Day 32--North Sydney, Cabot Trail, Baddeck NS

Day 32—Tuesday, July 13
Ferry from Port Aux Basque to North Sydney Cabot Trail, Baddeck, NS
120 miles

We had to be at ferry at 7 am. While we were waiting in line, Suz popped into the ferry terminal and returned to the car with a little gift for me—a small refrigerator magnet moose sign. I’ve been taking photos of all the different moose and deer signs.

Then to assuage our boredom, Suz dragged out some stale crackers and fed these to some herring and ring-billed gulls and two rock pigeons that were searching the lines of cars and parking lot for tasty morsels. There was one immature gull among them and we tried to give it a break, but a bigger gull was dominant and generally got the goodies. When it didn’t get the cracker crumb, it complained raucously with bill stretched wide.

We were one of the first cars to board. This ferry, the MV Atlantic Vision, is much newer than the MV Caribou that we took to Port aux Basques.

The dirty stack smoke from the MV Atlantic Vision ferry

We climbed to the fifth floor and sat way up in the bow before a bank of windows in brightly colored chairs. There were outlets under the bench seats, so we plugged in our computers and used them to check e-mail, discovering only later when Suz’s computer was on the last of its battery, that the outlet we’d plugged into was dead. We found a live outlet, and Suz recharged her computer battery. I read a little Reader’s Digest type book about the Atlantic provinces. The six hours seemed to go much faster than when we had come the other way. Photos below were all taken as we entered North Sydney, NS.

A spit of land, but more importantly, the Cape Breton Highlands can be seen in the background

After debarking, we drove to Arm of Gold and cancelled our stay, and then spotted an ice cream store so had an ice cream cone. After this, we drove part of Cabot Trail to Ingonish. It was beautiful but not as spectacular as I would have thought, probably because we had just come from Gros Morne which is more spectacular. Oddly the road signs were in English and Gaelic.

High on Cabot Trail looking toward the North Atlantic; the Volvo did not like these steep climbs, and at this first overlook, it wheezed and panted, though the temperature gauge never budged, so it must have been okay

The Cabot Trail Road snaking higher up the highlands

This and the photo above are views from the Cape Breton Highlands

On our way to Newfoundland we’d been seeing signs for McLobster from Maine through New Brunswick and into Nova Scotia. I wanted to get a photo of their advertising, so we stopped at a Mickey D’s and I had a McLobster roll. Quite good though the bread was not great.

We ended the day in Baddeck and stayed again at the Baddeck Inn (Remember? the place high on hill owned buy a Scotsman and his brother?) It was just us and a handful of motorcyclists.

From our Baddeck Inn looking out on the Arm of Gold; this was the same motel we stayed in on the way to NL

Though we went into Baddeck and to the Outdoor Store where the saleswoman had ordered MaryJane-type Birkenstocks in Suz’s size—none had arrived in the right size or color so Suz did not buy a pair. The power saleslady of our earlier stop in Baddeck was not there. Good thing, or we might both have wound up with new shoes and/or clothes.

It was in Antigonish, NS, where we found a McDonald's with the lobster rolls. I took several photos of the beautiful, brightly painted, wooden buildings in downtown. We stopped here at the post office.

After the lobster roll and ice cream cone, I ate a meager dinner of sardines and cheese and crackers outside by myself on the motel’s breezy porch. Suz and I have had another argument and are pretty much not talking to each other. 

After dinner, I got on the Inn’s computer and figured out the rest of our trip. I wrote to Peter and Johnny asking for a bed for the nights of July 16th and July 18th. Both replied back affirmatively. So our plan now is as follows:

July 14—Fundy National Park
July 15—Acadia National Park
July 16—Peter & Sonja’s in Jericho VT
July 17—Somewhere in Pennsylvania
July 18—John & Pat’s in Rural Retreat, Virginia
July 19—Suz drives home and I spend my first night at Hungry Mother SP in the cabin I’ve rented for the week of the reunion

Fireweed

We are both getting more testy and irritable, each saying or doing something to tick the other off several times every day. We’ve been in each other’s pockets for much too long now, and are anxious to “be done with it.” The prospect of even these five more long days in the car is discouraging.