Day 15-16, Wednesdy-Thurday

So last night, our ferry arrived right on time at 6 pm in North Sydney.  It was a six hour sail under beautiful skies.  Got some beautiful shots of Port Aux Basques as we pulled out.  This town looks much better from the water.

We could not resist returning to the Black Spoon Bistrot where we had lunch on day 3, just before boarding the ferry to Newfoundland.  Another amazing meal. Joni had pan fried scallops for an appetizer and pan mango haddock for her main dish.  I started with seafood chowder, and  added Cajun seafood on bow tie pasta.  All of our dishes were incredible.

We left the restaurant around 7 pm, and headed for the Cabot Trail and the Cape Breton Highlands National Park.  We didn't have a reservation anywhere, so we were rolling the dice.  We arrived at the first campground, near Ingonish Beach, but it was full, so we drove another 10 k north to Broad Cove campground, still in the National Park, and scored a sight.  It was 9:45 pm.  Along the way we relied on our Garmin GPS to guide us.  All of a sudden, Michelle, the voice of Garmin, said, "board ferry now".  We had no idea that was on our route, but we had no alternative.  So in the dark, we took a 5 minute ferry ride across St. Ann's bay.  Very exciting, but a little unnerving too.

Up around 7:30 AM, a relaxing bacon, eggs, and toast breakfast and eventually hit the road by 10:30 AM, looking for a laundromat as he headed north along the Cabot Trail in the national park.  The scenery is spectacular and it' been hard not to stop at every viewing point along the route.

Our first lighthouse of the day, did the trick, so we pulled over in Neil's Harbour just in time to watch a Zodiac leave the dock with a bunch of eager whale watchers aboard.  Hope they don't too close to a whale; one flip of a fin would send them all into the Atlantic.

Found our laundry just north of the lighthouse.  This will be our last stop at one of these establishments before returning to Sugar Hill.

We had lunch, fresh crab sandwich for me and scallops for Joni, at the Chowder House in Neil's Harbour.  Delicious!

We then drove directly to Meat Cove which was only about 40 k away.  We arrived around 3 pm,  and were immediately overwhelmed by the spectacular setting.

Never been to a better campground in that respect.  Our actually site was a little treacherous, not exactly flat, and there were incredible winds, so it was hard not to imagine either just letting gravity or the wind push us right off the cliff.  Would have been a great place to die.

Took lots of pictures, had yummy take out fish and chips from the campground's small restaurant, and talked to lots of our neighboring campers who were all very nice.  Two young men, with whom we chatted with at the laundromat, men invited us to share their campfire and some Jack Daniels with them.  We declined and opted for Scrabble.

Sleeping was a little rough, mostly short spurts of one hour; the winds kept shaking the van, but we survived.  Breakfast was simple:  coffee and Wheatabix as we enjoyed the view and avoided the wind and heavy mist.  We kept looking for whales, the campground owner says they see them daily, but we struck out.

Without doubt a campsite we'll remember forever!  Thank you Nat and Terry Bull for insisting we come here.