Chéticamp – Meanderings & Mind Munchies

Skyline Trail

Today it was sunny and hot. We hiked the Skyline Trail. It’s a very popular trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park. It’s so popular that at specific times of the year, you need to make a reservation for a specific time slot if you want to hike it.

The trail itself was fairly boring. There wasn’t much to look at, and it was very sunny and humid.

The trail was pretty much 2 miles of this.

Once we reached the headland, though, we had a beautiful view of the Atlantic Ocean. We even got to see some pilot whales.

Here, you can see the boardwalk leading down to the viewing platform. There is at least one other platform down the headland a bit further.

Looking off to the left. That winding road is the Cabot Trail.

See that mossy green groundcover blanketing the mountain in the photo above this one? That is wild blueberry. Yum!

Greg took a tumble on the way back from the hike, so we headed back to the camper to relax for the rest of the day.

Whale Cove

Greg decided that today we would drive to Inverness. Along the way, we stopped at Whale Cove to take some photos.

As Greg was taking photos, one of the local residents walked by and struck up a conversation. She told him that if he wanted an even better view of the cove, there was a gravel road just around the bend that led to a cemetery. Although the cemetery was private, the owners didn’t mind visitors.

So off we went to check it out. (If you look at the bluff in the first photo above, that’s where we were headed.)

Inverness

The town of Inverness was bustling with locals and tourists. We headed to the beach to use the facilities and have a look around.

The Dancing Goat

Then we headed to The Dancing Goat for lunch. This restaurant had been recommended to us when we were staying back in Baddeck, so we wanted to try it out.

The restaurant was very different from what I expected. It was a little like a Starbucks if Starbucks also offered sandwiches.

On the way back to Chéticamp, we stopped for more photos.

It was a very windy day. The waves were crashing into the shore.

Impressions of Cape Breton

I thought I would share a couple of my impressions about Cape Breton for any readers who might want to visit here someday.

The roads aren’t great. It can be quite a bumpy ride, particularly when towing.
Parking is a hassle. There are few if any public parking lots. Most parking is on the street, and the roads are narrow, particularly for trucks.
Cape Breton and PEI have a very small town, summer vacationer feel to them. At least at this time of year, tourists seem to outnumber the locals. Despite that, the two islands don’t feel touristy in the way that the Jersey Shore does.
When we were staying in Baddeck, all of the road signs were in Gaelic and English. Now that we’re in Chéticamp, all of the signs are in French and English. Also, many of the signs in museums and parks include the Mi’kmaq language.
French seems to be the primary language. Most residents are bilingual, and most of the tourists seem to be French-speaking Canadians. Whenever a park worker or store clerk greets us, they say, “Bonjour. Hello.” I gather that, based on how we respond, they know which language to continue in.
People are incredibly helpful and nice.

Les Trois Pignons

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.

Bog Trail

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!

Wild flowers

Since the rest of this post has no associated pictures to go with the narrative, I thought I would take the opportunity to post some pictures of all of the lovely wildflowers we have been seeing while in Canada. Honestly, even the dandelions are prettier here.

(I Googled the names of the flowers, so there are probably errors.)

Yes, I know I included two photos of wild roses, but they are so beautiful, and they were growing everywhere.

Wind!

The woman who owns the campground where we are currently staying warned us when we arrived that the following 24 hours were going to be windy, and boy, was she right!

As we sat in the camper our first night, the wind was so strong that the camper was rocking. At one point, the wind lifted our large mat up outside and knocked over the grill. Apparently, winds as high as 150 km/hour are not uncommon here.

Canadian health care

Yesterday was another travel day. Greg decided to drive all the way back to Baddeck and then across the island to our new location near Chéticamp rather than go west on the Cabot Trail through the mountains. It cost us another hour on the road, but it was safer and less stressful.

I could tell when I woke up in the morning that something was going on with my bladder. By the time we arrived at our campground outside of Chéticamp, I knew I had a UTI.

So when we woke up today, we headed to the local urgent care center. It cost us $125 to see the doctor, and we had to pay in cash. Then we waited. This urgent care center also takes appointments, and it was clear that appointments took precedence. We waited about an hour and a half to see the doctor.

He confirmed that I did, indeed, have an infection and prescribed an antibiotic.

Since it would take a little while for the antibiotic to be ready, we decided that it was a perfect excuse to go out to lunch at Le Gabriel in Chéticamp. It had been recommended to us by Lisa, the woman who owns our campground. I thought the food was decent, but nothing special.

The rest of the day was spent doing laundry. Very exciting.