Nova Scotia - Day 6: Glenora, Tent Camping, Ceilidh

After a fine night in Cheticamp, we had a leisurely breakfast, then pushed on South. Our destination was the Glenorah distillery - the only producer of single-malt whiskey in North America. You can't properly call it "scotch," because it's not made in Scotland, but that is the kind of drink we are talking about. The grains are from the Canadian plains, the yeast is European origin, and the water comes from the stream that flows through their facility. They were preparing their grain elevator to receive the first of the 2014 grain harvest - another week or two and they'll be brewing and distilling. Although there is peat available in the Cape Breton Highlands, that's park land, and so is not available for commercial harvest. Therefore, Glenora produces a scotch that has essentially no peaty flavor, more in the style of the Scottish lowlands.
 
One of the other qualifiers about single-malt whiskey is that it, by tradition, it must be barrel-aged for at least 10 years before bottling and sale. Therefore, in order to make a go of it, on needs to distill and store product for a decade before you can expect to start recouping expenses. This presents a serious barrier to entry. But, as our (Scottish) tour guide explained to us, the backers of this project (Canadians of various sorts) had money to spare and were looking for a project. They could have taken up any number of money-sucking idle pursuits: horse breeding, yachting, vintage automobiles, etc. Instead, they decided to produce whiskey. Good for them.
 
We had a tour of their facility.

This is the kettle where the barley is boiled with the local water to create the wort, which is what gets fermented. What you can't see in the picture is that the kettle goes down almost two storeys from this level - that's a lot of grain!
 

These barrels are where the fermentation takes place. Apparently when that's going on, the CO2 levels are high enough that access is heavily limited. They are kept constantly filled (with water at the moment) in order to keep the wood swelled up against the hoops, keeping them water-tight. This also prevents the wood from absorbing liquid from the fermenting wort.
 

After the fermentation is complete comes the distilling. This is done in two passes, first on the right, then on the left. These distilling towers were hand-made in Scotland. They cost a pretty penny when the distillery was first established; today they would cost many times as much due to the increased price of copper, and have a yearlong lead time. The small case situated in between is the "spirit vault" where a final assay of the liquor's strength is made before transferring to the barrels for aging. The aging warehouse, alas, was not part of the tour.
 
It was during this time that our guide poured a small dram of their 10-year for each of us. I'll not embarrass myself by trying to describe it. Decent stuff.
 

The distillery has been around long enough to produce successive bottlings of 10-year, and are coming up on their first 21-year. In between they've experimented with various other things, like aging in sherry and ice wine barrels.
 

Here is the eponymous creek from which they get their water. To the left is the distillery. To the right is an inn and restaurant where we had a fine lunch.
 

We pushed on that afternoon to Port Hood, our destination for the night. Jasper has taken a liking to having half of the back seat down, so that he can be closer to the family, the sights, and the open window.
 
Hilary went to great lengths in her planning to find places where Jasper could stay. There was nothing available in Port Hood, however, so we ended up with plan B: camping. We'd brought a single, 2-man dome tent, sleeping bags and pads, with the intention that Hilary and I would cozy up in the tent with Jasper on his mat. B would end up in a B&B with her grandparents.
 

When we arrived, however, we discovered that the campground was really an RV park with a broad patch of grass for tenting. What is more, there was no one at the front office to accept us or show us where to set up. Undeterred, we took our cues from the maps and pitched in a likely-looking spot. (See above). About 30 feet behind me is the ocean, which was picturesque and all, but meant that there was nothing, nothing, to abate the substantial westerly wind coming off the water that evening. More on that later.
 
We had a hurried dinner in the very busy Clove Hitch bistro, then booked it a bit further south to the Celtic Music Center in Judique. The Center was hosting a fiddling concert to kick off the week-long Celtic Colours music festival. Hilary and I enjoy celtic music a fair bit, and B is handy with a violin, so it was a great fit.
 
