Day 6 - Cape Breton National Park

I left the campground at around 7:00 for the approximately 4 hour drive to Cape Breton. Once again, it was a pretty boring drive, with nothing particularly interesting to see or do until I crossed over to Cape Breton. There is a narrow strait that separates Cape Breton from the rest of Nova Scotia. In the 1950's, a causeway was built across the strait connecting the them. Once you cross the strait, the scenery changes dramatically, with lots of forested mountains dominating the landscape.

There is a well known road, I guess it's well known by some, called the Cabot Trail that essentially circumnavigates Cape Breton Island. It's named after the explorer John Cabot who landed here, and I guess did some exploring in the region. There is a strong Scottish heritage here, as many of the town names have a Scottish ring to them. That got my to thinking, I wonder if Nova Scotia means “New Scotland”, or something like that ... I'll have to look that up when I get back from my trip.

I had a choice to follow the Cabot Trail in its entirety, or to take a coastal road for the first 50 or so miles. I chose to take the coastal route. It was a beautiful morning and I stopped a number of times to take some pictures of the seaside scenery. When you arrive at the national park entrance, the road starts to wind its way up and through the mountains. Unfortunately, some heavy clouds had moved in and the views were not what one would have hoped for.

I drove to one of the more popular trails in the park, the Skyline Trail. It starts with a walk through the woods and then it runs along the ridge of a seaside mountain. As I was walking along the trail, there was a group of people up ahead of me looking into the woods to the side of the trail. When I reached them, I discovered that they were looking at a moose that was grazing a short distance off the trail. After watching the moose for a few minutes and taking some pictures, I continued along the trail. Eventually, the trail leaves the woods and follows a wooden boardwalk down along the ridge of this mountain. As mentioned above, unfortunately due to the cloud cover, there wasn't much to see.

I finished walking the trail and then returned to my car. After that, I finished driving around the Cabot Trail until I reached my campground. As usual, I got set up, made dinner, did some reading and went to bed.