The Way She Goes

Will be doing a double post today as we didnt have internet connection last night.  So this post is for 9/21.

I forgot to mentiom how odd our hotel in Antigonish was.  Its called the Claymore and is just separated from a strip mall.  Looks like its been there a long time, has a Claymore sword behind the counter and some dated scottish stuff arojnd the entrance.  Entry smelled very mildewy, luckily room was great.  Breakfast was at the attached restaurant and was good.

We now headed northeast towards the Cabot Trail, a scenic drive around and through Cape Breton and Cape Breton Highlands National Park.  An area thats hard to describe.  Its extremely hilly/mountainous, with occasional waterfalls, gorges, the coastline, different kinds of forests.  Its very pretty and tge drive is a lot of twisting ups and downs with pulloff views.

We got lucky/unlucky as when we got our passes I realized the one thing I had forgotten to book was a timeslot for the skyline ridge hike, but they had one opening left at 4pm. Its a popular hike that leads to 180 degree views of gorges and the coastline as it ends on a thinnish jutting hilltop.

So we got the timeslot, and went for lunch at a gondola area.  In winter its ski slopes and the lodge had food.  It was kind of stamdard fare.  But we had a great time chatting with the gal running the lift.  She complemented Sarahs hair which is how lots of conversations start for us.  So we got the skinny on what its like in NS, tbe job situation in Canada in general as I mentioned id looked in Newfoundland.  And she said Albertas the place right now for money but surprisingly Prince Edward Island really is trying to bring in people.  Pretty fun.  Best part was she thought we were in our twenties, that was a win.

Continued on the drive, and saw some seals along the way in the water.  Forgot to mention previous day we'd seen dolphins, so a couple interesting critters.  We got to the hike site at 4:30.  Now... this is where the day started not going quite great.  The hike while rated easy is a little over 4 miles.  We hadnt made camp yet amd we arent fast.  

The trail is neat, plants are cool, it slopes up and dowm relatively gently.  It also goes through a Moose "Exclosure".  So they found that moose have transformed areas of forest into prairie and theyre trykng to restore the forest in chjnks by blocking out moose.  You get to the gate and you have to close it after you pass.

The reason this happened is they had a Spruce Budworm problem.  Those worms killed spruce and led to an increase of fir and birch which moose love to eat saplings of.  The fence and gate make it like a reverse Jurassic Park, but with moose.

Anyway, we kept walking and walking and clouds were coming in.  And ag one point clouds have rolled onto the mountain and it starts misting.  Sarah being the best trooper is telling me if I want we can go to the end.  So we go to the end, its been over an hour amd we get to the boardwalls at the end and all we see is this

So now we start walking back.  And its getting darker and fewer people are around, and theres bears and moose existinv somewhere.  And it starts raining pretty hard.  So yeah pretty rough by the time we got out.  Sarahs pants ripped and we were soaked.  

Got in the car and headed to our camp.  At around 7:30 it was dark and nobody there for reservations.  We park the car and realize that the sites you have to walk to with your stuff, its not drive in.  Woof.  We walk to our site.  Its cool but thoroughly wet.

Big shoutout to Sarah shes my hero when im feeling poopiest.  And tgroughout tgis telling me its ok we'll figure it out.  She finds a place in town for food thats open until 9.

We leave and drive towards Chéticamp.  This was more harrowing then we thought as it was these same mountain roads, twists, turns, cliffs but pitch black and this part was umder construction so dirt and pepples road.

We got the the restaurant and sat down.  Doryman Tavern.  They had a live band going to my surprise playing Acadian and Zydeco im French and English.  Very awesome, learned that Chéticamp (prounounced Shetty Camp) was an Acadian (French settlers of thag region) settlement.  They were expelled by the Brits and spread out into New Brunswick, Maine, others into Louisiana (Cajun).  So hearing the guy chat about where differemt songs were from and about was very cool.  He also mentiomed theres now an Acadian gathering that happens every 5 years, and its third meeting in 2004 was in Chéticamp.

To accompony that they had an Acadian course of Fricot (stew), Bouilli (carrots, potatoes, and fried ham), and Blueberry cake.  

During this time we also looked up a list of motels, the waitress told us our best shot would just be to call all of them.  Unfortunately they were all full.

Sooooo... we drove back to the campground.  Parked in the lot and slept in the car.  Which was not that bad.  They had really nice bathrooms with showers.  The car was confy.  In fact we might do it again

<3 again to Sarah.  We had a good time from a pretty poopy day.  Id looked forward to that campsite and seeing the sunset on the ocean there but wasnt in the cards.