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Published: October 19th 2008
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We woke up, got dressed and went down to breakfast. We met our Winnipeg friends in the dining room and had breakfast together. After breakfast we packed, took all of our luggage to the car and said goodbye to PEI.
We originally were going double back and go by way of the Confederation bridge back to New Brunswick and then to Nova Scotia however, after some investigating we decided to take the car ferry. It was $20.00 more than the bridge and it seemed like it would be fun to go that way and it would place us a little farther east in Nova Scotia which was a good thing. So ferry it was. They really get you when you visit PEI. The toll for the bridge is $40.00 but you don't pay it until you go back to the mainland in New Brunswick. I guess the theory is that unless you die and are buried on PEI they are going to get their toll one way or the other. The same with going back on the ferry; it's $60.00 and that includes the toll for coming over on the bridge. Strange. But anyway, the 90 minute ferry ride is
what we chose.
They don't make reservations for this ferry so we needed to be at the dock fairly early so that we would have a place otherwise it was a 3 hour wait for the next one. Unfortunately that meant that we wouldn't get to do any sightseeing on our way to Wood Island, PEI where we would catch the ferry. There was more I wanted to see but time... blah blah blah.
We got in line at the ferry place (depot, dock, whatever) along with buses and semis and all manor of vehicle and about 15 minutes before departure we were loaded on the ferry. I haven't ridden that kind of a ferry since I was a small kid in San Diego. You are not allowed to stay in your car and really who would want to breathe all the gas and exhaust fumes for 75 minutes so we headed for the passenger section. There was a restaurant and a lounge where you could sit and wait. Once you were there you were not allowed to go back to your car.
We had some lunch, I had the worst hamburger I've ever had. It gives
"mystery meat" a whole new meaning. I don't dare contemplate what kind of meat was in that thing...moose, caribou, pigeon, whatever. After lunch we wandered around the ship, peered over the side, saw ourselves going the other direction found an information kiosk on the ferry. The woman was informative, sort of, and she suggested that since we were going to Cape Breton Island that a decent driving distance would be Inverness. She never told us that there was barely any place to stay there but oh well. So we decided Inverness would be it for the night and in due time, went back to the car and drove off the ferry and on to Cape Breton Island.
One of the ways we've determined where we would go was to find a place that sounded interesting and then go there. That was the case with Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. It is farther north than I had originally planned to go and had decided only to go there if we were to take the ferry from Sydney to Newfoundland. We had ruled this out for a couple of reasons, money and time. It was a six hour ferry ride
one way which pretty much eats a whole day and then the same coming back. I had planned on us spending most of our time touring the main part of Nova Scotia. It was Alexander Graham Bell that I have to thank for the happenstance of reconsidering visiting Cape Breton. His home and a museum are there and it seemed like a good place to visit.
Instead of on ramps and off ramps Canada has lots of roundabouts. Roundabouts, I don't know whether I love them or hate them. It wouldn't be so bad if people were going a reasonable speed but my god they haul ass around those things and and sort of sling-shot in the direction they need to go, if you miss one, too bad you end up going round and round. After taking the third exit on the roundabout we were off to Cape Breton Island.
I haven't mentioned our girl guide GPS, mostly because she has been doing a pretty good job of getting us where we need to go but she really blew it here. Somehow she missed the coast road and so we ended up going inland which put us quite
a ways from Inverness. She said "OH my god, I must recalculate" and so she had us turn around and head up a dirt road. Huh? Well OK she hasn't steered us wrong yet. It wasn't too bad for a few feet but then the road got narrower and narrower and the canopy of trees completely hid the sky and the road got more rutted and full of huge mud puddles and I'm not sure how a 4 x 4 would have navigated that let alone this puny Nissan that we were driving. It was getting more and more impassable and creeping me out because I had visions of us getting stuck in the mud, no cell service and nobody around for about 1000 miles and god we could
die there! We turned around.
We checked the map, realized our mistake and determined that we would have to go west when we reached Whycocomagh. Dorothy we sure aren't in Kansas anymore we are in Celtic land. As a matter of fact, all of the road signs were in English and Celtic.
We finally made it to Inverness as it was getting dark and hey! there was no place
to stay! We finally found a motel,
probably the only one in this tiny town and settled there for the night. I was grateful, it wasn't awful. There was a restaurant across the street and we just went there for dinner. It was hotter than the hinges of hell in that place! We ate fast. We were both tired and feeling funky and that heat didn't help a bit. I ordered seafood chowder and a Greek salad. The chowder was very good, the salad could have fed Greece it was so big.
After dinner it was the same old same old, figure out the next day, TV and sleep.
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