cape breton, nova scotia

From Truro, our next plan was to head up on Wednesday to Cape Breton and spend a few days, but the weather report was not cooperating. With a sunny forecast for Wednesday and rain forecasted—at times torrential—from Thursday through Saturday, we decided to get up to Cape Breton as fast as we could and see as much as possible on Wednesday. The Cabot Trail through Cape Breton Highlands National Park was gorgeous; the Trail winds through the park, over mountains and through cute little Acadian towns dotted with French Canadian homes in bright colors. We saw some colorful people too; at the first scenic viewpoint in Cap Le Moine, we saw our first transvestite of the trip, sitting on a rock smoking a cigarette in a bleach blond wig and fishnet tights.







At Cap Rouge, we saw a few minke whales playing among the lobster traps in the sea - no need for an expensive whale watching cruise!! We stopped at a little restaurant for lunch and had the most amazing mussels (local) that I’ve ever eaten. We also drank local beer from “drinking jars” and took these goofy pictures to the tune of the sea shanties piped through the outdoor speakers.








Halfway through the trail, near the top and most remote part of the island, our check engine light came on (I neglected to mention that one part of our apparently rusty muffler cracked open during the drive up, making our road trip a wonderfully noisy one). Long story short, we rushed a bit more to get down the east side of the trail and back to some civilization in case our car started to deteriorate further, and ended up doing the entire Cabot Trail in one day. We stayed at a little ocean-side lodge in the town of Ingonish Wednesday night and fell asleep to the sound of waves lapping the shore. On Thursday morning, since we had done in one day what we had planned to do in three, we decided to head back to the house where Dan spent his early childhood in Perry, Maine, right across the Canadian border (that will be the next and final installment of this protracted vacation recap…bored yet??).