The Celtic music tradition in Cape Breton has undergone a revival in the last generation or so. Most of the tradition revolves around the ceilidh (KAY-lee) - a jam session of sorts, usually done in someone's home, generally involving a solo fiddle with upright piano accompaniment, sometimes backed with a hand drum, penny whistle, etc. Lots of drink and home-cooked food are involved, too. You can imagine the draw for a community activity like this, far from major cities, in the dead of winter when there's no fishing to be done.
 

The concert was a fine, foot-tapping time. Each of the players on stage took a turn doing a set: a progression of three movements, each several minutes long, with progressively faster tempo. There's apparently a fairly well-known repetoir of a few dozen tunes, which most of the players learn by ear, rather than through sheet music. (back in the day, people would trade cassette tapes of performances and learn from those!) The guy on the piano is left to follow the timing and key changes, and did a fantastic job at that.
 
One small interruption came when, several pieces into the first half, the MC got on stage and asked if there was a doctor in the house. I kid you not. Hilary reported for duty. It was not exactly an emergency, but the ambulance response times can be lengthy. In gratitude, the organizers gifted her a CD of an earlier concert. (The Celtic Music Center has a recording studio and publishes a fair number of albums from local artists.)
 
After the concert B decided, for her own inscrutable reasons, that she would prefer to sleep in the tent, with Hilary and me, and Jasper. We hadn't reckoned on needing a third sleeping bag, but made do with jackets, a blanket from M, and other bits of outerwear. B squeezed in between Hilary and me, with Jasper on Hilary's other side. It was cozy, to say the least. It would not have been all that bad except for the wind, which rattled the tent all night long. Every time a strong gust came along, poor Jasper would start at the noise and the fact that the tent wall was attacking him! It was bad enough that, round about 2 a.m., I pulled the car around to serve as a windbreak, which was surprisingly effective. All the same, it was a restless night for the grownups.
 
(of course, now that we have two dogs, this kind of plan would be completely out. Next time, B gets to sleep in a tent between the dogs.)

Nova Scotia - Day 4: Dingwall, Cabot Trail Biking, Pleasant Bay

We awoke in Dingwall to a beautiful day by the shore!

 
After a nice breakfast up at the main building of The Markland, we went back down to the beach for practice - why not?

 
Although B gripes about practice as much as any six-year old might, she playing is coming along nicely.

 
Mark and Holly enjoyed B's performance, and the ocean's, from these chairs that just happened to be at the beach. Jasper romped in the sand and surf like a crazed animal!

 
Since we would be staying here a second night, we did not have the usual scramble to get packed up and on the road. We even took advantage of the Markland's washing machines to do a bit of laundry. This left us with some time to kill. Hilary sat in the sun for some reading (not realizing the need for sunscreen until much later!) Brynna convinced me to teach her how to play chess. There are many skills that I, humbly, claim to possess, but chess isn't one of them. She did respectably for a first timer, but did ultimately lose. She was keen to explain things to Hilary.

 
In the afternoon the plan was for Hilary and I to take our bikes and do a stretch of the Cabot Trail from Dingwall, up and over a climb, and down to Pleasant Bay.

 
It was a bight sunshiny day, but cool.

 
The first part of the climb gently heads up a loooong glacial valley, which this afternoon was in full autumn splendor.

 
Then it gets steeper and starts switchbacking.

 
And steeper still! Near the top there are several extended sections of 10-13%.

 
Eventually it flattens out onto a broad plateau with tall grass and short trees to either side. It was a prime spot for moose-watching. Brynna, Mark, and Holly apparently did see a moose on the side of the road when they buzzed past before us.

 
Then for the reward: several km of steep downhill! Neither H nor I are particularly fearless or accomplished descenders, so there was much squeezing of the brakes the whole way down. Even so, there were some open stretches that allowed me to open it up to about 40 mph! The descent was cold, though!

