Where the St. Lawrence Bay and the Atlantic Ocean Meet

"Time is the fire in which we burn."

It always seems we don't have as much time to explore an area as we would like.  Here we are, up at the doorway to the Cape Breton Highlands and, due to weather, we have four days to explore them - not nearly enough.  Still, we'll do the best we can.  This is day two.

Just getting around the Cape Breton Highlands National Park is a feat of driving endurance, so we split out efforts up into four days.  Today we decided to head up to Meat Cove, the furthest the road could take us to the northernmost point of Cape Breton Island - where the Bay of Saint Lawrence and the Atlantic Ocean meet.

Our trip took us north from Cheticamp, up through Pleasant Bay --

-- and on through the Highlands toward Cape North.  As we crossed the middle of the peninsula on the Cabot Trail, we arrived at Aspy Rift, which is the line of the "great shove" that created the Old Appalachian Mountains when North America was still part of the supercontinent Pangea.  The rift is a huge valley that looks as if it's been smoothed by glaciers, but at one time long ago was incredibly deep as the ancient Appalachian Mountains loomed as high as the Himalaya above where we stood.  Our view up the valley gave a hint of the size of the ancient rift:

Cape North is where the road divides.  Head onward and you turn south toward Baddeck.  Turn left and you head up to St. Margaret and ultimately Meat Cove.  We turned left, just where a colorful church graced the hillside.  We had to include a photo of it, because no blog entry is complete without at least one lighthouse and at least one church:

Onward we drove, through Capstick --

-- and into Meat Cove, which boasts a few houses, a campground, and a Chowder House which our friends Dave Lopushinsky and Leslie Manion strongly recommended to us.  Alas, it hasn't opened for the season yet.  But, luckily, the campground manager was on site, and he obligingly gave us directions up to the trail to a spectacular view of the surrounding area.

We set off up the trail and immediately encountered this precocious cascade:

Our trail wound up the hillside through meadows --

-- and woods --

-- until we reached the height of land, out on the point, with Meat Cove and its gravelly beach below:

The immensity of this place is hard to convey in photographs.  Here is a 360 degree video of what we saw.  In the distance to the south along the shore we spotted a waterfall spilling out off the cliff into the ocean:

Below us, boats were setting and checking their lobster traps, and they sped around the point hundreds of feet below us:

This seemed a natural place for a selfie:

Having filled ourselves with the magic of the meeting of the bay and ocean waters, we drove back down to Meat Cove itself and walked along the beach, looking back up jealously at some tents perched cheerily on the cliff in the campground:

We had planned to have lunch at the chowder house in Meat Cove, so by this time we were getting hungry.  We decided to hunt down a cafe in Dingwall, which is out a short road from Cape North.  As we entered the village, the sign below welcomed us and informed us that it is a "peacefull fishing village."  We embraced some peace, joy and love as we gazed at the hand-wrought architecture of this whimsical cabin:

As we drove into Dingwall, we were surprised to find a lighthouse this far up a channel from open waters: 

It turns out that the lighthouse was moved here in 2010 from St. Paul Island, an uninhabited island located about 24 kilometres northeast of Dingwall. Built in 1917, the lighthouse guided ships through the Gulf of St. Lawrence until it was located to the mainland to make way for an automated system.  St. Paul Island, about 3 miles by 1 mile in size, is an extension of the Appalachian Mountains and the Cape Breton Highlands, the highest point on the Island is 485-foot Croggan Mountain.  The island is nicknamed the “Graveyard of the Gulf” (of St. Lawrence) as it is fog-bound throughout much of the navigation season and posed a significant hazard to sailing ships.

As we had hoped, we found one cafe open:  the North of Smokey Diner, just in the center of Dingwall.  Kathy enjoyed some plump mussels and David chose a veggie burger with magnificent hand-cut, fresh-fried frites.  Thus re-engergized, we drove on to where the Dingwall Harbor opens into the Atlantic Ocean.  We looked back at the little marina of commercial fishing boats --

-- and then out over the complex network of stone jetties and breakwaters toward open waters:

We felt we had gotten a great introduction to this wild land, and started back along the Cabot Trail toward Cheticamp.  Along the way, we couldn't resist stopping at the Lone Shieling Trail to visit this replica of a Scottish crofter's hut -- 

-- and walk through a protected area of the Grande Anse Valley, which is dominated by 350-year-old sugar maple trees, one of the largest old-growth hardwood forests in the Maritimes. Because it is heavily protected, access is restricted to a short loop trail. But even in that short walk, we gained an appreciation for the richness and majesty of old-growth forest:

The weather held out for us.  We didn't get any rain until we were driving home.  We're hopeful that tomorrow will be just as nice as we explore some hiking trails closer to home in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park.