Flying Salads and a Short Lighthouse

On Thursday, we awoke to no electricity and very weak water pressure. Due to a rainstorm during the night, the local area was experiencing an electrical outage. So, we had no AC, but we had enough battery power  to make coffee and water in the fresh tank with propane for hot showers. 

The Lakes Campground

We met the folks at the site across from us who were from Truro, NS. We learned that the wife worked with Dr. Raj Lada at the Christmas Tree Research Institute at Dalhousie University. I know Raj and had visited their facility during a Christmas tree conference in 2013. We got caught up on the statuses of our respective Christmas tree research programs. It’s a small small world after all. Before departing, Jane & I briefly biked around the campground.

We drove back to the coast and continued along the Cabot Trail. We stopped at the Great Breton Highlands National Park welcome center to purchase our pass and get advice and a map. Because of the topography of the highlands, the coastal views became even more spectacular. After driving awhile, we pulled into a turnout, Cap Rouge, for lunch. We ate the remainder of our super salad on a bench overlooking a beautiful coastal cliffside made of 300-500 million year old rocks.

We enjoyed Flying Salads at the Cap Rouge Look Off

While the view was excellent, eating our salads was challenging due to strong breezes. So, my good readers, based on our experience, I would like to pass on the following guidelines to you in case you ever find yourself consuming a tossed salad in strong winds:

Bon appetit!

Entry to the Highland Bog Boardwalk

After our most excellent lunch experience, we continued along the Cabot Trail enjoying continuously changing but stupendous views occasionally interrupted by waiting in traffic queues to proceed through ongoing construction sites. 

Along the way, we took a couple of short but nice hikes. The first was through a highland bog over a boardwalk. We observed lots of interesting fauna, including pitcher plants, orchids, dwarfed larch, sphagnum moss, and others. The second hike was the Lone Shieling hike that included an old stone hut in remembrance of the original Scottish settler and also passed through a mature sugar maple forest with 350-year-old trees. Eventually, not long after exiting the northern end of the national park, we found our way to Hideaway Campgrounds. 

Lone Shieling Trail

After a brief pause at the campsite we headed to a local Dingwall restaurant, the Marktown for an early dinner and some music. Jane agreed to drive for this excursion. On the way, we saw a short red and white lighthouse with signs saying “Open” and “Free”.  This was too tempting to pass by. Jane pulled over on the lawn next to the lighthouse and we spent the next 45 minutes learning about the fascinating history of the St. Paul Island lighthouse narrated by our own personal native guide.

The 27 ft. lighthouse had  served to reduce the number of shipwrecks at St. Paul’s Island, in the Cabot Strait, after the original wooden lighthouse burned down.  It had been located on a tall precipice on the north end of the island, hence its shortness. Our hostess told the following story. A lady who was unaware that the boat her husband was traveling on had crashed on St. Paul’s Island saw a man in town wearing the coat she had made for her husband. The man confessed to the authorities that he and other hunters had found twelve dead bodies from a shipwrecked boat on St. Paul’s Island and had looted them. The money that the wife had sewn into the coat lining was still there. Because of her loss, she led the efforts to have the original lighthouse built to prevent more lost lives at the “Graveyard of the Gulf”.  Another automated lighthouse has replaced this one which was disassembled on-site and re-erected in Dingwall. A lighthouse keeper is not longer needed to refill the whale oil lamp, clean the lenses and windows, and raise the weight that rotates the light. 

The (former) St. Paul Island Lighthouse

Leaving the lighthouse, we had no problem finding the Markland Inn as the road ended there at the end of a peninsula. We entered the lobby and made reservations for a 6 pm dinner in the restaurant that adjoined the lobby. Jane and I started playing a game of Scrabble until we were called for dinner. We had a window table with a nice sea view and enjoyed a Digby scallops appetizer, crab cakes (John) with local beers and desserts. Jane was amused by the “Panic Line” marked near the bottom the beer glasses.

Jane reaches the Panic Line

After dinner, when we returned to our Scrabble game in the lobby and the music had begun. Norman McDonald was playing guitar and singing a mixture of old 60s and 70s popular music and folk tunes, as well as, local songs. We were the only ones in the lobby and so, applauded each of his songs and struck up intermittent conversations. While I was in the washroom, Jane told him that I played banjo and probably provided a bribe because he asked me to join him. I agreed because there was no audience at all. So, I hauled the ole 5-string out of the RV and tuned it a 1/2 step low to match Norman’s guitar and began faking it by following the chord changes on his guitar. We played 5 or 6 songs together, only one of which I knew. I sounded okay on some. Because a crowd had assembled in the lobby to listen, I bowed out after a while and let the pro take over. Norman had a very easy-going enjoyable sound and the lyrics to the local Nova Scotian songs were very interesting. After the show, Jane drove us back to our campsite and we set up the RV in darkness.