| Cape Breton |
| Aug 7 (Tuesday) We reach the Canso causeway, the one road that accesses Cape Breton, at around 2pm. The plan today is to stay in or around Mabou. No vacancies. We drive on to Inverness. No vacancies. We drive through Margaree. No vacancies. It begins to rain, and there's a thunderstorm over the water to our left. We drive on to Cheticamp, which is the last town before entering the Highlands National Park. No vacancies. We go to the tourist office, and they tell us there's a vacancy in Margaree. We take it. We drive back, and find the Salmon Pool Inn, which we had just missed on our previous drive through Margaree. (We turned off right before it.) It's a beautiful place overlooking the Margaree river, and we get there at around 9pm. |
| Click the pictures on this page for hours of fun (click back to return) and then hey, click the pictures again... |
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| <PEI Baddeck> |
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| After searching the universe, I found Naboo (y'know from Star Wars Episode I). Actually, a town called Mabou, but close enough. |
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| Wednesday morning, I wake up at around 7 and capture these shots. |
| Aug 8 (Wednesday) We head northbound from Margaree and are ready to tour the National Park. The drive is awesome, and below are the first shots as we enter the park. |
| <PEI Baddeck> |
| After a couple of hours of driving (and several stops at spectacular lookout points) we reach Pleasant Bay which is near the northern edge of Cape Breton and the park. We decide to stop here to do a bit of whale watching. We get into this old fishing boat, and being the smart boaters that we are, we sit at the back of the boat. The water was very choppy this morning and as we hit wave after wave, the crash of water would shower over us. It tasted really salty, and my coat to this day has a nice salty smell to it. Most tours guarantee a whale siting or your money back, and after an hour into the 90 minute tour, it was looking like we'd at least be getting a free boat ride out of the whole thing. Suddenly the screams of "Whale!!!" start occuring and we start following three pilot whales, as they swim through the choppy waters. The chase was on and all the other tour boats saw that we had a whale and proceeded to follow also. So there we were, three boats chasing three pilot whales, and me clicking photos like a mad fool, burning 24 shots, and this is the clearest photo I got of a diving whale. |
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| Fishing boats at one of the many scenic stops along Cape Breton... |
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| We also visit a Tibetan monastery just outside of Pleasant Bay. A rocky dirt road takes you to this most peculiar attraction in the middle of the maritimes, a bit off the beaten trail. |