September 20--Louisbourg and Beyond

Today, we had a lazy start, ate breakfast a few feet from our RV park in ‘down town’ Louisbourg and headed out to the Old French fortress town. We fell asleep last night to the sounds of the wharf, mostly crab fishermen support systems. At breakfast, we talked with the cafe owner about American politics, Canadian politics, and the politics of fish! He was obviously very well educated about all three! He was an Obama fan, by the way!

Louisbourg is now a fascinating historical site on the order of Williamsburg, Virginia. In the mid 1700’s, it was one of the 3 (or 4, depending on who you listened to) busiest ports in North America, just after New York, Boston and, perhaps, Charleston. For me, it came as a surprise to learn that the trading of beaver pelts was NOT the principle business of the French in North America (OK, so my basic education in the history of this period was dished up in the 6th grade in major metropolis of Lake Crystal, Mn (population 1,500 + livestock). No, their business was dried cod . . . to the tune of the equivalent of $20 billion US per year. And they caught them one at a time using a hemp line, a 5 lb weight, and a hook. That’s a lot of cod! Well, enough of the history lesson. Let’s just say that Louisbourg was a very cool place!

So now let’s talk about the roads that came from the same time period. We hit every bump on them down route 4 alongside Bras D’Or. This is a HUGE drainage, 3700 square miles with six rivers feeding it, all within the island of Cape Breton, with only 18,000 people currently occupying it. Apparently, many have moved to the oil/gas fields of Alberta, and left their homes for sale. Many, many for sale signs along the shores.

Tonight we ended up at Antigonish, NS, and only had seafood as an appetizer. The steak and lamb chops were a terrific change of diet! We checked the tide tables for Fundy National Park, and thought we would be there tomorrow to see the high tide at around 5 p.m. Low tide is at midnight tomorrow, and we doubt seriously that we will see that one, so we will stay the next day to see the next low tide at noon. There will be a 40 feet difference between high and low, certainly something to see!

September 19--Louisbourg

Well, the weather was beautiful this morning, a little frost on the tent, but the heater is holding in there keeping us warm. So our choice was made for us.

Right now we are sitting in our lawnchairs looking at Louisbourg Bay (mile 4,509), smelling the ocean, watching the lobster boats go by, and contemplating ??? guess what ??? for dinner. There is a place just down the street called the Lobster Kettle, within walking distance.

We traveled down the eastern coast of Cape Breton today, Steve had lots of practice braking and turning with the bike and trailer rig. We had a short little ferry ride across a river, and then made a right turn and headed for Baddeck. Great highway, and lots of photo opportunities if we had a panorama lens.



We spent a few hours at the Alexander Graham Bell Museum. Did you know that Bell had invented the photophone years ago, turning light waves into electrical and sound way back in the late 1800’s? I learned what a classy lady his wife was in so many different ways! It was a fascinating museum, and amazing the number of things Bell worked on in his life. His family still lives in Baddeck, a charming little community with lots of sailboats in the harbour. There are about 20 residences on the Bell property belonging to various Bell offspring.

After the museum and lunch, we headed back north to Sydney, and thought for a very quick moment about taking the ferry to Newfoundland, but passed it by for Louisbourg. Tomorrow we are going to the old French fortress/museum and are advised it takes about 4 hours to tour. We will be there when they open at 9:30 a.m and then head towards the Bay of Fundy National Park in New Brunswick tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow will mark the furthest point East of our great adventure. Thus, officially, we’ll be ‘on our way home’ tomorrow although it will be a much longer trek back (going by way of North Carolina, Texas, etc.)!

September 18--Cabot Trail

Well, we woke to clouds, but not rain, so we decided to head on up the Cabot Trail. We left our camp about 8 a.m. and headed north. We stopped at several places along the way, looking for quilts for the cabin, but not finding anything we liked. We stopped in Cheticamp, and looked at the hooked rugs they made. I even gave it a try at ‘hooking’, but was an abysmal failure at that.

