From VA to Labrador in 3 weeks, our 2011 Adventure

[CLynn85]

Day 7: Peggy's Cove

I'll spare you all Day 7, since that was mostly our ranting and rambling about our next touristy destination - Peggy's Cove. If you feel so inclined our blog post is here:

http://clcanada.blogspot.com/2011/08...-tourists.html

It did however have my favorite graffiti of the trip on a lonely bench away from the masses:

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Day 8: Kids love us, Dogs love us, Birds love us.....

We slept pretty well last night at the "Halifax" KOA, it seems like our pattern of staying at a campground with water/electric every couple nights is a good way to go since it keeps our batteries topped off and the convenience of having water inside the camper is nice. I say "Halifax" with quotes, because even though it's in the county, it's no where close to the city. We dined on pancakes since this is the first campground on this trip to have a pancake breakfast, and headed off to the capitol of Nova Scotia, armed with only a myriad of free tourist maps.

Lindy, in her week or so of Canada research, had stumbled across the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax. Since it boasted a healthy exhibit on the Titanic, she knew I'd be game. We were pleasantly surprised too, in that it also had other well thought out exhibits on topics such as Nova Scotia shipwrecks, sailboats, goose boats, a viewable archive, and an awesome assortment of models, both contemporary and antique, of local vessels. It quickly proved itself to be one of the best museums I've ever visited outside of some of the "National" museums of Washington. If you're ever in Halifax, it's worth a couple hours of your time, especially if you're a transportation geek like me.

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They also happened to have a tracker for Atlantic hurricanes in the lobby, convenient since we were trying to dodge our second natural disaster of the trip - Hurricane Irene!

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Also included in the tour was the opportunity to go out onto the pier and board the CSS Acadia, a research vessel that spent close to 30 years in service mapping out the bays and rivers vital to this region. It's amazing how well built these older ships were and how well it has held up even to this day.

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Upon returning to the public parking lot where we'd left our rig, we were greeted by another winged creature. This one, some form of local bird, took a special liking to the Skamper-ized Tacoma. We laughed about it's presence and were about to shoo it off when it hopped on the roof. As we tried to dig out the camera, it began to dine on the buffet of insects that had met their fate on the front of the camper, and by the time I was able to snap a shot, it expressed it's love for the Skamper by spreading its wings and hugging our truck, seriously, birds love us....

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To be continued...

[CLynn85]

Day 8: Part II

Lindy had identified the public gardens as a place she wanted to explore in the city so we hopped in the truck and wound our way up from the shore. As we hopped out and slid across the street we were greeted by a sign declaring pets to be prohibited. No worries, as this gave me an excuse not to have to stare at flowers for an hour, so I volunteered to be on dog-sitting detail and walk the dog around the outskirts of the park while she explored the gardens for a bit. We did run across each other once at the fence, we call this "Dog : Excluded".

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All in all, we really enjoyed our time in Halifax. It's a nice city and I can see why people would be proud to call it home, I would welcome the opportunity to return sometime in the not too distant future and spend more time exploring around.

As we departed Halifax we paused to plot our route. We knew we would eventually be making our way towards North Sydney, where the ferry departs to New Foundland, and Lindy had picked out some potential campsites on the eastern side of the mainland. We had already spent a lot of time following coastal routes, and the highway route would have taken us all the way back up to Truro, but there was a network of linking secondary roads right through the heart of the province, so we thought we'd give it a shot. As we departed the highway onto the first road, things were going pretty well. The road was nice and the views were good. A couple roads later after passing through the town of Dean, we found ourselves on a well-graded gravel road to Trafalgar. No, I'm not talking about some villain from the latest Harry Potter movie, it's a real "town". After miles of gravel roads through counties and game preserves, we'd decided we'd had enough of what I've declared the "Trans-Nova Scotia Overland Route" and headed south to rejoin the coastal roads. Much to our dismay, the paved roads paled in comparison to the smoothness of the gravel roads, and for the most part, had dis-jointed bits of pavement interrupted by an abundance of tall grass. These roads seemed to link what must have been logging communities of years gone by, but the inhabitants are all gone and hardly any cars now pass by them. Below is an assortment of what we saw for the entire trip.

