Bog Trail

Our whale watching trip for today was canceled due to high winds, so we had the entire day free to explore.

We decided to drive up the Cabot Trail along the route that we had chosen not to take with the camper.

But first, we stopped at Les Trois Pignons, which means The Three Gables in French. It was a cute little museum describing the history of the Acadians who settled in Chéticamp.

The museum featured a large exhibit of hooked rugs and placards explaining the history of making hooked rugs. It was surprisingly interesting, considering that I have never found hooked rugs to be particularly attractive.

All of the framed pictures on the walls are actually hooked rugs.

The women who made these started by taking the raw sheeps wool, carding it, turning it into yarn, dying it with all the colors that they planned to use (in one instance, 29 shades of brown!), and then hooking the rug based on a design that they had drawn onto canvas.

Believe it or not, this is a hooked rug! It is about 6 ft x 10 ft.

With a new appreciation for the ingenuity of the early Acadian settlers, we headed off to check out more of the Cabot Trail.

Cabot Trail to Pleasant Bay

Here are some of the photos from our drive. It was a very hazy, humid day.

This is the only photo that really shows it, but it was so hazy that the Atlantic Ocean blended into the sky at the horizon line.

One of the park rangers noticed me taking photos of the wildflowers, and she suggested that I check out the Bog Trail if I wanted to see even more wildflowers.

Sadly, the only wildflowers we saw on the trail were pitcher plants, bog cotton, and white-fringed bog orchids. However, we did get to see this shy fellow.

His croaking led us to his location, but he was still difficult to find.

The Whale Interpretive Museum

Once in Pleasant Bay, we toured the Whale Interpretive Museum.

I’m not generally a museum person because I experience information overload, but this museum was small enough to get through in about an hour and very interesting.

Seafood Stop Restaurant

Yes, that’s really the name of the restaurant. The folks who own our campground recommended it, and we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to eat more lobster.

Once again, I dug in before remembering to take a photo.

Greg and I both had the lobster cold plate, which included cold lobster pieces, potato salad, cole slaw, pasta salad, a roll, and melted butter for the lobster. Yum!