In National Park, incommunicado

Cabot Trail - click on the photo to see the other photos

https://photos.app.goo.gl/P995tD2qDFJ8x8FQ9

This evening, Monday, we finally received a text message sent by James wishing Steve a Happy Fathers Day.  It arrived so late because we had no mobile signal the whole time we were in the Cape Breton Highlands  National Park.  (Dark green section on the map on the last post)

We left our campground at Port Hood and resisted the distillery choosing to stop instead in Mabou where there is a very famous pub, The Red Shoe, which has live gaelic music every evening.  We were there at lunch time so the music was piped but Steve seemed to enjoy his Red Shoe pint.  Also in Mabou is a sweet little church, well a shrine actually - do look at the photos.

Joe's Scarecrows provided us with a light-hearted diversion.  We met Joe himself doing a bit of routine maintenance on one of his characters.  He asked where we were from and, hearing it was from the UK he said he had had a long visit from Billy Conolly who was going to include the scarecrows in a travelog he was making.  Has anyone seen it yet?

At Inverness Harbour we saw some more lobster boats being unloaded into another old fire truck.  When we came back from a walk along the very impressive Inverness beach a little rv had parked up beside us.  It was identical to the one we had in W Canada 2 years ago - we had been expecting something of a similar size this time before we were given the truck.  We have got used to the truck and appreciate the space and facilities when on campgrounds.  I suppose we're used to driving too, though I knocked a wing mirror of a pick-up on the ferry we had to go on today - no harm done thankfully.

The night before entering the National Park was spent at a good campground on Cheticamp Island.  Once more an Acadian area,  actually Cheticamp is supposed to be the largest settlement of acadians in N Americal at present (and also the rug hooking capital of the world...)  Apparently acadians were granted land there not long after the 'expulsion' of 1755.  The camp host explained that, although he was an acadian and spoke french, he, like all other Acadians, also speaks english and he is loyal to the Queen and personally looking forward to her visit to Nova Scotia next week.

Yesterday morning we paid our National Park fees, collected the warning literature about bears (black) and coyotes and set off.  It was our greatest hope that we would see moose - the campsite chap and the National Park staff said we would but sadly we haven't.  Lots of walks in places where they are supposed to frequent and all we saw was their massive footprints and plenty of 'poop'.  We didn't see any black bears or coyotes either.  The best we could do was several green frogs, located because of their croaking and a couple of red squirrels (both in campsites).  Vegetation has been slightly more interesting as we have seen insectivorous plants and also lady's slippers orchids.

The landscape in Cape Breton Island is more rugged than the rest of Nova Scotia that we have seen so far - the National Park particularly so.  Also pretty isolated.  There are mountains and most of the woods and forests are of various pines.

Tonight we are in Englishtown- a very small town with a wharf, church, fire station, post office and village hall with about 10 houses and a campground.  Tomorrow morning we are hoping to go on a 'Puffin Boat Tour' to see birds and seals.  We have to just turn up and they will run the trip if there are more than 5 people wanting to go on it.  Hopefully it will be a nice day and the sea will be calm again.

We have failed to go on another whale watching trip.  Either no boats because their owners are still lobster fishing or the wrong sort of boats.  Nevermind, we could hardly be as lucky again as we were off Digby Neck.

Thanks for your comments, keep 'em coming please.

To answer some outstanding questions - Colin, flowers in gardens I have seen here are very similar to those at home and so are the weeds.  We've just been admiring a beautiful patch of buttercups for example.  There is a mystery about Hostas here - they are very popular and never seem to have any holes in their leaves.  Perhaps there are no slugs or snails in NS. - Wendy, there are very few tourists doing the trails with us.  It has been slightly busier here on Cape Breton Island and there have been 4 or 5 overnight rvs at campgrounds rather than the 1 or 2 we've been used to.  All the locals we speak to say their real holiday period doesn't start until July.