Day 6-7 (May 22-23, 2009)
We departed Antigonish heading for Cape Breton Island and traveled, well, meandered actually, along the south shore of Bras d'Or to Louisbourg on the southeastern tip of Cape Breton Island. Weather was warm and sunny, so we stopped to picnic at a high overlook of this vast inland sea, all alone, as usual. This is definitely not tourist season. No traffic, no muss nor fuss.
By chance we happened upon Mr. Peck, the owner of a store, the RV park and several cottages in the complex who informed us the water was turned on just yesterday. I think we may have been the first occupants of the season. We immediately headed out of town to Fortress Louisbourg. We are told this is the largest fortress in North America that has been about 25-30% restored to its original condition of the 1740s, including furniture.
The place is quite magnificent with dozens of buildings of stone and wood with ramparts and walls, gatehouses and living quarters for all manner of soldiers, craftsmen, their families. We were among a dozen or so visitors in this massive place. If you're in this part of the world, don't miss it!
Without the Fortress attracting tourists, the town of Louisbourg would be nothing. The fishing industry is marginal, with a large packing plant now closed. Many places are not yet open for the season and the Recession cannot be helping .
We had a lobster dinner at one of the two restaurants open in tow. The lobster really wasn't very good, probably undercooked. I've had better. In fact, the three lobster dinners this week were sub-par, IMHO.
Today we followed the shore toward Sydney weaving through various lobstering harbors, mostly alone on the highway. We stopped at Main-a- Dieu where they were unloading lobsters from several boats that were arriving. We tried to buy a few, but they were unwilling to sell becuase , apparently, the wholesaler was there and/or they have legal restrictions about selling direct-to-retail ( Would that stop them...? <grin>). The wholesale price is CDN$4.50/#.
We talked with and old-timer who lobstered when he was young, but hated fishing because it paid so poorly. He said that 60 years ago when he was in the business he remembers the price as low as 3 to 5 cents per lb!
On the other hand, today's lobster boats were all in good repair and the parking lot was filled with 30-40 late model pickups.
LEaving that port we continued along the shore and eventually arrived via the Marconi trail and the Colliery Trail at Sydney stopping on the beach to run the dogs and have a sandwich in the RV with ocean views all around! A really beautiful place, stony with very little sand and no seashells.
At Sydney we hopped on the Rte. 125 bypass and headed to Baddeck where we find ourselves an the Baddeck Cape Breton Campground high on a hill overlooking Bras d'Or with quite a few other RVers for the first time. But the WiFi service is spotty as is the cell service.
I may get this posted tonight, or from a different place where service is better. Every place we stayed this week had solid WiFi Service, but not here.
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