Canada Day 4: August 3, 2010

 

BONUS VIDEO!

Woke up bright and early today to a nice pancake breakfast courtesy of Chris.  After breakfast, we drove a few minutes down the Cabot Trail to the signature Skyline Trail for a morning hike.  We had heard that this trail would be full of wildlife.  In fact, we even received brochures on the way into the campground about how to defend yourself in case of a coyote or bear attack.  Needless to say Laur and I in particular were on guard as we started the hike.  The trail was very flat and took about three hours since we stopped often for pictures.  We were at treeline for the entire hike, and walked counterclockwise through well maintained paths that started inland and wove out towards the coast.  For the first hour and a half we didn’t see many other people or any wildlife except a bald eagle in the distance.  When we reached a boardwalk out onto the cliffs overlooking the sea and the Cabot Trail and shoreline, we had pretty much given up hope on seeing wildlife.  We figured we must have just been unlucky or caught it on a bad day. 

Our luck changed about ten minutes after leaving the boardwalk.  Joe was the last person in our group when we were walking.  We won’t forget the expression on his face when he motioned for us to come back and look through the pine tree we had all just passed to see a huge bull moose chomping away on the trees!  We were psyched…and maybe a little nervous, too, since we were easily within 5 ft. of it!  I’m not sure how all of us walked by it and didn’t even notice him!  The moose complete with huge antlers worked his way out and crossed the trail we had just walked through.  We watched the moose eat some more leaves and took tons of pictures until he walked further away…and until we had to share the moose with lots of other hikers.  Just a few minutes down the trail we spotted a young bull along the side of the trail eating away at the plants.  He definitely gave us a scare when we started walking towards us on the trail!  We backed up and stepped behind a tree just to be on the safe side.  Got lots of neat pictures here too until the trail got overcrowded.  Fortunately, the Skyline Trail did not disappoint us!  It was definitely the closest any of us had ever been to a moose!

After our hike, we set off to drive more of the Cabot Trail.  Within ten minutes of leaving the part, we stopped where a few other cars were parked to see a female moose and its baby on the side of the road.  We really must have lucked out today…four moose in an hour!  The entire Cabot Trail drive including the hike and other stops took us about 11 hours.  The most scenic part of the drive was probably north of the Skyline Trail where we wound in and out of the coast and through the rolling mountains.  Another pretty part was the scenic road we took off the trail near the fishing towns of New Haven and Neil’s Harbor.  Drove off the trail a few kilometers twice to see some waterfalls. The first, Beulach Ban Falls, was small and probably would have been impressive just after a good rainfall.  Maryanne Falls, where we ate lunch, was much more scenic.  Joe and Chris lugged the cooler down next to the swimming hole at the base of the falls so we could have a scenic picnic lunch.  It reminded me of Diana’s Bath in NH. We stayed for a while, took lots of pictures and watched Chris jump off the rocks into the water.

Back on the road, we took a road off the Cabot Trail to save some time and check another animal off our list.  Just before the end of the road we spotted a mother black bear and her three cubs on the side of the road.  Unfortunately the noise of our car scared the bears so we didn’t get to see much of them, but we were all excited that we at least saw the black bears.  We finally arrived back in the town of Cheticamp just after 8pm and stopped at Le Gabriel for dinner.  Had some tasty spinach dip, wings, pasta and seafood while chatting with some locals and listening to some live Acadian folk music by a father-son team.  Cheticamp is still very much French.  The signs are in both French and English, people speak both languages, the flag is a French flag with a yellow star in the blue strip, and some of the culture remains.  Other parts of Cape Breton on the east coast and southern parts are more Gaelic and have bilingual signs.  People here are definitely friendly and very proud of their local culture and heritage.  However, I didn’t completely feel like we got a good sense of the local culture.  Think we would have needed to go into the towns and interpretive centers a little more to get the full picture.

It was late when we arrived back at the campground and raindrops were falling so we set a small fire and then decided to call it a night.