Day Ten - "Isn't Sydney in Australia?..."

Today was a bit of an odd day for us. We were trying to make our schedules work out such that we could time the crossing into New Foundland just right and help dodge the hurricane, make a night crossing, and allow our friend, Mike, to catch up since he’s doing a slightly similar trip and was going to be in New Foundland at the same time as us. This meant we had a day to kill in the area near the North Sydney ferry terminal with no real agenda.

We had been wanting to do some paddling up here since we’d gotten to Maine. Although kayaks have been on my to-purchase list for some time, they keep getting pushed aside for other priorities, so we were planning to rent them at some of the numerous port towns. For whatever reason, time, weather, etc, it hadn’t worked out thus far. Since the KOA was on a lake/bay and had a pair of 16’ canoes, we decided to rent one for the morning and get out on the water. After a couple hours we dragged it back on shore, packed up the truck, and set off.

After talking to the proprietor of the KOA about the gravel road we’d been down the night before, we learned that it was actually part of the old road to Baddeck. Armed with a so-so road map and this new nugget of local history, we went out to find other parts of the same road. All in all it’s still there, aside from a few washed out bits. If I’m ever back in the area with some more time, or perhaps some 2-wheeled transportation, I’d love to revisit it and attempt to run the whole thing.

Not wanting to waste the whole day, we found pavement again and followed part of the “Cabot Trail”, which circumnavigates Cape Breton and highlights the Celtic heritage of the area, as well as some of the natural beauty. We stopped at a couple of galleries, and after a picnic, hiked a trail down to some falls on the New River.

By this time Mike had almost caught up to us, and it was getting closer to check-in time for our ferry, so we met up with him in Sydney for dinner and got in line for the ferry. This has been the largest vessel I’ve ever been aboard and for a ferry, I was impressed. We being a bit more budget-minded opted for general seating, which was surprisingly well equipped. I could’ve slept far better in one of the cabins, but once the lights went dim and we pulled away from port, we were both asleep for the trip across the strait.

Day Nine - No Frackin' Way

Canso looked much better by daylight than it had the night before. Still, it is just a dying little town that is struggling to hold on. Even the RV/Marina attendant lived in Halifax and made the three hour commute weekly to take a few days duty in Canso.

Before leaving town, we took advantage of a break in the weather to explore what is left of this sleepy little fishing village. The rain was a bit too much to take advantage of the boat tour out to Grassy Island, but we did find a harbor view path. It seems that Canso is making a great effort to try and breath some life into their tourism appeal thorough trails, paths, tours, public art, festivals, etc. Although we were impressed by their effort, we’re not sure if it will be enough. We were glad to have inadvertently stayed an evening in Canso and to learn about the not so quaint side to the life of a fishing village, but it is not a “must return” type of place.

One last thing from Canso. This building was our first glace at the town. Imagine rolling into a desolate town at sundown and seeing this place. All we needed was some Halloween music and bats flying out of the rafters. On the way out of town we had to stop and get a picture. This too is a reconstruction effort, but considering it has signs on it saying “Beware of falling bricks” who knows…

Following the coast, we set our sights on Cape Breton. Along the way we added another lighthouse spotting to the list. This one is located near Queensboro.

JD took some time to explore the information kiosk near the lighthouse park.

By lunchtime we were on Cape Breton. Our first order of business was to find the local information center and find out the latest on hurricane Irene. Given the forecast, we decided to delay a day before taking the Ferry into Newfoundland. This meant we would have a day and a half to explore.

 The first sight we were greeted by was a series of large signs reading “No Frackin Way” glancing over to the series of homes and outbuildings whose owners were obviously responsible for the signage we were shocked to see Homer, Bart, Marge, Lisa, baby Maggie, and the rest of The Simpsons cast. Who knew that Springfield was in Nova Scotia.

Taking the highway we came through the town of Baddeck. Alexander Graham Bell lived near this town for a while, and there is a national historic site/museum commemorating his work. The hillside of the museum also gives a great view of the lighthouse.

As we often do, it was not long before the truck left the pavement and found a bit of dirt and gravel. After exploring some back roads, we checked into the North Sydney/Cabot Trail KOA. There are only two KOA kampgrounds in Nova Scotia, and we managed to stay in both. The view from our campsite was of the highway bridge, but with a bridge this beautiful, we soon forgot the bit of road noise.

Day Eight - Kids love us, Dogs love us, Birds love us.....Everybody loves us!

We slept pretty well last night at the "Halifax" KOA, it seems like every other night at a campground with water/electric is a good way to go since it keeps our batteries topped off and the convenience of having water inside the camper is nice. I say "Halifax" with quotes, because even though it's in the county, it's no where close to the city. We dined on pancakes since this is the first campground on this trip to have a pancake breakfast, and headed off to the capitol of Nova Scotia, armed with only a myriad of free tourist maps.