We entered the park, and it very quickly got darker and darker. By the time we had passed French Mountain, we were in the clouds and the rain. After about 30 kilometers, we stopped for lunch (lobster roll, scallops, mussels, shrimp) in the pouring rain. We tried to sit it out until it quit, but after lunch with dessert, it was still coming down. So we got out our rain gear and electric heated clothing and geared up and headed out. Much better with electrics on. After a few kilometers we were passed by a Ducati who we later saw at the end of the park. It turns out he was doing a coast to coast Canada ride for an online motorcycle blog. He had picked up the bike in Toronto, and was riding it to St. John, Newfoundland, to begin his coast to coast trip. He was planning on being in Vancouver by October 7, but said 300 kilometers a day was about all his body could stand on the bike (too bad he didn’t have a Goldwing!). He also said the rain had followed him wherever he went, so we should definitely go a different way. I think he was right, because we set up camp close to Ingonish and had sunshine about an hour after we left him! Despite what the travel books say about the West Coast of Cape Breton as being stunning, we have been more taken by the East Coast! Perhaps it was just the rain and fog that skewed our views!

We are camped tonight at Broad Cove Campground just inside the Cape Breton National Park, and will head to Banneck tomorrow, to visit the Alexander Graham Bell National Museum. Then we think we may head over to Sydney and the Louisville French Fortress if the weather is good, and straight to the causeway to get off the island of NS if the weather is gray and rainy. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. Bay of Fundy or Louisville???

September 17--Still at McLeod's campground

Well, we woke up to clouds, but they cleared off by 9 a.m. Yeah! We slept in waiting for someone to bring us coffee in bed, but it didn’t happen. So we got up, dressed and packed up our dirty clothes and the computer and went to Inverness for coffee and the laundromat. We had coffee at a quik stop, but the coffee line was long. The fellow in front of us said we had to be quick, or it would be gone. He said they served over 500 cups of coffee a day from the dinky little place.

So we got our coffee, some cinnamon rolls, and headed back to the laundry. They had a great wi-fi connection, so I was able to upload several days of journals, and a few pictures before Steve got the laundry folded! Is he a good boy!! (I’m the best!...Steve)

Then we headed south to the Glenora Distillery, the one of the few makers of single malt whiskey (can’t call it scotch) in North America. We had a tour of the distillery, a lovely lunch accompanied by scottish tunes, and left with a couple of bottles of aged scotch (seemed to be worth more than the Wing!) and a DVD from our lunchtime Celtic mandolin player.

We spent a quiet evening in camp watching the sun, then the sunset, over the ocean. We visited with one of the “seasonals” who said they lived on the other side of Cape Breton about an hour away, and they took their RV over to McLeod’s every year for the last 22 years and left it for the summer. We heard the story about the island across the bay, and how wonderful the ocean is during the summertime right on McLeod’s beach.

I guess there were 3 trailers actually involved in the flood several weeks ago, one washed clear out to sea, There is a fine toilet sitting on a beach a mile away. . .the last remains of the ill fated RV.

I met a woman in the showers and we talked about the ferocious wind we had both encountered on PEI. She said she had heard that they had actually had to turn a cruise liner away from the harbor at St. Johns, Newfoundland, because of the high waves caused by the remains of Hurricane Ike, the first time for that to happen in 80 years. It sounded like we were really lucky in the campsites we chose while we were on PEI. She said she and her husband were in an exposed campsite, and they were afraid their truck pop-up was going to blow over.

We had a lovely fire this evening, and sat outside until the first stars came out. The evening was capped off with showers and an episode of Heroes. Tomorrow we are headed north on our red chariot to traverse the Cabot Trail.

September 16 til ???--Cape Breton

Well, we were shooting for the 11:15 a.m. ferry from PEI to Caribou, Nova Scotia. We took out time getting up, having breakfast, packing up, and getting the bike loaded. We were on the road and to the ferry site at Woods Island by 9 a.m. and in line for the 9:30 ferry.

A fellow came up and talked with us about our camper. He had a similar motorcycle camper but pulled it behind his truck. He was from New Brunswick, and spent the summer on PEI working for his son who does something with electrical mosquito abatement. We laughed about how the mosquitoes in NB actually ATE DEET and it seemed like they were on steroids after sucking it up. The DEET did nothing to keep the mosquitoes away from us in NB.