 
We met up with Mark, Holly, and B in Pleasant Bay, at the Rusty Anchor restaurant. What a find! The food was excellent, the veggie options original and tasty, and the beer selection quite satisfying. One would not have expected such a place, here way out at the end of the island. I asked the hostess if it'd be getting quiet in these parts come winter. She chuckled and said they'd be boarded up in another twelve days.
 
The Rusty Anchor also has an impressive view of the Bay. At various times, one can spot whales just off shore. More on that in Day 5.

 
After this fine picture at sunset just outside the restaurant, we loaded ourselves back into the car, with the bikes hanging off the back, and backtracked our route to The Markland, where we had another pleasant night.

Nova Scotia - Day 3: Baddeck, A.G. Bell Museum, Biking the Coast, Dingwall

We woke up to a glorious morning overlooking the water

 
After scrounging for breakfast, B and I hung out at the playground for a bit

 
I watched a large group of cyclists head out for a day on the Cabot Trail. The Cabot Trail is a 185-mi loop of 2-lane roads that circles the northern half of Cape Breton Island, and is a popular multi-day bicycle tour. For long stretches it hugs the coast, and in others passes through highlands not unlike those of Scotland. Hilary and I would be doing segments of it on this trip. Within New Hampshire, one could liken it to the triple-notch century that encircles the White Mountains. Much like the Kancamaugus Highway between Lincoln and Conway, prior to the establishment and improvement of the Cabot Trail, it was very difficult and time consuming to get from one far-flung community to another. Today it is merely time-consuming.
 

 
Then we headed back up to the cottage for practice
 

 
and headed into town to the Alexander Graham Bell museum. What an unexpectedly fine place! First off: it is large and well maintained, not just a handful of artifacts in a rundown one-room building. Secondly: it is not merely the story of the telephone. That's a part of it, and the part that most people know, but there is also an awful lot about his other work and experiments, particularly in the years after the telephone when he lived in Baddeck. He was an endless tinkerer, and the collection at the museum bears that out. (There is even a section with artifacts that no one knows what they are or were used for.) There was his work with the hearing impaired (his father's work, too), the phonograph, sheep husbandry, water distillation, and flight.
 
There's actually quite a lot to see there about his interest and experiments in flight, stuff that I had never heard about before. He had this fascination with tetrahedral kites, and used them to build up truly massive structures that could carry one or more people.
 

 
He and several fellows designed, built, and flew a series of experimental aircraft at around the same time as Wright Brothers. These culminated with the Silver Dart, which made several flights from the frozen surface of Bras d'Or. The museum has a replica and many original parts.
 

 

 
The torpedo-looking thing in the background was an experimental boat that reached unheard-of speeds using hydrofoils and a pusher prop.
 
After the museum we had a fantastic late lunch at the home of a retired co-worker of Holly's, just up the road from Baddeck. Their home was beautiful, and the setting hard to beat:
 

 
Among other conversation topics over lunch: where should the Baddeck community advertise in order to recruit some young docs to the area. Much like the North Country in NH, this area has a tough time recruiting and retaining young professionals to be so far from everything.
 
By the end of lunch it was getting on to mid-afternoon. Hilary and I were jonesing to get on our bikes, and sensitive to sunset being around 6. We still had about two hours' drive to our destination for the night - Dingwall, near the northern tip of the island. We drove along picturesque winding roads along the coast and through woodlands in autumn color. We stopped on the northern shore of Ingonish Harbor and got geared up. The cars would lag behind and pick us up farther down the road: Mark in our car with B and J, with Holly driving behind - a caravan of white subarus! Hilary and I finally hit the road around 4:30 just at the entrance to Cape Breton Highlands National Park. (It was a little unclear at the park entrance if we were supposed to pay or not. We stopped to pay, since we'd be in and out of the park over the next few days, but every car just sailed through. Oh well, of all the many expenses in this trip, a park fee is the least grumble-worthy.) It took some miles, but the road eventually came close against the coast, where we were treated to beautiful evening skies.
 

