Ingonish National Park and Cape Breton were so marvellous I did not have time to mourn leaving Newfoundland. The highlight was the empowering night walk, "Seeing in the Dark", where we sharpened hidden survival capacities. There is also a wonderful double beach - lake plus ocean right by the campground.
Lookouts on the Cabot Trail
Lookouts over the Cabot Trail
The Cabot Trail Lookouts, West Cape Breton
Cheticamp Campground; The Cabot Trail lookouts; Cape Breton sunset;
28.8.16, 10:30 pm, Cheticamp Campground
To read more about my N. America Sola Camping Trip Start here, go to Table of Contents, or follow the links below:
Cheticamp Campground
I reached the camping at 7:30 pm and quickly erected the tent, cooked rice, brushed my teeth and sat down to write about Meat Cove, Pleasant Bay and the road. If you don’t write things down immediately, so much is lost.
This camping, when compared to Meat Cove Campground, is fairly simple and banal, but perhaps because of that, it was so easy to put up the tent. The car is parked right next to the tent, not half a mountain away. No need to schlepp. Flat surface, no wind, no rain. No need to stabilize the tarps with super heavy rocks.. Everything has pluses and minuses. Good night.
Cabot Trail Lookouts and Explanatory Panels
More about the Cabot Trail itself: Aside from stopping at the monastery and the eatery at Pleasant Bay, I pulled over at various lookouts and rest stops, one more spectacular than the other. It is impossible to resist the surrounding beauty. Explanatory panels posted strategically at some of the Cabot Trail lookouts describe the geology, biology and history of the area, helping to understand the “Big Picture”.
Aspy fault. Looks more impressive in the geological panels than in reality…
Driving on the Cabot Trail is amazing!!! Great lookout spots every few meters. From the summit of Mount McKenzie you can see the St. Lawrence Gulf. I took pics of some of the explanatory panels:
Harp seals don’t need maps. They are masters of the Big Picture. According to the interpretive sign they give birth only on ice!!! Looking at the eyes of that seal pup is enough to melt me.
Since I circumnavigated the peninsula, I am now viewing the Gulf of St. Lawrence itself. Awe inspiring!
Cape Breton Sunset
As I was driving down the mountain, the ocean spread in front of my eyes in out-of-the-world colors, as shown in the sliders above and below and the following pictures :
A group from India was gathered at one of the lookouts, pointing to a moose hiding far down in the bush. I was amazed. Who would have noticed that?
Following are two sets of three exposures of the same shots. I find it so gratifying to see what technology can do to our visual impressions. No camera captures “reality” , but even our actual view is not “objective, as I showed here with the pictures of bee eyes. Even though clearly our direct viewing “trumps” all photos, there is still something to be said for the nuancing technology permits. And, yes, photography is an art form, meaning another venue through which we play with the elements of nature, whether they be resonating strings, drumskins or a digital camera.
Another sign said: “The rocks before you were deposited on or intruded into the Earth’s crust between 500 and 300 million years ago. In the last 2 million years, ice sheets have scraped over them, and today the waves and weather continue to erode them. These rocks, their elevation and form largely determine what plants, and, as a result, what animals live here. They also strongly affect our activity.” And this is the bottom line. We come from earth, air and water. Our breath, the oxygenation of organic compounds, is controlled fire. We are one with the entire history of this planet, all the nonsense about day-to-day politics, apart. No science denial can affect or change these facts. A spec over creation.
Yes, Cape Breton here in the North, and Park Timna in the Arava South are very different on the surface, but both allow us to experience that continuity, that wholeness, the effect rocks have on plants, on animals, on us.
I went on driving to Cheticamp Campground to get acquainted with the western part of Cabot Trail.
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