August 18: A windswept fort and feeling stretched

Today I drove the forty or so miles down just past the modern-day town of Louisbourg, walked through a visitor center, and caught a shuttle bus into the past.

Louisbourg Fortress (a fortified town, as opposed to a fort, which is just a fort) was built by the French, back when they were battling the Brits for supremacy in North America. The current fortress is something like Williamsburg, only even more so. With Williamsburg they had a few existing buildings to start with. With Louisbourg they had archaeological digs and historians. What they’ve achieved with that is pretty astonishing. You really do feel like you’re walking through an 18th century (they’re portraying the 1740s here, the height of Louisbourg’s prosperity) walled town. You almost feel like you’re in France, not Canada, which is rather disconcerting.

Louisbourg Fortress from the shuttle bus across the bay.

The soldier who wanted to be bribed with rum to let us in [g].

The main gate into Louisbourg Fortress.

Looking up the hill at the main town.  The big yellow gate is actually fronting on the water.

A lovely tapestry in one of the buildings.

A pantry exhibit in one of the buildings.

A painting of what it must have looked like here in the 1740s.

One of the gardens. I was rather surprised that lavender does this well in this climate (the cool windy summers as much as the cold winters), and ended up in a nice discussion about the local climate with a man working in the garden.

Piles and piles of slate shingles. Those were for the houses of the rich.

I’ve never seen an oven like this one before.

Another bit of garden. Not sure precisely what the yellow flowers are, but they may be Jerusalem artichokes. They sure do look like the googled images of them, anyway.  The green bristly things in the foreground are teasel, used to card wool back in the day.

An interesting part of the church paraphernalia inside of the building in the next photo.

This was officially the officers’ barracks, but there was also a church and a jail in there — along with a huge exhibit on how Louisbourg was researched and rebuilt back in the 1960s.

The living history part of the deal is toned down here, though. Not a lot of demonstrations, at least not today. But a good many of the buildings were filled with exhibits, about how they did the research and the rebuilding, and telling the stories of some of the people who lived here. I was surprised (although I have no idea why I was surprised) to discover that a few African slaves lived here. I was also fascinated by the hierarchy of the place, who was on top, and who was unfortunate enough to be at the bottom. I learned about the soldiers’ lives, and saw where they lived, and all in all it was another part of history that I didn’t know about. I also had a very nice chat with a gardener about the local climate, and another with a soldier on the ramparts about how most English language military terms come from the French language.

I’ve been charmed by the way I’m greeted with “hello, bonjour” ever since I crossed the border into Canada. I keep meaning to mention it, but what I’ve learned is that this is how they ask you which language you speak.  You’re supposed to respond in your language so that the person addressing you knows how to go on. Which is pretty nifty, IMHO.

I spent most of the day at Fortress Louisbourg, in a misty moisty morning and cloudy (and windy) was the weather, and then just in the brisk wind that made me glad I’d put my hoodie and my raincoat on.

After I left Louisbourg, I wasn’t in the mood to make a decision as to what I was going to do the next day, so I stopped at a provincial park campground nearby – and promptly got read the riot act for speeding in the campground. I had not been speeding. I’ve been paranoid about the whole kilometers vs. miles thing ever since I crossed the border, and I know for a fact that I was not speeding. But I didn’t argue with the man, and he didn’t do anything more than fuss at me.

I’ve already been feeling sort of weird about Cape Breton ever since I got here. I’m not sure I can explain it, but I’m more than ready to leave. It’s almost like I’m a rubber band, with one end fastened in western Washington, and apparently Cape Breton was just stretching me just a little too far.  That’s also part of the reason I didn’t go on to Newfoundland.

There’s more to see here, and I could have stayed another night or two, but I’m ready to head west. Not directly west, not yet, but west.

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

August 19: A long, long drive, and another enormous bridge

The result of my decision last night is that I drove a long way today. Oh, I suppose I could have broken the drive up with another night in Nova Scotia, but that’s not what I wanted to do.

I got up and out early and headed for the Canso Causeway. The main road from Louisbourg to the mainland goes north almost to Sydney (a distance of about forty miles, so not that big a deal), and then southwest along the western shore of Lake Bras d’Or back to St. Peters, where I spent my first night on the island, and then down to the causeway by the same route I came onto the island.

Lake Bras d’Or on a sunny morning (of course the weather got better as soon as I decided to leave).

A lot of the signs in certain parts of Cape Breton Island are in Gaelic as well as English. So a different kind of bilingual than what I was getting used to.

There’s actually a hamlet called Lower River Inhabitants, which I found vastly amusing.

The drive along the lakeshore was lovely, and I enjoyed the views. When I got to Port Hastings (the tiny town at the island end of the causeway, I stopped twice, once at a McDonalds (I’ve finally figured out the tea issue – I order a small hot tea and a large cup of ice, then I let the tea brew for a few minutes and pour it over the ice – then I go out to my cooler and add lemon juice and I’m in business [wry g] – hey, it works), and once at a museum at the end of the causeway that told about how it was built back in the 1940s, which was fascinating. I’d wondered about that big scar on the waterfront on the mainland side. Apparently that’s where most of the rock to build the causeway was blasted from. Next door (and the main reason I’d stopped) was a small shop selling quilts. The lady was very friendly, and she had some nice (albeit machine-quilted) quilts for sale.

Looking at the Canso Causeway from the parking lot of the museum about it.

