20020531

May 31, 2002

Day 22

Start: KOA Baddeck, Baddeck, NS
End: Arm Of Gold CG, North Sydney, NS
Miles: 40

The low last night was 56f and the high today was 73f on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. 

Late yesterday, the clouds came in and we had light rain until noon today. Then the clouds blew out of here and we had a glorious afternoon. Tonight, thunderstorms are expected. Tomorrow, there’ll be stiff winds and sunny skies for our ferry trip to Newfoundland.

We didn’t do much today. We moved from the KOA campground to another one that’s only a few miles from the ferry dock. The idea was that there can be thick fog at any time out here, so it’s best to have only a few miles of it when you have a fixed schedule. The trip took us across the Seal Island bridge, which is undergoing construction and is one-way for half its length. The trailer fit through the one-way section, leaving six inches on one side and a foot on the other.

John, the owner of the campground, wasn’t around when we got here. Since we had talked with him yesterday, we figured it would be all right to pick a site and hook up to the power. Then we went grocery shopping for fresh items like bananas.

Then we went out to a laundromat to get the laundry done. It was a funny little room filled with ice-makers and washing machines and dryers and freezers; the other half of the building was a “beverage room” or bar. While we did laundry, others were bagging ice and putting it into freezers. Every now and then, someone would come in and buy 60 bags of ice for his business, and people would move ice from freezers to whatever vehicle he was driving. It was a busy joint. I don’t know how busy the bar was.

We brought the laundry home and hung around the campground for a while. John returned. When I asked him what we could pay him, he said $12CDN. That was more than satisfactory to us (it’s about $8US). I told him we’d see him again on the 21st; he said he’d probably have the whole campground ready by that time, since he had about two weeks worth of work to do. The plumbers worked here all day, and the place opens (officially) tomorrow.

We took a ride to Sydney to see the big city in this end of the world. It’s really not that big. The harbor is large and a few old cement observation towers near the harbor entrance remind you that WWII convoys rendezvoused here - people left here but died before they made port.

The Celebrity cruise ship “Galaxy” was in port. I’ve no idea what sort of cruise she’s on that would bring her in here – maybe a Montreal to the US East Coast or something like that.

Since we didn’t find anything of note in Sydney, we came back via local roads to North Sydney and Sydney Mines and to the campground. We noticed a restaurant near the ferry dock on the way back to the campground. 

A few items of clothing still hadn’t dried, so we spread them around the trailer and opened the windows to force air across them. We sat for a bit, then decided to go out for dinner, back to the place we had noticed (Rollie's). Dolores had mussels and then a surf-and-turf, with a small lobster. I had a shrimp cocktail and halibut. The sauce that came with the shrimp cocktail was unusual. It wasn’t our usual cocktail sauce, but something that looked yellow-greenish and tasted like it was made from habenero peppers. Gawd, it was hot! Good, though.

At the end of dinner, the clouds were coming in rapidly, so we scurried back to the little house in the empty campground overlooking a river. Dolores tried to find entertainment on TV, but with only four channels and one of them totally in French, she had a hard time of it. For a bit, she watched a US movie dubbed in French – it was weird.

I’ve computed the expenses on the laptop and now I’m doing this note. Then we’ll pack for the ferry trip tomorrow (you can’t visit your vehicle while the ferry is underway – you have to stay in the ship’s rooms above the vehicle decks).