Nova Scotia - Day 5: Whale Watching, Cabot Trail Bike, Cheticamp

We woke up a second morning in Dingwall - the only time we stayed in the same place twice during this trip. H, B, J, and I made hasty preparations to load up the car again and make the trip back to Pleasant Bay, where we had been the afternoon before. This morning we would be going on a whale watching trip!

We made Mr. J as comfortable as we could in the car, where he would hang out in the slight chill and overcast skies. There are several companies that operate out of the harbor. We ended up with Captain Mark's, which came well recommended. (Fun fact - one of the captains buses the local kids over the Cheticamp during the school year. Other fun fact - our guide on this particular day is a fishing boat builder during the off-season.)

In order to get close to the animals, they operate using of tricked out Zodiacs. Because they are small craft, low down on the water, one needs to wear exposure gear:

 
Although a variety of whale species migrate through this area (right, humpback, blue), the only ones that stick around for long are pilot whales, which look like very large dolphins with a blunted face. After cruising along the coast for 20-30 minutes, we spotted a pod not far off, and went in for a closer look.

 
These creatures work in groups to hunt, sometimes using bubbles to corral schools of small fish into a tight group, then one by one cut through the center to snatch a tasty treat. Unlike our dolphin watching in New Zealand, we didn't see much above-the-water antics. But like New Zealand, we saw young ones boppin' around. I had the GoPro with me, and so we do have some video. But like usual, I haven't edited it down for public consumption yet. Too late, the captain suggested I dunk the camera under the water to get some shots. Oh well. After a while the pod relocated and we lost track of them. Around the same time the wind picked up and made things pretty choppy, so we headed in closer to shore and started on our way back. We saw groups of seals, some of then quite large. For the most part we could't get too close because they are quite shy. This young'un was curious though.

 
Then gone in the blink of an eye!

 
There are also bald eagles that nest along the shoreline. This particular nest was easy to pick out from the white streaks on the cliff below. (click to embiggen - see if you can pick out the eagle perched on top)

 
Back at shore we met up with Mark and Holly. Just a little ways south of Pleasant Bay along the Cabot Trail the road starts switchbacking steeply up. We wimped out a bit and drove up, about halfway, to an overlook. According to the signs behind the benches, at certain times of year you can spot migrating whales from here.

 

 
After a hasty picnic lunch, Hilary and I geared up and hopped on the bikes. Mark and Holly each took one car (and B, and J) and pushed on to Cheticamp - about 40 km farther on. The road continued upward:

 
And leveled out a bit as we pass a trailhead that leads down to Fishing Cove:

 
The road continued gently upwards for many miles across the wooded, boggy plateau of French Mountain. This is national parkland. At this time of the year, we more or less had the whole place to ourselves. The colors and vegetation were reminiscent of what one might find in parts of the White Mountains, but we could spend ten or twenty minutes without encountering so much as a passing car. The only thing that made it a bit unpleasant was an unrelenting headwind.

We took a brief break at pulloff to use the bathroom. This spot had a boardwalk trail through a prototypical alpine bog. (says the helpful sign that reads "Bog")

 
I was curious to see it, but didn't want to spent a lot of time on it (we had many km to go, and it was chilly being stationary). So while Hilary was using the facilities, I checked it out on two wheels:

 
Navigating the boardwalk at modest speed while also taking a selfie is only slightly stupid.

 
A bit further up the way we topped out - the highest spot on the road. Not much to speak of, except for this ICBM...water heater...voodoo idol...weather influencer...phallic symbol thing.

 
Not long after cresting the top and enjoying a well-earned gentle downhill, we suddenly spotted a moose across the road!

 

 

 
He was, I suppose, mildly curious, but paid us no mind

 
The road eventually gave us a pretty sweet downhill. We next to no cars around, I felt like I was bombing some descent in a alpine stage of Le Tour.

 
The road rejoined the coast at this overlook. Ahead you can see the road leading to Cheticamp. Hilary and I posted this picture to the Capital Multisport facebook page (our monthly team meeting was that evening), and tried not to look too boastful.

 
For the next several miles, the road undulates up and down, sometimes with only the guide rail between you and the Atlantic. This stretch is the one that gets into all the tourist materials. The overcast skies lessened the effect slightly, but it was still amazing. Here's the same stretch, but looking back north from the other end.

