Happy Fourth of July

For my American friends, have a wonderful fourth. Don't let the heat get you.

Adventure Day Five

My brother and his wife along with her sister and her husband came out. It was nice to sit around chatting but god, it was insane out there. 96 degrees with a real feel of 115. I couldn't breathe

I gussied up my nails. I'm a bit proud of how straight I freehanded the lines

This little fellow has been hanging around (He spent the whole day with us)

so dad made him this



Some things I forgot last post (i.e. I couldn’t actually read what I wrote on the bus). Cheticamp is a M’ikmaw word for ‘exposed land.’ The priest in the crypt in St Peter’s is Father Pierre Fiest. The church was built from island rock to the tune of 41,000 (which is millions in today’s money) So on to day five
Oh, how it rained in the morning. We left Cheticamp to head to Baddeck, home of Alexander Graham Bell. To get there we went up the Cabot Trail, through a national park, went all the way across the top of the park then down to Baddeck. Until 1:30 it rained, and all the pictures are so dark and atmospheric. I actually like that, so the rain didn’t bother me much. You can’t live in the park but just outside it yes (we zagged back and forth). There were SO many little houses along the coast, so isolated and yet so beautiful. I’m not sure I’d be cut out for living like that but it’s fun to dream. Between the park and the northern coast is a place called the Barrens which is an uninhabited protected area. On the coast are tiny towns with weird names like Capstick and Meat Cove (which is a former whaling butcher station, now home to about 30 people).


We stopped at a whale interpretive center. It was a tad small, but they tried hard. They could find a better movie to show than the history of whaling and why it’s wrong. I think most of us realize that. Show us instead WHY whales are important.

We stopped at the Keltic Lodge, formerly (partially) the mansion of one of Bell’s friends for lunch. And then we dropped into the Bell museum (You can’t view his home; his descendants still live there) in Baddeck where Bell eventually settled. I found it rather fascinating. It took 60 seconds to realize I literally knew nothing about Bell other than the first thing he said on the phone. He and his father were teachers for the deaf (and interesting ways of doing it too). It was his passion. I knew his wife was deaf (only thanks to Big Bang Theory). He was her teacher. She worked with him throughout his life, becoming the first woman to fund scientific investigation in North America. She also learned to lip read and speak seven languages. Imagine what she could have done today.
Bell didn’t just invent the phone. He worked on the first planes and hydrofoils. He tried to use a metal detector to find a bullet in President McKinley. He tried his hand at genetics and selective breeding (He wanted to get sheep that always birthed twins. He failed but did make a strain that had extra nipples)

While we were in there, the tour director brought our luggage over to the Gisele Inn and came back for us. We were laughing because when we got here we were told our room numbers but not given keys. They left our luggage inside, key in the door because it’s so safe. What was less amusing, was most of the restaurants were more than a half mile from here and given the average age of the tour is about 70, that seems unwise. I went to the closest one and splurged again (because the cheaper pizza place was like a 15-minute walk with no sidewalks) sigh. On the other hand, I went with the four old ladies from Buffalo and they were good company and the food was yummy.


Rain on the Cabot trail

Rain on the Cabot trail

Rain on the Cabot trail

Rain on the Cabot trail

I'm beginning to think I need one of those bras with the jillion iron wires

Somewhere on the cabot trail

whale skull

Rain on the Cabot trail (the black smudge in the water is a whale)


Black Brook Bay (I snitched two of the pebbles)

Out on the cliffs (I need to learn how to pose)

The Keltic Lodge

Keltic Lodge (and probably my best framed photo)

The glove/hand is how they taught the deaf to speak. Touch your thumb joint and that's an A etc. The hair in the picture is his amazing wife.

the silver dart, the first plane in Canada and off to the right a hydrofoil, Bell helped with both

Gisele's. Originally owned by a German couple and the wife liked pink. The carpet, the curtains, the furniture the bedding and even canopied beds all in pink. They had just redone the rooms and it smelled like carpet glue