Cabot Trail

We found a much more picturesque Nova Scotia today. After yesterday’s miles through monotonous pine forests we wondered what we had missed.  Turns out the coastline is where you need to be to see some beautiful scenery.  The Cabot Trail covers close to 200 miles of coastline and some gorgeous vistas.  The road  climbs and twists and turns and like all other roads in cold climates has areas under construction!  

We wonder how many houses are just summer homes and how many are occupied year round.  Besides fishing (and lobstering) what do people do for a living?  We also saw many large and small churches, all with similar architecture to St Peter’s where we lunched yesterday. 

 

None of these photos show how the road hugs the sides of cliffs or wiggles like a snake (because I was hiding  my eyes...)

We traveled on an unpaved road to Capstick - the next to last Northernmost village in Cape Breton.  The last is Meat Cove and did not look inviting at all.  The stone wall beside the little red building was as gorgeous as Andy Goldworthy’s at Storm King!

Almost forgot the monument honoring John Cabot (nee Giovanni Caboto) at Four Mile Beach.

Cabot discovered the continent of America in 1497?  Another mystery.

Tomorrow we headback towards Maine.  We had planned on seeing Prince Edward Island, but decided we had seen enough pines and coastlines for now.  Next trip!

Toward the Cabot Trail

We covered a LOT of miles on Monday and found a few quirky places and some gorgeous places and a lot of the same green landscape - plus one gigantic lake.  We traveled mostly inland, thinking we would avoid fog - not a great choice as the landscape appears repetitive (lots of fir and pine trees...) and the fog stayed in New Brunswick.  We hoped to find a seafood lunch at this first stop but missed their being open by a day!

So we pressed on until we realized we were not on much of a commercial route.  We found a lovely shaded spot and raided Hilda’s fridge for a picnic lunch.

 We parked Hilda at a campground in mid-afternoon and continued our search for Kodak Moments.  We should have taken a photo of the ferry we took to Little Narrows across St Patrick’s Channel but the entire operation was less than two minutes!  Why no bridge? Who knows - the ferry runs 24 hours a day!  I think we drove for about 90 minutes and saw occasional glimpses of the lake:  Bras d’Or Lake.  Removing trees for motorists to view the lake does not seem important.  But there is plenty of lake to see eventually!

We eventually found our way to Baddeck and dinner of crab cakes and Digby scallops.  YUM!  I then took my favorite photo so far:

Tomorrow we drive the Cabot Trail.