 

 

 
Good to finally be on the bikes (practicing the bike-selfie)
 

 
The exposure in that image is deceptive, because it was after sunset by this point. We had reflectors, we had lights, and the road was only lightly trafficked (only one car per minute in either direction), but the temperature was falling and it was getting dark. It had been a short outing - only about an hour - but very satisfying. Hilary and I pulled off at the appointed meeting spot in Neils Harbor and got picked just a few minutes after.
 
The town of Dingwall is a bit off the main road, and right on the water. We stayed in a cottage at The Markland, where we would actually be for two consecutive nights. We'd had a full day by that point, and a late lunch, so we scounged in our provisions for a light dinner. It's just as well, since there's not much for restaurants in and around Dingwall at this time of year.
 
After getting B off to bed, Hilary and I took Jasper for a much-needed long walk. A long sandy beach under the moonlight was just five minutes' stroll from our door, and made for a perfect setting. Jasper still seems to show surprise every time he gets a taste of salt water.
 
D

Nova Scotia - Day 2: The Road to Cape Bretton

This day was, unfortunately, mostly about the going than the doing. Our destination was the town of Baddeck on Cape Breton Island - some hours' drive from Halifax.

After breakfast at the hotel, I went out see attempt to get our phones squared away. Alas, being a Sunday morning, the mall (yes, I went to the mall) wouldn't open until noon. That outing wasn't a total loss, though - I did our first fill-up in Canada. It was a bit expensive, but would only get more so the farther out we got. Brynna and Hilary, in the meantime, amused themselves in the hotel pool and hot tub.

When I returned, we had violin practice, load up the car, then headed back to the mall. This time I had satisfaction, and got us hooked into pre-paid plans on Bell Canada. It took a while to get squared away, but I'll spare you the details. Hilary and Brynna, meanwhile, were camped outside of the Apple Store, and B practiced reading words on the signs.

There's plenty to see and do in Halifax, but unfortunately we had burned up a lot of time already. We grabbed some wraps for lunch and hit the road.

According to the Nova Scotia guides, there's plenty of stuff to see and do on the road between Halifax and Cape Breton. Unfortunately, most of it requires taking the longer, out-of-the-way roads. We're not averse to that, but we were sensitive to keeping B and J cooped up in the car for long stretches. In order to get their wiggles out, we stopped about halfway on the road in Antigonish, where there was a fine playground.

 

 
Cape Breton Island is separated from the rest of Nova Scotia by a narrow channel of water - the Canso Strait. During the last Ice Age is was a river valley. A hundred years ago a very busy ferry crossed back and forth. After WWII it was bridged by a causeway - created from rock blasted from an adjacent cliff - with a small canal to permit water traffic. We crossed over late on a dreary afternoon.

 

 
Baddeck was another hour or so up the road, on the shores of Bras d'Or Lake, which actually connects to the Atlantic in one or two places, and so is somewhat brackish. It was in this town that Alexander Graham Bell put down roots after the invention of the telephone - more on that tomorrow.

We pulled into our lodging for the night - a cottage at the Silver Dart Lodge - and waited for Mark and Holly to arrive. (Due to worries about being seasick on the ferry ride, they had traveled overland from CT, spending Saturday night at the friend's place in Campo Bello. Even broken over two days, it was a loooong haul, and they were pretty fried when they arrived.) After check in, we headed into town for what turned out to be a thoroughly mediocre and overpriced dinner. Oh well, there'd be more chances in the days to come.

Southwestern Swing: Mesa Verde, June 2013

My cousin Martha is a Teacher-Ranger-Teacher at Mesa Verde National Park this summer, so we jumped at the chance to 1. visit her and 2. see a cool new place. It was a win-win on both counts!

