Jim & Jeanette's Travels: Day 28 – Monday, June 9, 2014

South Harbor, Nova Scotia to Hilden, Nova Scotia – 302 miles

Technically, today we began our journey homeward. Our campsite last night marked the farthest point from home that we’d be traveling, so beginning today, every mile we drive will be taking us back toward Colorado – although in a roundabout way. I checked our accumulated total mileage so far, and the GPS tells me it’s 5315 miles. Just for grins, I punched the “Go Home” button on the GPS to see what kind of route it would generate to get us back to our driveway, and after a surprisingly short crunching of numbers, it came up with a route that totaled 2797 miles. Of course that’s the most direct way, traveling on Interstate Highways down through New England and New York, and picking up I-80 across the Midwest, then I-76 down to Denver. I guess theoretically we do that in five days, maybe six at the most, if we really put the pedal to the metal – or less if we drove straight through without stopping to rest at night. Not my way of traveling, but it could be done. We’ll probably do it in three weeks minimum, and probably cover at least another four thousand to forty-five hundred miles.

The first part of the journey – 60 miles or so – was another beautiful drive down the coastline of the Cape Breton Highlands, only this time it was the Atlantic Ocean off to our left side. It was a crystal clear morning with only a hint of a cloud here and there. The eastern horizon, out in the Atlantic, was a sharp horizontal line, unobscured by the haze layer often seen over the ocean. The water itself was deep blue and smooth, with hardly a trace of surf against the shore. The local fishermen were taking advantage of the calm conditions, and there were dozens of lobster boats checking traps all across our field of view.

The shoreline itself, while generally very rocky, was not as rugged as we saw yesterday on the western side of the island. The land was not as high in elevation, and there were many small sandy beaches here and there, especially where they occurred at the mouths of rivers. Where the beaches were adjacent to the rocky headlands, they consisted of fist-sized to softball-sized cobbles rather than sand. The water everywhere was as clear as a bell, and quite cool when I dipped my finger into it at one point.

We eventually reached the end of the highlands, and the terrain became more benign. Looking off to the east, we could see the eastern part of the island was much lower, and although there were a few low hills, it looked generally pretty flat. Whatever titanic forces pushed the earth’s crust upward to form the highlands somehow bypassed that portion of the island.

It was a little after 1:00pm when we reached the Canso Causeway back to the mainland. Coming off the causeway, we turned to the east to follow what was identified on the map as a scenic drive. It turned out to be not that scenic, at first skirting around an unsightly rock quarry, then an industrial area of docks and oil tanks along the shores of the Canso Strait. The road finally turned south, paralleling the eastern shoreline, but too far inland to offer views of the water. It was mainly just a narrow winding road through thick willow or alder scrub which blocked any view to either side. We could occasionally catch a glimpse of the ocean, but even then it was just the blue horizon off in the distance. And the road itself was quite rough, rattling our poor motorhome like ball bearings in a tin can. Perhaps the road and the scenery get better farther south if you stick with it, but after nearly an hour of this we found an escape route that cut back inland toward the central Trans-Canada Highway. While we generally prefer the back roads, the scenery along this mostly multiple-lane super highway was much better than we had seen since arriving back on the mainland, plus we could get some miles under our belt and hopefully make up some of the time we had spent dilly-dallying around for the past few days. We eventually turned southeast toward Halifax, and stopped for the night just past the town of Truro.

All in all, the day was not a total loss, because of the spectacular ride this morning. But nevertheless we’re looking forward to a better day tomorrow.