Well, finally the ferry started loading, and we were in line for the 45 degree vertical climb up to the upper deck (my knuckles were certainly white, and Steve should have been feeling my claw marks). But at the last minute they waved us to the lower deck with the Big Rigs!!! Whew!

After a 90 minute ride during which we had a great American breakfast complete with fried eggs and sausages, we landed in Caribou and headed east to Cape Breton Island. Just gorgeous!! But the colors haven’t turned much up here yet, either. We stopped at the Glenora Distillery, and were going to do their tour, but it was getting late, and we decided to go to the next town and settle in and come back tomorrow. We were directed to the McLeod Campsite about 20 kilometers away by several people. When we finally got there and turned on the gravel road, we were very skeptical. The gravel road was potholed and a bit rough, and then you had to go down a slight hill on gravel to the campsite office, about 1 mile off the main highway. However, it is fabulous! We are staying at least two nights, and maybe another one.

The reason the road was so bad is that it is a county road and apparently two weeks ago one of the remnants of a hurricane (Hannah, I think) arrived over the McLeod campsite and stayed for several days, dumping 30 inches of water on a very centralized 25 mile square area. It washed away two of the trailers that were camping in the campground. The owner apologized for the road conditions, but it seems he is still trying to get his campground back together after this storm. He also told us that the wind we had in PEI the last two days was the remnants of Hurricane Ike, so you can imagine the winds Steve drove through on PEI.

I’ll upload photos later. Tomorrow we are doing laundry and then going back to the Glenora Distillery for a tour and tasting.

September 15 PEI and Hurricane Ike

The wind blew and blew and blew during the night. We woke up to lots of gray clouds and wind, and debated what we should do for the day. Stay or go east to Red Point Prov. Park. It took us a while, but we decided to pack up and move, and if we didn’t make it to Red Point, oh well.

We also needed isobutane for our camp store, some more cans of soup, and some cash, so that was on our list of things to do first today. After driving through a number of small towns and battling the wind, we decided to turn into Summerside since it was a larger town, and might have a sporting goods store. Meanwhile, it had cleared off, and the wind stopped a little. Summerside had a Wal-mart, but we couldn’t find anything we were looking for in it (Stuffy Steve should be happy). So we went to the super Atlantic store and got the food items. They directed us to Canadian Tire for the isobutane, and downtown to the CIBC ATM. Canadian Tire is NOT a tire store, it is like a Lowe’s hardware store (if you are imaginative!), I’m not sure they even sell tires there. Leave it to our neighbors to the North! While in Summerside at the ATM, Steve was approached by a couple of missionaries from Salt Lake City. They were very happy to see a Utah license plate and were so enthusiastic they forgot to proselytize him. I guess they thought a biker was not too conducive to conversion!

After taking care of these pressing matters, we headed east again, with Steve battling the wind all the way. We had lunch at the New London Seafood Restaurant, and had oysters on the half shell, steamed mussels, fried clams and baked sole with lobster sauce. Ummmmm, good! After lunch, we planned a route to Red Point and gave up on seeing the National Park because of the wind. After several hours of fighting the wind, we decided to cut short our attempt at getting to a campsite at Red Point, and tried to find a campsite on the way to Woods Island, the ferry location.
We ended up at the Murray River campground, a private campground but without internet. We got directions to the library that had internet service and sent a message to our kids letting them know where we were.

So far we are 4,060 miles into our trip, and the motorcycle tires are holding up pretty well. . . but it’s doubtful they would hold out for the remaining 6,000 miles of our trip. Jon has ordered us some new ones that we will have put on when we get to his house next week (Thanks, Jon!).

September 14 PEI and lobster

The mosquitos came out quickly this morning, so they pushed us to get moving away from them. So we took down camp, called Jamie to wish her a happy birthday and left a message on her cellphone, packed up, and headed south to Shediac. New Brunswick is just lovely, and most of the roads we took were great. We arrived in Shediac about 11:30 and stopped at the giant lobster statue for a photo opportunity. We also checked in with the visitor’s bureau (a very unlively sort of guy). We got directions to the lobster boat tours, and headed downtown to the quay.