Mesa Verde is in southwestern Colorado, near the Four Corners. Initially (based on flight price), our itinerary took us from Boston to Denver to Farmington, NM, where we would rent a car and drive about 2.5 hours to the park. However, by the time we showed up at Logan for our flight, storms in the middle of the country were wreaking havoc on the airline schedules, and it was clear that we would not make our connection in Denver. The person checking us in was, however, able to get us on a late flight from Denver to Cortez, Colorado, which is only about 30 minutes from the park. This necessitated a bunch of craziness with a different rental car company, but eventually someone was found to come and give us a key (to the last available rental car) when we arrived around midnight.

The other thing we had not fully factored into our travel plans was the fact that we were traveling west, right around the longest day of the year. It...just...stayed...light...forever. And Brynna Would Not Sleep. She finally conked out on the tiny plane from Denver to Cortez, once it was pitch black out, around 11:30 PM east coast time. She was so out of her mind by that point that when she and I were separated from Alex on the golf cart ride out to the plane, she became frantic that the plane would take off and leave Alex behind. So, she marched up to every single airline employee—the person at the gate, the traffic-director on the runway, the first officer waiting at the steps of the plane, and finally a quick detour into the cockpit to speak with the pilot—to tell them that her Daddy was coming on the next golf cart and that they had to wait for him. So. A rough travel day was had by all...but by the end of it, we were snugly ensconced in Martha's hogan on the Mesa, and our vacation began.

We started the next day with a tour of Cliff Palace. Here are B and Martha waiting for the tour to begin and working on Brynna's Junior Ranger booklet.

Heading down down down the steps (which were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s):

And down and down and down some more (Cliff Palace is tucked in underneath the mesa edge):

And then up a ladder (the first of many for the trip):

And then our group stopped and our ranger (Mariana, Brynna's new idol) told us a bit about the site. You can see the cliff dwellings behind her. They are about 800 years old.

Here's another view of Cliff Palace:

This is a kiva, a ceremonial and gathering place. There's a sophisticated venting system since a kiva would have a thick wooden roof over it.

Alex and B looking down into a kiva (Alex with a tight grip on B's shirttail):

Then we climbed three more ladders to get out. The ancient Puebloans, however, did NOT use ladders. They used hand and toe holds, like this:

Then we headed off to Balcony House, a different cliff dwelling. To get into Balcony House requires a climb up this 30 foot ladder. B was a very good sport! None of us are on the ladder here, this is just to give you an idea of how tall it is:

Alex and B went up side-by-side, and I came along behind her.

Made it!

This is a defensive tunnel in Balcony House: there's even a big rock in the middle that you have to climb over to make the tunnel even harder to come through. 

After we walked (and crawled) through Balcony House, there were several more ladders to get back up to the mesa top.

Then it was time to use our Colorado rental car to go fetch our New Mexico rental car (since it costs a million dollars to do a one-way rental). B and Martha napped on the way. We hit up a playground in Farmington to get the wiggles out, grabbed some ice cream, and set out once more. We drove past the impressively enormous massif of Shiprock before turning north toward Cortez, where we returned rental car #1 and headed out for some Mexican food (we ate at Tequila's, perfectly adequate). And, of course, the company was exceptional!

The next morning, Alex and I decided to go running. He made it farther and faster than I did (it was HOT, sun-exposed, and at 7000 feet of elevation), and took this picture from the Soda Canyons overlook. If this picture was enlarged a bunch, you'd see Balcony House tucked under that arch just below the mesa top in the middle of the photo.

While we were off being crazy, Martha and Brynna went to complete the junior ranger activities. Here is B getting sworn in as a junior ranger. She is VERY proud (and has been taking the no-littering provision so seriously that she's been picking up cigarette butts wherever she sees them).

Then we walked down to Spruce Tree House, which has a reconstructed kiva. Alex and B climbed down inside and had a look around.

Then it was time to bid Martha a temporary farewell and head off for an overnight at Arches. The story will continue in our next blog post!