© 2020 Donna Hébert, all right reserved.
There’s a swing to the seasons here. People wait-wait-wait-wait and then wait some more for summer to finally arrive but when it does, BAM! They plant things, travel, go dancing (sadly not this year, though), eat out (many restaurants close in the off-season) and remind themselves why they put up with the long, dark winter. They also work their tails off all summer because this is a tourist destination. Still, summer is worth the wait.
On Sunday, Bob and I took one of our favorite drives up the Cabot Trail through Cap Lemoine and Chéticamp, where we had coffee at the Frog Pond Cafe, going on through the Cape Breton Highlands as far as Pleasant Bay, where we stopped at the Rusty Anchor for a truly magnificent dinner. We drove over the mountain where, in winter, the snow can get to 20 feet and the school bus still has to get through.
Bob likes to tool along on the Trail imagining he’s a British race car driver but I threw a spoke in that, asking to stop every few minutes when I saw something to photograph. Today’s essay is largely photographic and musical. All photos were shot with my iPhone. Looking for photo ops gave a nice feel to the trip. There were a lot of other people with the same idea – it’s Labour Day weekend up here too – but we managed to stay away from them. The most magical moment was at day’s end, when we stopped along the Margaree River. The play of light was magnificent.
My 2002 solo version of “Neil Gow’s Lament” fit as a theme for this YouTube slideshow. Bob is wearing his “dance Cape Breton” tee and that’s a homemade blueberry lemonade on the table at the Rusty Anchor in Pleasant Bay. The treeless landscape at the beginning is Cap St. Joseph LeMoine and opening photo is the Mi-Carème center there. The Cabot Trail runs inland of this peninsula. The Frog Pond Cafe just north of Chéticamp is a great place for espresso and mouth-watering oatcakes. The grandeur of the landscape from there on makes me wish I could paint. I’ll have to be satisfied with my iPhone camera. The sweet Margaree Valley in the fading light at the end is simply stunning.
That’s why we live here.