September 20, 2007
Cape Breton
I haven’t seen a speedometer hovering around 100 since testing the North Dallas Expressway in my youth. To see one now even if in kilometers is on the edge of unnerving when hurling headlong meeting big travel buses winding the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. My psyche will probably never catch up with the metric system, let alone in a rental car where the agency is only too ready to compare my count on dents and scratches alongside theirs at checkout time. It doesn’t help for sightseeing .
Anyhow, sightseeing’s what’s happening these past few days during OoN’s absence. CP’s done her share of it from the navigator’s seat and walked some of the trails I’d rather not chance. The geology is spectacular, largely scrambled igneous from the cast-off tectonic plates that Africa shed some gazzillion years ago. (Don’t ever try that sentence in Geology 101.)
Some travel jock wrote that Cape Breton is the most beautiful island in the world. I presume he’d seen most all of them. But given the professional tendency to hyperbole (which we parsons share), I’d say it was an understatement. There’s hardly a turn in the road that doesn’t anticipate some spectacle like if not a whale offshore then a whale boat waiting to take you to one. The road signs in the national park part of the island remind the driver that moose were here first, that they take no account of highways, and that they are pretty much the size of your car.
Unlike in East Texas, road signs are often in Gaelic as well as English. The Celts have seen to that. All the labels on the foodstuffs are in English and French. It’s not exactly the way the city council in our town would handle this with their attempts at grammaphobic ordinances.
A neighbor to our cabin near the Margaree River took us on a tour through the heavy undergrowth down by the riverside where the salmon fishing is rampant.
The libraries and B&Bs have WiFi and share it generously. The Margaree Library where I’m currently connected is about to close for the day. Peace and more later.
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