June 15: Cape Breton
Jun. 26th, 2008 01:28 amCape Breton Highlands National Park.






On the whale watch boat, heading out of Pleasant Bay.

Fin whale, surfacing to breathe. The blowholes are just visible at the left, dorsal fin at the right. These are the second largest whales (second largest living animal, really), after the Blue Whale. We saw two Fins and three Minkes, but we were never close enough to the Minkes to get a photo.


MacIntosh Brook, further along in the National Park.


Amazingly, this tree is still alive.


Driftwood Lodge, Ingonish. We picked this at random from the listings in the Nova Scotia tourism book (partly influenced by "no television" and "cats on premises" in the description). The freaky thing is that we stayed here on our honeymoon, 20 years ago, also pretty much at random. At the time, there was a Polish restaurant in the pink building on the right, and we were hungry, tired, and intrigued. The grand-daughter runs the place now, but she seems to be bringing up her kids (toddler and infant) in Polish. Also coincidentally, the Salty Bear adventure tour group that pulled in after us was also on the whale watch, on the other side of Cape Breton, 50 miles and 5 hours back.







On the whale watch boat, heading out of Pleasant Bay.

Fin whale, surfacing to breathe. The blowholes are just visible at the left, dorsal fin at the right. These are the second largest whales (second largest living animal, really), after the Blue Whale. We saw two Fins and three Minkes, but we were never close enough to the Minkes to get a photo.


MacIntosh Brook, further along in the National Park.


Amazingly, this tree is still alive.


Driftwood Lodge, Ingonish. We picked this at random from the listings in the Nova Scotia tourism book (partly influenced by "no television" and "cats on premises" in the description). The freaky thing is that we stayed here on our honeymoon, 20 years ago, also pretty much at random. At the time, there was a Polish restaurant in the pink building on the right, and we were hungry, tired, and intrigued. The grand-daughter runs the place now, but she seems to be bringing up her kids (toddler and infant) in Polish. Also coincidentally, the Salty Bear adventure tour group that pulled in after us was also on the whale watch, on the other side of Cape Breton, 50 miles and 5 hours back.