 
After a few more miles, the road makes a large bight around an inlet, then you pop out of the National Park and are on the outskirts of Cheticamp. We felt welcomed:

 
We met up with the rest of the family at our lodging for the night - the Cheticamp Outfitters Inn. We had adjoining halves of a small cottage. The place has some shore frontage, although it's a collection of boulders and not a beach per se.

 
After some stretching, but before getting too cold or showering, I decided that I ought to go for a brief swim. Why? Well, mostly to say that I've swum in Nova Scotia in October:

 
Yes, it was cold, but not horribly so. I did a very quick circle - maybe 40 feet all told - then picked my back onto the rocks and into the shower!

 
That evening we went out to dinner at the All Aboard Restaurant, where we had a very pleasant time. Among our many culinary delights, we had a bucket of mussels delivered from the boat just a few hours before. Tough to beat that!

Nova Scotia: Ferry, Yarmouth, Keji, Lunenburg, Halifax

Earlier in October, the Mooses took a trip to Nova Scotia. This was an awesome trip! We were there a bit past peek season, close to peak color, but before it got too cold and everything closes up for the winter.

We had toyed with this trip for a while, but couldn't execute until this year. Why? Because it's actually really tough to get to! One might naively think, as we did until we investigated it, that Nova Scotia isn't all that much farther than Maine. Well, no: to get to our main destination on Cape Breton Island would be some 13 hours in the car! We wanted the car because we wanted to bring bikes - the touring around Cape Breton on the Cabot Trail is excellent. Plus we wanted to bring Jasper. But the prospect of packing everyone in the car for that long did not really appeal. So we shelved those plans for another day.

Then we noticed, while having a post-race pizza in Portland last fall, that a ferry service was starting up between Portland and Yarmouth. Cutting across the Gulf of Maine at 25 knots does not actually save time versus driving up through New Brunswick, but it is so much more comfortable. We could have a cabin, with beds, and a whole ship to roam around in, and none of us would have to actually drive.

After a very busy week of preparation, we booked it down to Portland after work on a Friday. We had just enough time to give Jasper a last run around on the grass, and scarf some awesome pizza, before driving out thoroughly-packed Subaru onto the Nova Star. Jasper, alas, was not permitted to roam the ship or share our cabin. He spent the trip in the car. We went back and forth on this one a lot. We would not be able to visit him (or the car) at all during the trip. There is a kennel on board, and we could visit him there once or twice. But Jasper has never been crate-trained, and we thought that visiting him, but then leaving him again, would just upset him. We made him as comfortable as we could in the car - dropped the back seat, doffed his harness, and laid out food and drink - and hoped for the best.

(We did, for future reference, get a chance to see the kennels on the return trip. We made the right choice: the kennels are small cubes of stainless steel with barred doors. Definitely not happy or spacious accommodations.)

The transit time is about 11 ours, meaning they get one round trip in each day. The Portland-to-Yarmouth leg is and overnight, so we very gratefully slept (another ferry advantage). There were moderate seas that night, and one could feel the motion of the boat as you lay there. But we were all exhausted enough that it didn't bother us.
 
We pulled into Yarmouth harbor around 7:30 in the morning. We were pleased to find that Jasper had not ransacked the car, pooped all over the place, nor died of anxiety. He didn't seem pleased to see us, but we'll count it a success nevertheless. After clearing customs, we drove about four blocks down the waterfront and took him over to a small municipal park. He perked right up.

Happy puppy!
 

Fun with the HDR mode of the camera.
 

Memorial to those lost as sea.
 

Fully revived from being at sea
 

We found a nearby cafe for some much-desired coffee. B gives her approval to hot chocolate.
 

Because it was a Saturday morning, we did what we do most Saturdays: go to the farmer's market. Yarmouth's happens to be right next to the ferry terminal. It's late season, but there was plenty of fine stuff to be had, such as these excellent pears.
 

Late season strawberries!
 

Breakfast!
 
Before leaving town, we tried to get our phones squared away with the local cell networks. We didn't need to be connected, but being able to make local calls, access maps and navigation, etc., without paying out the nose was a good idea. I had done some research on our options beforehand, and had settled on some prepaid plans through Bell Canada. (There were other options, and if anyone is curious I can get into more detail, but let's skip that for now). It is possible to walk into many big box stores, purchase a SIM, pop it into the phone, purchase a card with some credit to top off your account, and go from there. Some additional potential hoops, however, made me want to search out some actual help. Unlike when we went to New Zealand, there was not a helpful kiosk at our point-of-entry to get us squared away in twenty minutes flat. We had to search around a bit to find the Bell store. Significant problem, however: the entire Bell activation network was down. No phones for today!