After a false turn that took us to the public quay, we got back on the main road and took the next road to the commercial quays. We found the boat tour people, but they didn’t have any opening for a tour until today at 4:15 p.m. Sounded like a good little tour, you got to go out with the lobster boat, pull up lobster crates, learn about the Shediac Bay and how lobsters grow, with the finale being learning how to crack a lobster and then a eat lobster dinner. But since we would have to wait for more than a day, we decided to ask about a place to have lobster at.
She recommended Terry’s Fish Market two doors down, so we went over there for lunch. Terry was an older gentleman who had run the fish market his whole life with his wife. They are the only two working there. He had a pile of cooked lobsters, and picked out a couple for us, cracked them, and gave us some potato salad, a roll, and coleslaw, for a total price of $26 Canadian. We took our trays upstairs, (see the picture) and gorged on lobster.

Then we headed over to PEI and crossed the Confederation Bridge (the longest span of bridge in the Western Hemisphere). We headed to the west coast, going through Summerside first. The tall ships were at anchor there, we missed them sailing in, but they were good to see.

Then we drove up the west coast for a while before heading across the northern tip of the island for Jacques Cartier Provincial Park. The word to describe this area is wild. The wind sweeps across it from the west and keeps it fairly deserted. The Prov. Park was on the lee side, and pretty empty. Another couple was there for several days from Ontario with their two standard poodles, and a third couple pulled in from BC later in the evening. They all came over to check our our rig, no one had ever seen anything like it before. This has been a common reaction at just about everywhere that we stop.

We had nice chats, and then retired to our nest for some soup and to watch a couple episodes of Heroes, the first season. Life is very tough!

September 13 New Brunswick

Tonight we are camped at the Kounchamajigee (this is not the correct spelling) National Park in New Brunswick. We arrived fairly early (4:30 p.m.) which was great since we had time to set up the tent and then go for a walk out to the sand dunes. Quite extraordinary! The park is at the mouth of a river flowing into the Atlantic Ocean, so the waters mix here to create a wonderful bird flyway. Lots and lots of different birds, cormorants, plovers, cranes, gulls, snakebirds. On the way out to the dunes we passed a couple who had two seven month old brown golden doodles, so we had to say hello. They were SOOooo cute! We also passed several piles of bear scat, chock full of berry seeds. The park attendant told us to store our food in the car.......then she looked up, saw the bike and said, just be careful, because there were several black bears in the vicinity. We met some folks from Sacramento who have been here for several days hiking, and they had actually seen a bear several days ago. Sooo.....we’ll be careful!

Steve’s taken some great photos from our walk this evening. I’ll try to pick up some of the best ones and upload them when I have a good internet connection.

This morning we got up and were going to go to the farmer’s market in Caraquet for breakfast but we couldn’t find it. After wandering around for a while downtown towing the trailer, we gave up and headed down the road towards the Acadian Village just outside of Caraquet. This was very interesting, similar to Williamsburg, VA, where they have tried to replicate how the typical Acadian families lived during the 1800’s. Every building had a person in period dress, and who talked about what it was like to live then. We found a cauldron of corn on the cob they were cooking and handing out today, their last day open for the season, so we each had an ear of corn and a molasses cake, ummmm yummy!

We headed out from the Acadian village in search of lunch, and finally stopped at the first open restaurant we found. Much to our delight, they had plenty of lobster choices on the menu, so Steve had a lobster omelet, and I had a lobster roll. Umm, just what we had been waiting for. We topped lunch off with a piece of warmed up sugar pie and ice cream and coffee. Way more than we needed, but it was just great!

This morning when we left the Berry Patch campground it was 60 degrees and misty, overcast. It was cloudy, rainy, and misty for much of the day, finally clearing right before we got to the national park. The mosquitos have been bad at both campsites, and our Deet doesn’t seem to phase them much. Tonight we got campfire wood when we checked in, and had a nice fire, a light meal, and great showers. We are tucked in our little tent with the heater on low, just keeping the chill off of us.

Tomorrow we are headed to Shediac, the lobster capital of New Brunswick. I want to go out on a lobster boat, so we’ll see if that happens. We may just stop for lobster, and head over to PEI. We are definitely behind on our schedule, so we may be at Jon and Lori’s by next Sunday (not tomorrow). Maybe Monday, we’ll see how it goes.