-Pierre. It was open so we went inside to looke at the sunny interior. The walls and ceilings are all white and the light through the stained glass makes it glow. Very pretty church and it's spire can be seen for miles around.

Food was our next priority. There are quite a few places to eat and we chose what was probably a bit of a tourist trap, a restaurant (and pub) with a big lighthouse out front. They're large enough to cater to a bus group though it was mercifully quiet when we were there. The food was good, though our waitress had us a bit worried whether she would manage. She used a catering tray to hold on to as she walked around, with the drinks or the food on the tray. She was clearly a little unsteady but she was game to go! The service was, in fact, quite good! We had no room for dessert and headed back to the motel room. The motel offers dvds to borrow and play on the television so we looked through the list of titles and chose one. we had some snacks and settled in to relax and enjoy the movie. Tomorrow will be a long driving day around the Cabot Trail!

Around the glorious Cabot Trail

September 20

Another clear blue sky today! The only other thing I could wish for was that the leaves on the trees had been changed colour but we're a couple of weeks too early for that. There's a charge for entering the Cape Breton Highlands National Park that encompases the Cabot Trail but it's not that much and there are family/group rates if you've got a car full. They also offer you a good map of just the park routes, lookoff spots, attractions and hiking trails which we found very useful.

We weren't lucky with the whale watching cruise so we took a little time and drove back to Joe's Scarecrow Village. What an amazing and quirky attraction! This guy has dressed up scarecrows and manequins, there are dozens of them, all scattered around a field. Most are "adult", some are kid sized. Some have masks of well known figures and the rest are just ... faces, masks, manequin heads. All of the masked figures seem to have "eyes" behind them so it can be quite creepy, really. There is no fee but donations are appreciated. It was early so we were the only ones there though a bus full of tourists was arriving just as we were leaving. It's right on the main road, in Cap LeMoines just south of Cheticamp. Bizarre yet marvellous!

On the road, tunes in the cd player and diet Coke at hand. We bought sandwiches at Tim Horton's to have for our lunch later. Apparently they were expecting hundreds of bikers who were driving around the trail for Ride for the Cure (cancer fund raiser) a bit later in the morning so we were glad we missed that long lineup!

The scenery was truly spectacular. The road was at times twisty but almost always in quite good condition. there were a couple of spots where the shoulder was narrow or the road at the shoulder was a bit rough but mainly it was in decent shape unless you went off the Trail. We made some stops at some lookoff points and also stopped along the way at one or two gift shops, a cafe and took a couple of side roads to see a few villages, Bay St. Lawrence at the northern tip of Cape Breton and Neil's Harbour where there is a lighthouse on a very windy hill. We had our sandwiches in the car as it was too chilly to sit at a picnic table and had a coffee at the little cafe beside the lighthouse. There were places we could have stopped and didn't bother and places we thought we would stop but missed the turnoff. The Giant MacAskill museum was one of those. Apparently we didn't take the wrong turn from the Englishtown car ferry but the road to the museum is badly marked!

We ended the day in Baddeck, a pretty town on the water, on the Bras D'or lakes. There's a lighthouse here too (how many did we see? I lost count!) Our bed and breakfast is just up from the main and only intersection by the visitor information centre. We got checked in then went out to walk around the village, down by the waterfront and up main street. Not much open past 5 o'clock on a Saturday! We did stop into the library as we had to use the toilet and signed up to use the public internet computers but barely got logged in when the library closed! Fail!

Where to go for our dinner? We asked the landlady at the B&B and she'd recommended a couple of places. One was too full and too posh for our casual attire. The one we chose was called Yellow Cello. Food was good but we didn't have very good luck with the service. The young man didn't seem to be very experienced. He brought our main meal before we were finished our starters and then didn't bother to clear the dishes when he took our dessert order, nor when he brought dessert. When i asked him to take away some of the dishes he didn't seem to understand what i wanted! Duh! Not much of a tip there, I'm afraid. Only left one because i think most of them share with the kitchen staff and the food was fine.

Turns out there's no television at all in the B&B other than an old one that a dvd player is hooked up to. She said there were 3 or 4 movies we could play. Um... The room itself was nice and large as was the bathroom with a jacuzzi tub which Graham tried. Nice large shower stall which I enjoyed. We snuggled up and pulled out the cribbage board i had brought with me for a couple of games before settling in.