And then it was over the causeway and back to the mainland, where I hit the main highway and headed west, thinking I’d catch the ferry to Prince Edward Island (PEI), because it was a bit shorter coming from the east than driving around to the bridge. Well, I got to the ferry landing and discovered you have to have reservations. They were full up for today. So much for that. So I stopped to call and make a reservation for a campground near Cavendish (more about that tomorrow) on PEI. A campsite for tonight, and a cabin for tomorrow night.

I know this is local First Nations. What I don’t know is how to pronounce it.

And then I got back on the highway and booked. All the rest of the way across northern Nova Scotia and over the border into New Brunswick, where I turned north almost immediately, heading for the Confederation Bridge, which opened in 1997.

The beginning of the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island.

A quick snap of the view over the Jersey barriers on one side of the bridge.

It’s another bridge on the scale of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, only without any tunnels. It’s 13km long, which is apparently the longest bridge of its type in North America. It’s seriously impressive (it darned well better be – when I cross it again on my way west, it will cost me $46 – you only pay leaving the island, not arriving).

I stopped at a welcome center on the PEI side of the bridge to get a provincial road map. The CAA map of the Maritimes isn’t all that good, but the provincial maps cover everything.

Welcome to Prince Edward Island!

The campground was less than forty miles away at this point, but the road was – and this still sort of makes me giggle – winding and up and over and around, and it reminded me of nothing so much as the little backroads I drove in northwest New Jersey a few weeks ago. Weird, huh?

The campground is very nice, heavily wooded and private, and quiet. And close to both Charlottetown and Cavendish. If only the wifi actually worked…

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

August 20: Cavendish, er, Avonlea, and beautiful red beaches

Okay. Is everyone familiar with Anne of Green Gables? The story of an orphan adopted by mistake (she was supposed to be a boy) who won everyone’s hearts over, anyway? The source of one of my favorite quotes? “Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it… Yet.” Well, today I visited Green Gables, or at least the house L.M. Montgomery based Green Gables on (it belonged to some of her cousins). I also saw what’s left (just the foundations, alas) of the house where she wrote the book, and the house where she was born.

The path through the woods that I took to Green Gables, named after a landmark in the books.

The Haunted Wood, which is actually quite lovely and not haunted at all [g].

I did not expect to see jewelweed here, for some reason, but here it was.

Hollyhocks in the garden at Green Gables.

Green Gables itself.

I thought this was clever. This is the bedroom done up to look like the room Anne slept in the night she arrived.

And this room next to it was done up to look like her room as described near the end of the book.

I was walking back up the Haunted Wood trail to Merlin, when I spotted a little boy and his grandmother peering at something on the edge of the trail. This caterpillar turned out to be what they were looking at [g].

The view from the path to the remains of the house where L.M. Montgomery wrote Anne of Green Gables.

And another classic PEI bucolic farmland view. The whole island looks like this. It’s so charming.

This little dude was on the porch of the bookstore near where Montgomery wrote Anne of Green Gables.

The cellar hole of the house where Anne of Green Gables was written.

Yeah, Cavendish, PEI, is to L.M. Montgomery and Anne Shirley what Hannibal, Missouri, is to Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer. There is one big difference, though. Most of the Anne sites are part of PEI National Park, so they’re not quite so commercial and in your face about it. OTOH, outside of the national park, there are amusement parks and wax museums and omigosh all kinds of silly stuff.

Touring Green Gables, and walking through the Haunted Wood was a lot of fun this morning, though. I took Lonely Planet’s advice, and parked Merlin at a little town park at the other end of the 1km long Haunted Wood trail, and approached Green Gables that way instead of from the huge parking lot and modern visitor center. They were right. It was much nicer. I had my parks pass in my pocket, so it wasn’t like I hadn’t paid or anything.

The Haunted Wood is just your basic spruce and birch woodland, but it’s a special spruce and birch woodland, because it’s the one where Anne got her wits scared right out of her because of her own imagination. Anyway, it was fun to make the pilgrimage, which is something I’d always wanted to do.

After a picnic lunch, I drove along the shoreline part of PEI National Park and admired the broad Gulf of St. Lawrence and the bright blue sky and the rusty red sands and cliffs. I’ve never seen an oceanscape quite like that one, and I enjoyed it very much. Then I drove around the island for a bit, and went back to my cabin, and chilled out for a while before I went out for dinner.

The northern shore of Prince Edward Island is gorgeous, isn’t it?

Another view of the shore.

This is the hamlet of French River, which apparently has been voted one of the prettiest towns in Canada for years.

I had a lobster supper tonight [g]. I ate soup and a half bucket of mussels (that’s how they serve them, by the bucket) and salad and a whole lobster, the mussels and lobster accompanied by melted butter, and the best dinner rolls I’ve had in a very long time. I finished the whole thing off with lemon meringue pie, and they basically had to roll me out of there when it was over. That’s more food I’ve eaten at one time since before I left home, I think. And every bit of it was delicious.

Lobster suppers are a staple of New England and the Maritimes, and especially of PEI, so this was a splurge I’d been thinking about making for a while now. Since I’m headed off of PEI and across New Brunswick towards Quebec tomorrow afternoon (I want to spend the morning in Charlottetown), I knew this would be my last chance. The supper place was just a mile or so down the road, and it came highly recommended by Lonely Planet, so I thought why not? And I’m glad I did!

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.