Cabot Trail - an Overdose on Beauty

Since the weather was nice on Saturday, we decided to drive the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island. 

We had to drive back down to Exit 11 to start the Cabot Trail.  We traveled the entire loop going through the park at the north end of the island and coming back through Baddeck.  The entire drive for the day was 225 miles long.

It was a beautiful day, beautiful mountains, beautiful coastline, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. 

We could have taken a ferry across at Englishtown.

But since we were going to be traveling 110 miles on a ferry on Monday, we decided to just drive the entire trail.  Before we reached the entrance to Cape Breton National Park, we saw this RV park on the coast.

And a little further down, we came to this pull off where you could look down and see the ocean coming in on this rock lined shored.

As soon as we stepped out of the car, you could hear the waves coming in and going out on the small rocks. 

It was very loud not with crashing waves but with a constant low roar as the waves went in and out over the rocks.

While we continued driving down the road, I continued snapping pictures trying to capture every scene not really realizing how beautiful it was until I started looking at the pictures again to upload to the blog.

Then we came to our first major hill to climb.  Glad we were in the car and not the motorhome.

At the top of the hill, the view back down the coast was SPECTACULAR.

As was the view down below us.

The blue down in the background is ocean not sky.

I was even able to zoom up this lobster boat.

To the north of us was Middle Head Point.

We arrived at Ingonish beach….

…where we saw some crazy people surfing in the ice cold Atlantic waters.

To the far south was the mountain we had just come down.

We left the beach

and drove by the point at Ingonish Beach.

The next lookout was my favorite.  I wish now we would have stayed here a lot longer.

The deep blue waves would come in

and crash on the rocks below.

The pictures don’t even come close to describing how beautiful it is.

We continued to drive up the coast…

…before heading inland to cross to the west side of the park.

Here, the mountains were covered in spruce and pine trees.

And the roads were quite a bit steeper (13% grade at one point). 

Glad we weren’t in the motorhome!

Then we reached the west side of the coast of Cape Breton Island.

Again, words and pictures cannot begin to help you comprehend the beauty.

We stopped at this overlook on the west side of the coast.

We continued away from the coast at the top of the mountain…

…and came upon a lake to the east.  Chuck pulled over to look at the lake because he thought he saw something back in the cove.

Eagle-eye Chuck spotted our first moose sighting.

We drove further down the west coast.

That’s the road in front of us.

Before reaching Cheti-camp, we saw these two unusual rock formations.

And this really big rock cliff.

We stopped at Cheti-camp for lunch at a little seafood restaurant.  The very nice waitress spoke French and so Chuck spoke two of the four words he know in French to her:  Bon jour.

On the way back, we saw these beautiful flowers along the side of the road.

I told Chuck I had overdosed on beauty today from the majestic mountains, to the powerful ocean, to the daintiest little flowers growing on the side of the road…all of it spectacular and all of it beautiful.