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Back on the coastal roads, things were mildly better. Every once and a while we did hit a fresh strip of pavement, and since the pup had been riding in the backseat for most of the day, it was nice to have opportunities to get him out. Point Bickerton gave us the opportunity to view yet another northern Atlantic light house, and the dog as always loved the green grass. This was turning into one of our longer driving days so we hit the road once more and tore through fishing village after fishing village, and just when things were rolling good, we see signs. "Road ends 500m? What do you mean the road ends?!??!!?" We had been seeing signs for "Country Harbour Ferry" for quite some time, and wondering: "Where does that go???". It turns out, it's just a ferry across the harbor so we could continue on the same route we'd been traveling. Luckily we had timed it pretty well by shear dumb luck, and had virtually no wait for the once an hour ferry. Things like this are still commonplace in these parts, even though in our region they've long since disappeared and been replaced by bridges.

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Lindy had done a good job researching campsites, but at the last minute we switched up our plans to instead go to a town that had been mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide, Canso. It was described as a fishing village and the sight of a National Park and trail system. What she hadn't read were the two sentences describing the town's demise since the great northern cod stocks dried up in the early 90's and subsequent unemployment....

[Christian P.]

Awesome. I am thinking of taking my fiance down to Sept-Iles next weekend and do part of this route...in the winter...

[4x4x4doors]

.....

[TimS]

Glad you had a nice trip. Its funny to see pictures posted that you had taken also. We have been though New Bruswick and Nova Scotia quite a few times. It never gets old. Living here in Maine, its close and yet it seems far away. Hope you return again.

[CLynn85]

Day 9: No Frackin' Way

When we pulled into Canso it was almost dark, so we had an idea of how deserted the town was, but didn't get to experience it. The "Campground" we stayed at was a former marina, and judging by the number of slips and amount of equipment rotting away, it must've been a pretty busy one in its day. We explored the town a bit more and learned some more about its history, but due to weather closing in again opted not to stay and take the boat ride over to the National Park island. Canso it seems, like so many other small fishing villages in the area, is doing all it can to hang on and embrace tourism as its primary source of revenue rather than fishing. Only time will tell if it has worked and whether or not this becomes a complete ghost town.

One last thing from Canso. This building was our first glace at the town. Imagine rolling into a desolate town at sundown and seeing this place. All we needed was some Halloween music and bats flying out of the rafters. On the way out of town we had to stop and get a picture. This too is a reconstruction effort, but considering it has signs on it saying “Beware of falling bricks” who knows…

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Following the coast, we set our sights on Cape Breton. Along the way we added another lighthouse spotting to the list. This one is located near Queensboro.

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JD took some time to explore the information kiosk near the lighthouse park.

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By lunchtime we were on Cape Breton. Our first order of business was to find the local information center and find out the latest on hurricane Irene. Given the forecast, we decided to delay a day before taking the Ferry into Newfoundland. This meant we would have a day and a half to explore.

The first sight we were greeted by was a series of large signs reading “No Frackin Way” glancing over to the series of homes and outbuildings whose owners were obviously responsible for the signage we were shocked to see Homer, Bart, Marge, Lisa, baby Maggie, and the rest of The Simpsons cast. Who knew that Springfield was in Nova Scotia.

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Taking the highway we came through the town of Baddeck. Alexander Graham Bell lived near this town for a while, and there is a national historic site/museum commemorating his work. The hillside of the museum also gives a great view of the lighthouse. The town sports a lot of nice shops, a good hardware store, and some eateries. The town is also the hq for a lot of outdoor outfitters who run tours and such.

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We pressed on trying to get a bit closer to our jumping-off point for the ferry to Newfoundland. We did manage to find some abandoned backroads to explore, which turned out to, according to the bloke at the campground, be the remains of the original main pass from Baddeck to Sydney. We also managed to hit another *yuck* KOA for the night, though this one was probably the exception to the rule. The staff was very friendly, and the facilities were wonderful. We joked about them being fake (or maybe real) Ozzies though, because they just happened to be in Sydney, they all looked and talked suspiciously like Crocodile Dundee, and they took a particular liking to our rig.

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I should note that I was anticipating being able to do more unofficial/pirate/backcountry camping on this leg of the trip than we were able to. It just seemed that no matter what there weren't many friendly looking options for places to setup for the night.

[TangoBlue]

Very nice. I'm going to have to put this trip on my list. Pretty novel idea to take pictures of the trip and then post it too... I'll have to look into that.