No worries: we had country to explore. We started driving along the southern coast, stopping for lunch at a small national park: Kejimkujik ("Keji" for short).

PB&J on the hood of the car. This must be vacation!
 

What's not to like?
 

Fog and Bog. We took a short hike from the parking area, through woods and bog, and down to a rocky shore. At least, we thought the ocean was nearby.
 

Insect-eating pitcher plant!
 

Lo and behold! We found the ocean!
 

Brynna was thrilled: there was much scrambling to be done on the rocks
 

This bolder has been cloven in two. Last year? A thousand years ago? Who can say?
 

This heavily tortured rock reminds me of a Picasso or other modern art.
 
We had a fine violin practice when we got back to the car (had to do it sometime, right?). After their much-needed romp, the creatures napped in the back while we pushed further along the coast. We eventually stopped at Lunenburg for an early dinner at this fine establishment.

After a bit more driving - including cruising through the Scarecrow Festival in nearby Mahone Bay - we pulled into Halifax, the major city in the province, and our destination for the night. We had little energy for anything besides pulling into the hotel and getting everyone off to bed.

More from St. John

Some more pictures from St. John:

B has in recent months become quite the little swimmer. This was exclusively pool swimming (not much open water to be done in NH in winter!). In the last two weeks before St. John, she had mustered the courage and excitement to hold her nose and duck all the way under the water with her goggles. We were hoping that this would mean that, even if she didn't snorkel exactly, she could at least have glimpses of what's under the waves. Alas, try as we might to cajole her (see image above), I think she wore her goggles all of once during the whole trip. (Also, does anyone else find the Land's End children's swimwear cut a little indecently?)

St John, and particularly the eastern end where we were staying, is actually a relatively arid place. To my surprise, cacti are pretty abundant, so are little lizards and geckos. This fellow has found himself a perfect hiding spot.


Us four in the middle-generation made a hike late one afternoon towards Ram's Head, the last bit of a spit of land extending south into the ocean.

As we crossed the beach at Saltpond Bay, we saw a gorgeous rainbow brought on the by the afternoon sun and a downpour than swept over us about ten seconds after this picture was taken.

Blue cobblestone beach, the next quiet inlet south of saltpond bay. There are a couple of moorings here for boats. The rush of the waves in and out of the beach, which really is made of baseball-sized cobblestones, was really something, like ten thousand babbling brooks. Ram's Head itself is the bump in the center background.

Just past blue cobblestone beach is a cleft in the land that allows the easterly wind to come whipping through at ferocious speed. We had at least one hat fly off.

Although our timing was perfect for sunset views at Ram's head, the weather that passed over us earlier obscured the sun and horizon as it marched westward.

On the way back down we noticed that some of the Turk's Head cacti, in addition to some lovely pink flowers, had tiny little pods, too. As it turns out, these are edible, and some folks harvest them to make a sort of jam. The inside, slightly sour, is filled with tiny black seeds. This particular pod is about an inch long.

Wilson!

Cinnamon Bay

One afternoon we ended up at Cinnamon Bay. This is one of the most famous beaches on the island, up on the northern shore. The national park service (about half the island and most of the surround water is national park land) has wall tents and cabanas that you can stay at, all of 50 feet from the beach. My parents enjoyed it when they came here about a year ago.

B loved swimming on St John. Although she is doing very well in her swim lessons with minimal floatation, for this trip we took no chances in the open water: full on life jacket. We even had her on a tether at one point. B didn't mind: the extra floatation made it easier for her to just have fun in the water, rather than using a lot of energy keeping her head up. Alas, despite recent breakthroughs at the local YMCA with holding her nose and ducking her face underwater with goggles, we never once managed to get her to look at the wonders beneath the waves on this trip.

Probably the best picture of B from the whole trip!

When she got tired of swimming, B liked playing in the sand, and counting the pebbles.

Hilary and I took advantage of the abundant child-minders to go for a lengthy swim. We struck out and eventually circled around the small island visible in the other shots - about 2/3 to 3/4 of a mile.

Don't we look hard core!

Our friends enjoyed their own chance to kick back and enjoy the waters on their own.

Their daughter consented, with great suspicion, to be held by Hilary while her parents splashed. Without the bottle in her mouth, she would scream quite a lot if any of the rest of us held her.

No better way to spend a sunset!