To the end of Nova Scotia and back
15.08.2017 - 15.08.2017
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Gaspe and Cape Breton
on baixing's travel map.
We woke up and got out of there real early that morning. It was probably the first time we put away a dry tent all trip. We had the road all to ourselves, but still managed to bump into a drunk/high group of 40 somethings stumbling their way along the trail. Weird people all around these parts.
The mountains here are made up of three layers, igneous like granite, metamorphic like schist and sedimentary like sandstone.
Here's me at the valley where you can see all three types.
When we got tired of all those lookouts, we kept going to the end of Nova Scotia, Meat Point. You have to take a 7 km dirt road all the way there, and it's difficult in a normal car, I would say. Not sure if it was worth going, because it's not part of the Cape Breton Highlands Park, it's a private campsite and the guy that manages it, is a little bit weird. The people who hang around there are pretty creepy too.
It's very beautiful, of course, and we found a way up the mountain. The manager told us it would take 20 minutes and his own daughter walks up there regularly with flip flops on, he said. The first part of that statement was true, but I'm afraid for his daughter if the second part was also.
We were supposed to see whales from that mountain, but of course, we didn't see any, and mom was a little scared of the cliff so we went back.
On our way back, we stopped at an outcropping of rocks. The main rock is granite, but 375 million years ago, earth movements and pressure cracked the rock and opened up cracks where minerals were squeezed and recrystallized. It makes an amazing scene, which was stunning in the bright sunlight.
We were getting pretty hungry, so we made lunch at Ingonish beach. We spent about an hour sunbathing and warming up from swimming in the icy, salty water.
Some people from Sydney told us to take the ferry back, because there would be too much construction if we followed our GPS. We thought about it but decided not to. Except when we tried to follow the GPS, we screwed up and ended up at the ferry anyway. It turned out he was right, of course and it was quite a pleasant way to skip the construction .
Then we drove and drove and drove, until finally we found a campsite near Pictou. A few times we found dead ends, following the "campsite" signs on the highway and our GPS to absolutely nothing. But we got there before dark and it ended up being alright. It was our last night of camping, so we figured we didn't need to peg anything out, including the actual walls of our tent. But guess what, it rained again, and we got up in the middle of the night to hammer some pegs in and spread the tarp out on the floor. Sigh.