[CLynn85]

Day 10: Cape Breton and the Cabot Trail

Today was a bit of an odd day for us. We were trying to make our schedules work out such that we could time the crossing into New Foundland just right and help dodge the hurricane, make a night crossing, and allow our friend, Mike, to catch up since he’s doing a slightly similar trip and was going to be in New Foundland at the same time as us. This meant we had a day to kill in the area near the North Sydney ferry terminal with no real agenda.

We had been wanting to do some paddling up here since we’d gotten to Maine. Although kayaks have been on my to-purchase list for some time, they keep getting pushed aside for other priorities, so we were planning to rent them at some of the numerous port towns. For whatever reason, time, weather, etc, it hadn’t worked out thus far. Since the KOA was on a lake/bay and had a pair of 16’ canoes, we decided to rent one for the morning and get out on the water. After a couple hours we dragged it back on shore, packed up the truck, and set off.

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Since we had learned more about the "old road to Baddeck" we set off to explore it some more, and found that, aside from some washed out bits, it's all still there and relatively passable. With some more time or 2-wheeled transportation I'd like to try to make it through the entire distance.

Not wanting to waste the whole day, we found pavement again and followed part of the “Cabot Trail”, which circumnavigates Cape Breton and highlights the Celtic heritage of the area, as well as some of the natural beauty. We stopped at a couple of galleries, and after a picnic, hiked a trail down to some falls on the New River.

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By this time Mike had almost caught up to us, and it was getting closer to check-in time for our ferry, so we met up with him in Sydney for dinner and got in line for the ferry. This has been the largest vessel I’ve ever been aboard and for a ferry, I was impressed. We being a bit more budget-minded opted for general seating, which was surprisingly well equipped. I could’ve slept far better in one of the cabins, but once the lights went dim and we pulled away from port, we were both asleep for the trip across the strait.

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[CLynn85]

Day 11: Planet Express

We arrived on the shore of Newfoundland, which is by all intents and purposes a rock off the coast of mainland Canada, at approximately 6:30 am this morning. A little dazed after spending the night on the boat, we stumbled down to the vehicle deck and our unloading went surprising quickly. After hopping off at the first sight of grass to let the dog stretch his legs, we stopped at the visitor center. Much to Lindy’s dismay I emerged with a fresh stack of maps, books, and brochures to clutter up her side of the truck. I had also managed to get a map and list of all the lighthouses on the island from the gal at the desk, something they don’t put on the shelves, we were in business. Just up the road from the info center was Cape Ray, which just happened to have a lighthouse, and what a lighthouse. Finally a real tower, constructed of brick, not these dorky little wooden shacks with a light bulb we’d seen thus far.

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Heading out of town, Lindy glanced at the map and noted a thinner, red line, that seemed to parallel the highway but follow the coast. After a few dead ends we found it, a gravel 2-track leading towards the shore, perfect. After bouncing down the track, it became apparent that ATV’s are the preferred mode of off-highway transport on the island, as all the paths leading off the road were significantly narrower than our truck. Finally, we came to a bridge, and to our disappointment, a sign that cars/trucks were prohibited and two perfectly spaced boulders to drive the point home. We turned around and headed back, found a shortcut through a creek, and hit the tarmac again.

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As we crested the hill on the highway though, it became apparent that this was unlike any place we’d been before. Not only was the highway void of signage holding tourists hands to guide them to the sights, but the terrain looked like something that was out of this world. That wasn’t a ferry we were on, it was a spaceship. We were now on another planet.

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To be continued......

[CLynn85]

Day 11: Part II

We had decided to split up from Mike at the light house and meet up again further up the coast at St. George, the next semi-bold town on the map up the highway. Again and again we saw gravel roads leading straight off from the highway, and we kept ducking off to follow bits of the thin red line on the map. More and more I became suspicious that this wasn’t a former road, but actually a railroad grade. It was far too flat with smooth corners to have been a road of such a narrow width. Eventually, at a particularly interesting intersection of gravel roads in every direction, I dug up a chunk of steel that was protruding from the earth. What it is, I have no idea, any ideas railroad afficianados?

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The trails seemed to go off in all directions.

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After another detour, we found ourselves in a culvert pipe under the highway, and after turning around, spotted a marker denoting this as part of the International Appalachian Trail. About that time Lindy also found a key on the map noting it as part of a “Provencial T’Railway”, mystery solved.

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