Memento Mori - Island Life

Once I had purged from the previous days pub excursion I really was feeling fine. I had a little time to kill before it was time to pick up my rental car and take the show on the road. Since the weather had turned gloomy and a little cooler I found a place indoors to eat and chill. I decided to take the time to follow up on my lost luggage and called the airline only to find out they had no idea it was lost. Whatever paperwork I filled out at the airport when I arrived in Halifax didn't seem to have gotten through. I went through the aggravating process of trying to explain and spell things out for the Indian CSR who could speak the language just fine but didn't seem to be able to understand anything I said. The end result was that my luggage was still lost, so it didn't really change anything. I shrugged it off and headed out of town, making my way north to Cape Breton Island and the Highland National Park. All told it's about a 4.5 hour drive of steep hills and valleys of jagged rock and fir trees with the occasional glimpse of water or a small town.

Nova Scotia is already considered rural backwoods of Canada, and Cape Breton is probably considered backwoods by Nova Scotians. The roads are rough (including the shittiest paved road I've ever driven on), many of them off the highway are a dusty brown gravel, there's lots of trailer homes, and not a lot of places of note along the way. That said, Cape Breton has one thing in great abundance - jaw dropping scenery. The weather had also cleared up into a beautiful, windy day. Once on the island I took the Cabot Trail north, which runs along the rocky western coast of the island (conversely the eastern shore has sandy beaches) which takes you up small mountains with stunning overlooks and fun, twisty roads before dropping into valleys on roads that hug the cobbled shore as it takes you through the national park. There are plenty of pull-offs to get better looks and take pictures, and tons of hiking and camping spots throughout the enormous park. On the island and especially in the park there are very few amenities. I didn't see a single gas station on the western shore and many of the small motels and restaurants hadn't yet opened for the season. I ended up staying at a place called Midtrail Motel with nice ocean-facing motel rooms and a decent family restaurant - they had a really good seafood chowder - in Pleasant Bay (not Paradise Bay as I previously thought) just outside the northwest entrance to the park. This is where I ended a calm, peaceful day of amazing scenery getting eaten to death by flies and mosquitos while watching the sun set.

The next day I woke up to some dark clouds and random light showers that gave the island a grim, stoic appearance that still managed to impress. Driving back south the way I had come was like a completely different place with the change in weather. I had breakfast at the motel and there was a Scottish couple in there and I asked them what they thought of this new-fangled Scotland these Canucks had come up with and the woman just shrugged and said "The weathers right" and went back to eating. They were as severe as the day was, but I didn't let either get me down. The plan for the day was to head back south towards Truro to the Bay of Fundy to see if i could witness the tidal bore in action. The tidal bore is, best as I understand, when the high tide flows into rivers the let out into the bay with enough force that it actually causes the river to flow backwards in a turbulently impressive manner. I wouldn't know though, as my timing didn't work out as I arrived too late for one, another was at midnight, and I slept through a third high tide the next morning. I also didn't get the check out the historic Lawrence House down the road in Maitland as it was closed (for the day or not yet season I dunno). I ended the day in a crummy gas station motel with a hard, squeaky bed. But at least it was clean.