Cabot Trail drive to Baddeck

Photos

Monday, October 7, 2013

Breakfast this morning was at 7am down at Laurie’s Restaurant and not a minute before. It was an exact repeat of yesterday’s buffet. It was fine. Certainly it was better than the cold buffets of the beginning of the tour at North Winds. It just seems like a lot of self-service meals from Caravan on this tour. Still Laurie's felt like a truck stop without a highway. Cheticamp is not the place I would have chosen for a 2 night stay on Cape Breton.



Bus left at 8am. The windows had not been cleaned. At least the one we got today was cleaner than yesterday’s. Mom said hers wasn't though. It really makes you appreciate when you have a good bus driver who takes pride in his bus. It's all the difference when they are proud and want their passengers to be able to sight see and photograph through the bus windows. Today was the closest we got to the front of the bus. We were in the seats behind Marty and she is right behind the driver. Mom & Judy were behind us, so tomorrow they should get the front row on the door side. (But they didn't. It worked out that they were in the 2nd row on the door side and us behind them that day. After that we just kept working our way to the back of the bus again.)

It was another long traveling day but it was our best one of the trip and finally felt like what we were thinking when we booked this trip. It was pretty sunny all day, the wind had died down and it wasn’t as cold. The water was perfectly calm with no white caps everywhere we could see it today and it would have been a perfect whale watching day. In fact the day we arrived in Cheticamp the people who operated the harbor cruise said they had seen 25 right whales. It is too bad that Caravan does not build any flexibility into providing that whale watching tour, especially since it is so weather dependent.

So, we did the Cabot Trail drive today through the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. Marty handed out nice maps this morning on the bus. It was indeed a very scenic road. The leaves were in beautiful color. The sun shone and we made lots of photo stops today, for once. We started out by startling a big bull moose into jogging down the road in front of us as we headed up French Mountain. There was mountain on the right and a guard rail on the left and he had nowhere to go. He actually seemed pretty stressed by the time he got to the top and found a place to flee the road. Since we had the seats right behind Marty today, we could see out the front some and really got to see some things from the bus in addition to all the photo stops. The moose was great though. A big bull moose in sunshine with a big rack of antlers was what I had wished for yesterday and first thing this morning I got it. But wait, we drove on and just around the corner in French Lake, Clay spotted a moose and called out. There was a female moose wading and eating in French Lake and on the barren above her was another big bull moose, both out in the morning sunshine. That was it. That was all the wildlife we really saw. But, I finally got to see a live moose in Canada. Thrilling!

We stopped for photos again at the Wreck Cove Point overlook, at Cape North, at Aspy, at Lone Shieling, and we took the Coastal Loop. We stopped in the morning at Pleasant Bay at the Whale Interpretive Center on the east side and on the west side we took a little walk around a lighthouse and working harbor at Neil’s Harbor.

Caravan provided a complimentary lunch today of make-your-own cold sandwiches with hot soup and cookies, brownies and fruit with tea, coffee and water at the Keltic Lodge on Middle Head. They also gave us each a 10% discount coupon for the gift shop. Clay used his. That was a nice gesture because they know people have gotten a little unhappy with the trip. Unfortunately for me it just proved that there are nice places to stay out here on these islands, but that we aren't getting those places.

This afternoon Marty handed out papers and had us all put our name in the lower right corner, then she described part of the first moose we saw and asked us to draw them. The catch was that we had to pass the papers around so we each paper was a team effort. They were all ridiculous of course. Then she appointed 2 passengers to judge the drawings. Clay won 2^nd Place and his prize was a Cape Breton magnet. I don’t know what 1^st prize was.

When we arrived at Baddeck we went first to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum. It was self-guided. You could see as much or as little as you wanted but you were there for a hour and 20 minutes. Marty had shown us the 15 minute film they show there on the bus so we wouldn’t have to spend our time seeing it there. We still watched a few other films. The most fun part was the kite flying though. Evidently AGB was big on kites. He wanted a kite that could carry a man but never succeeded. So, they have a bunch of kites there that you can take outside and fly. I flew an eagle, badly.  It was built too top heavy. Another woman flew a seagull and it was so aerodynamic that I went inside to the gift shop to see about taking one home. It was $23 and would have fit in my suitcase, but it was made in Austin, TX!



We drove in the bus around Baddeck to get us oriented for our dinner tonight and our free time tomorrow. It is very small, but having a 4-way stop sign intersection automatically makes it bigger than Cheticamp was. We got to Gisele’s Country Inn about 5pm. It is the nicest place we have stayed yet on this tour. We are in room 203 and Mom & Judy are next door. The building we are in is weirdly sited and we have no views here overlooking Bras d’Or Lakes. We also have no refrigerators and no fitness center, there is no Gisele. There is a restaurant onsite. We will eat there in the mornings for breakfast and for an included dinner tomorrow night. We placed our orders in the bus already. Clay & Judy ordered a sole roulade, Mom & I ordered chicken supreme and they also had a vegetarian dish that was unknown.

Tonight we walked down to town and looked at 4 menus and no one was thrilled with any of them or wanted to make a decision, so we just went in Tom’s pizza and got 2 thin crust pizzas. They were fine. They were about $20 each for 12 inch pizzas and we finished them off. Over dinner I don’t know who said it first, but the consensus was that everyone was ready to go home now. None of us were willing to book another Caravan Tour's trip. I was willing to give another try to Panama, Costa Rica or Guatemala, but the others all said no. Mom said she would investigate other tour companies and suggested a trip to Branson, MO, Clay and I weren’t interested.  Clay and I proposed a road trip on our own or an American river boat cruise, but Mom & Judy didn’t seem too interested. It will be sad if even the best day of this tour can't save it from being our last.

Tomorrow we have breakfast at 7:30am. Bus departs at 8:30am. We will visit the Fortress of Louisbourg in the morning and be there for lunch. Marty described lunch as a trip back to the 1700’s. That when you enter the restaurant, they tie a big cloth around your neck and give you one pewter utensil to have something that might have been served then, like soup. It turns out they were serving either fish soup or pea soup on our visit. She said it was reasonably priced and the only restaurant. I know I will not eat there, Clay was not inclined to, Mom wanted to but said she wouldn’t when she realized we wouldn’t. I think we can pack snacks to carry us from breakfast to dinner. Anyway, I have been looking at my maps and brochures trying to figure out where this fortress is and it looks like it is a very long drive! One map I have says it is 114 km or 1 hour 45 minutes each way.

Our afternoon tomorrow is free in Baddeck. Our dinner tomorrow at Gisele’s is at 6:30pm. The weather forecast for tomorrow is 64 F and 80% chance of rain.

Photos