August 20, 1999
A nice late morning. Both Matt and Niki slept in, even as the little girl next door, Caitlin had fun honking the horn. Matt never even budged.
But after breakfast, when we did get going and back on the road, it wasn't long before we came upon another lookout. This time Matt decided that he wanted to go for a swim. Both him and Niki changed real quick and what we had expected to only take seconds turned into a nice long play in the crashing surf for them both.
It was so peaceful, I didn't want to leave.
We drove on, pulling into Neil's Harbour for gas. Matt took the opportunity to check on getting a lobster trap as a souvenir from a local fisherman. So after a bit, he returned with two. We strapped them on the roof and away we went.
Now there is a scary side to these traps. The truth is they are really deviant life forms and are better known as Car Traps. Oh yeah, you see them all over. They wait along the side of the road in their nesting piles and when a car goes by they jump on the roof and devour the vehicle. Often you can see undigested bits in the trap, mostly rubber stuff.
We were amazed at how adaptable these Car traps had become. We saw various species we quickly named Van traps, truck traps. And it is suspected that there are bike and motorcycle traps also, but they probably eat so fast you never see one latched on for long.
Now when your on the Cabot Trail as we were, it would seem that getting lost would be a rather impossible feat. You only need to know us for a short while to understand. I was told by my navigator to just follow the centerline. Well, somehow, during a gap and at a spot where the road forked, we ended up down a forever narrower paved road. It eventually stopped at Bay St. Lawrence, after a quick walk about, we found a spot to turn the big RV around and headed back to the main road. I figure we weren't lost...for long.
The west side of the Cabot Trail put us up in the clouds, with a few big hills, 2 at 455 metres and one at 355 metres. The last long hill had me the most worried. Without much of a break in slope it just kept on going, following the shore. Even in low gear and both feet on the brakes, the best I could keep it down to was 25 mph. Some young kid on a racing bike pulled out just in front of us at the top of the last hill, and we never saw him again until the bottom.
The lookout at the bottom near Corney Brook, seemed like a great spot to have lunch and let the brakes and transmission cool, and to let me get my stomach settled back down. The best part was though, from here on in, the rest of the drive was going to be a piece of cake.
We headed south, back onto the mainland and then pulled into catch the ferry for Prince Edward Island. We just missed the ferry that was loading by one car, but we pulled out the BBQ and waited for the last one of the day. While we waited, we called ahead and got what seemed to be the only vacancy left on the island, at Seal Cove Campground.
So we started the day on Cape Breton, and ended it on PEI.