June 14: Nova Scotia at last

Train Station Inn, Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia. The story is something like this: an 18 year old buys a disused train station, to prevent demolition. He opens a 3-bedroom B&B inn, and eventually gets the idea to bring in cabooses, and convert them into further guest accomodations. This requires an act of the Nova Scotia legislature, the Train Station Inn Cabooses Act.

This is our room, #4, a.k.a. Canadian National #79092, one of the first two cabooses here.



( +6: trains and other stuff )

June 15: Cape Breton

Cape Breton Highlands National Park.



( +13: mostly in the national park )

June 16: puffins and coal

We went on a puffin boat tour to the Bird Islands. In addition to the puffins, there are razorbills (kind of like a northern penguin, only they can fly), a couple kinds of cormorants, a couple kinds of gulls, and kittiwakes (basically another kind of gull). Also grey seals and bald eagles.

Unfortunately, this is the best puffin picture I managed to get. They were nesting on the cliffs, bobbing on the water like black and white rubber duckies, and flapping madly through the air. But my camera has limited zoom and limited pixels.



( +7 )

Then we went to the Cape Breton Miners' Museum in Glace Bay. Most of the local coal seams extend well under the ocean, so this was referred to as submarine mining. In its heydey, there were something like 26 mines operating concurrently, extending as much as 7km out, and they hadn't exhausted the supply.

They Miners Museum features a small colliery, purpose-built for the museum, that only goes out as far as the water line (so we're told). The tour was conducted by a talkative ex-miner, who regaled us with endless tales about how life was in the good old days (i.e. pretty bad).

( a couple more pix )