The last few days have been rainy and gross which has totally ruined our plans for enjoying the Cabot Trail, a world famous road that winds its way around Cape Breton Island, the northernmost point of Nova Scotia.
Two days ago, we packed up early from the KOA and made the hour long drive to the southeast tip of Prince Edward Island where we caught the 9am ferry from Wood Islands to Caribou, Nova Scotia. The ferry took a little over an hour and gave us some nice views looking back at PEI.
Our first stop in Nova Scotia was the Steinhardt Distillery, where we sampled some amazing rhubarb gin, and coffee & maple vodka. This distillery was very much somebody’s hobby, which had been fed enough money to start producing commercially. We had a brief tour around their operation, which was all enclosed in one shed. We learned that they also produced beer, which was currently fermenting in some strange egg-shaped plastic tanks scattered around the floor. We bought a small bottle of their classic dry gin, which came in an artisanal blue bottle with a very wide mouth, which feels like you’re pouring a potion whenever you mix a drink.
Further along the route we came to the Alexander Graham Bell historic site, which was across the bay from the mansion he lived in for many years (which still exists, and is still owned by his descendants!). We learned a lot about his life, and his work with deaf people including the visual alphabet which his father had invented. There was also a huge hall that detailed his aeroplane inventions, including a replica of the Silver Dart, which had been built and flown for the 100thanniversary of its historic flight here on the frozen bay here in Nova Scotia.
I had only known Alexander Graham Bell (Alec to his friends) from his invention of the telephone, so it was really interesting learning about all the other things his amazing mind had come up with, from an early metal detector which he used to try and find a bullet in US President James A. Garfield, to huge tetrahedral kites capable of carrying a persons weight up into the sky!
We carried on from here to our campsite at Chéticamp Campground, just inside Cape Breton Highlands National Park. We built a fire and cooked some dinner, but not long after we’d finished eating it started pouring with rain. While the rain brought some relief from the incessant biting of some little black flies, it didn’t make sitting around a campfire very enjoyable.
It was still raining in the morning, so we packed up the soaking wet tent and drove back out of the park to the town of Chéticamp where we found coffee and breakfast at Robin’s Donuts. This was an interesting experience, as even though they’re a separate company they seem to be imitating Tim Horton’s in every way possible, even down to their ripoff Tim Bits, called Robin Eggs. While we were in town, we did some grocery shopping and replenished our ice and petrol.
Back at the campground we slowly wiled away the damp and dreary afternoon sitting in the warm visitors centre and reading our books. Like how we felt in Jacques Cartier National Park, we were frustrated by being in this beautiful place without being able to properly experience it. While we could have gone for a hike through the misty rain, we were really there for the views which were totally obscured by cloud. We drove back in to Chéticamp for an early dinner at a quaint cottage restaurant, where we had some amazing tomato soup (which was exactly what we needed after being out in the rain) and local fish & chips.
This morning we headed out of Chéticamp and along the coastal Cabot Trail road, which people come from all over the world to experience. Unfortunately for us, for most of our drive the scenery was obscured by rain and fog. We stopped several times to look at what could have been amazing views back along the coastline, but we had to fill in lots of blank spaces with our imagination. We had planned some nice-looking hikes along this route but skipped all of them because there was nothing to see except damp trees.
Near the northernmost tip of Nova Scotia, we stopped in a town called Pleasant Bay to have a look at a Whale Interpretive Centre. There are lots of whale-spotting tours that depart from here during the peak season, but none of them were running any more. In the Centre, we learned about the differences between toothed and baleen whales, and even got to hold some baleen plates! I had no idea that they were big and solid, kind of like fins with hairs all down one edge, because they just look soft and floppy in pictures.
We drove on from there and stopped a few times on the east coast, as the cloud had lifted somewhat. The scenery here was striking, with thick forest giving way to shorelines of red and white boulders. It was still raining though, so we didn’t hang around outside the car for too long. We eventually ended up at our campground for the night, Broad Cove. It had finally stopped raining, and we’re sitting around a campfire toasting marshmallows and writing blog posts.