Day 8: Cabot Trail, Part I
DAY EIGHT: AT A GLANCE
Starting point: The Marmalade Motel, Port Dufferin, NS
Ending point: Broad Cove Campground, Cape Breton Highlands National Park, NS
Starting mileage: 17,048
Ending mileage: 17,316
Daily total (miles): 268 (second-most so far)
Trip total (miles): 1680
Another cool, cloudy, and misty morning greeted us, but I have to be honest: I love foggy days (maybe a holdover from my San Francisco days!) and the photographic opportunities they afford. Case in point: a harbor we passed about 40 minutes into our drive. Within a few seconds of passing the harbor, I did my familiar look back and G asked, “Want me to stop?” Um, yes please!! I got out, walked down to the boat that had initially caught my attention, and snapped away.
Back in the car, we headed toward our next destination of the trip: Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Cape Breton is an island just under 4,000 sq. miles and connected to Nova Scotia by the Canso Causeway. We first visited in 2019 and have been wanting to get back ever since. Then, we spent five days exploring; this time, we’d be here for only two. But still, two days is better than zero days! First stop: Cabotto Chocolates, an artisan chocolate shop on the Cabot Trail, because I’m married to a chocoholic. Luckily, he showed some restraint and didn’t buy out the store. We did make sure to buy one of the small “Oh Canada” bags of chocolate, described as “A taste sensation! Ruby Chocolate, with its sweet, berry-like flavour and slightly tart after-note is swirled with our creamy White Chocolate.” I’m not a huge white chocolate fan, but paired with this sweet red chocolate, the taste was pretty fantastic. The woman working explained that the ruby chocolate is real chocolate—from ruby cocoa beans and naturally pink/red—not dyed or flavored! She said it’s considered the fourth chocolate, after dark, milk, and white. I had no idea! From there, we stopped for photos at a scenic pull-off—one of MANY we’d stop at over the course of our two days! Seriously, the views from the Cabot Trail are phenomenal, and this time, we weren’t driving a 17-year-old VW van around the twisty turns and questioning our life choices!
We stopped at the visitor center in Ingonish for a trail map (and stickers for the cooler), stopped at Lakies Head, another scenic spot off the trail that reminded us both so much of the Maine Coast, and then made our way up to Neil’s Harbour for the lighthouse and, we hoped, a bite to eat at the chowder house there; the restaurant was unfortunately closed, so we traveled back toward Ingonish and stopped instead at Salty Rose’s and The Periwinkle Cafe—and we’re so glad we did!! We ordered the lobster roll and the “crobster roll,” which was a scoop of lobster and scoop on snowcrab on a buttered bun. Our plan was to split each, but the way the scoops were on the roll, we couldn’t figure out a neat way to divide the roll to have both the crab/lobster. So, I stuck with the all-lobster roll, and G enjoyed the crobster. So, so good!
After our late lunch, we stopped at the wharf for a few photos. Little did we know then that the view of Cape Smokey (first image below) would be the clearest we’d have; we even wondered if we should take advantage of the somewhat clear skies and do the hike we had planned for tomorrow. Instead, we decided to relax after the miles and made our way to Broad Cove Campground to settle in. Broad Cove is one of the Cape Breton Highlands National Park campgrounds, and our site was fantastic. The bathroom (so clean!) at the park even had a sensor-based water dispenser—nice!! We walked down to the beach (beautiful), then headed back up to the van to grab camp chairs, and headed back down.
Today was a quite a bit of driving—our second-most miles-per-day so far—but we still managed 10K steps, which was great. By the time we got back to the van after the beach, we were ready to call it a day. My back, however, wasn’t quite so ready; perhaps it sensed I had been without discomfort and decided to remind me by seizing up, so I took a muscle relaxer and another short walk down to the water before bed. Tomorrow, we’ll be heading out for a hike and then back in the van for the day to complete the rest of the 185-mile scenic Cabot Trail and take a gazillion photos before ending up across the island, in Inverness.