Lindy, in her week or so of Canada research, had stumbled across the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax. Since it boasted a healthy exhibit on the Titanic, she knew I'd be game. We were pleasantly surprised too, in that it also had other well thought out exhibits on topics such as Nova Scotia shipwrecks, sailboats, goose boats, a viewable archive, and an awesome assortment of models, both contemporary and antique, of local vessels. It quickly proved itself to be one of the best museums I've ever visited outside of some of the "National" museums of Washington. If you're ever in Halifax, it's worth a couple hours of your time, especially if you're a transportation geek like me.

Carl in a reconstruction of a Titanic deck chair 

Displays of model ships in the museum 

Open/visible storage 

Goose blind boat for hunting in icebergs 

Tracking Atlantic hurricanes.... Irene is on the way! 

Also included in the tour was the opportunity to go out onto the pier and board the CSS Acadia, a research vessel that spent close to 30 years in service mapping out the bays and rivers vital to this region. It's amazing how well built these older ships were and how well it has held up even to this day.

Upon returning to the public parking lot where we'd left our rig, we were greeted by another winged creature. This one, some form of local bird, took a special liking to the Skamper-ized Tacoma. We laughed about it's presence and were about to shoo it off when it hopped on the roof. As we tried to dig out the camera, it began to dine on the buffet of insects that had met their fate on the front of the camper, and by the time I was able to snap a shot, it expressed it's love for the Skamper by spreading its wings and hugging our truck, seriously, birds love us....

Lindy had identified the public gardens as a place she wanted to explore in the city so we hopped in the truck and wound our way up from the shore. As we hopped out and slid across the street we were greeted by a sign declaring pets to be prohibited. No worries, as this gave me an excuse not to have to stare at flowers for an hour, so I volunteered to be on dog-sitting detail and walk the dog around the outskirts of the park while she explored the gardens for a bit. We did run across each other once at the fence, we call this "Dog : Excluded".

Here are some other shots of the scenery that she managed to collect while in the gardens:

All in all, we really enjoyed our time in Halifax. It's a nice city and I can see why people would be proud to call it home, I would welcome the opportunity to return sometime in the not too distant future and spend more time exploring around.

As we departed Halifax we paused to plot our route. We knew we would eventually be making our way towards North Sydney, where the ferry departs to New Foundland, and Lindy had picked out some potential campsites on the eastern side of the mainland. We had already spent a lot of time following coastal routes, and the highway route would have taken us all the way back up to Truro, but there was a network of linking secondary roads right through the heart of the province, so we thought we'd give it a shot. As we departed the highway onto the first road, things were going pretty well. The road was nice and the views were good. A couple roads later after passing through the town of Dean, we found ourselves on a well-graded gravel road to Trafalgar. No, I'm not talking about some villain from the latest Harry Potter movie, it's a real "town". After miles of gravel roads through counties and game preserves, we'd decided we'd had enough of what I've declared the "Trans-Nova Scotia Overland Route" and headed south to rejoin the coastal roads. Much to our dismay, the paved roads paled in comparison to the smoothness of the gravel roads, and for the most part, had dis-jointed bits of pavement interrupted by an abundance of tall grass. These roads seemed to link what must have been logging communities of years gone by, but the inhabitants are all gone and hardly any cars now pass by them. Below is an assortment of what we saw for the entire trip.

Back on the coastal roads, things were mildly better. Every once and a while we did hit a fresh strip of pavement, and since the pup had been riding in the backseat for most of the day, it was nice to have opportunities to get him out. Point Bickerton gave us the opportunity to view yet another northern Atlantic light house, and the dog as always loved the green grass. This was turning into one of our longer driving days so we hit the road once more and tore through fishing village after fishing village, and just when things were rolling good, we see signs. "Road ends 500m? What do you mean the road ends?!??!!?" We had been seeing signs for "Country Harbour Ferry" for quite some time, and wondering: "Where does that go???". It turns out, it's just a ferry across the harbor so we could continue on the same route we'd been traveling. Luckily we had timed it pretty well by shear dumb luck, and had virtually no wait for the once an hour ferry. Things like this are still commonplace in these parts, even though in our region they've long since disappeared and been replaced by bridges.

Lindy had done a good job researching campsites, but at the last minute we switched up our plans to instead go to a town that had been mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide, Canso. It was described as a fishing village and the sight of a National Park and trail system. What she hadn't read were the two sentences describing the town's demise since the great northern cod stocks dried up in the early 90's and subsequent unemployment. We still found there to be a couple of campgrounds and eventually settled on the former Casno marina now known as Casno RV Park. These are the kind of days on the road we live for.