Auntie Olga’s Seafood Chowder!!
You might recall that we came in to our accommodation last night in the dark after a very long day. We had no idea what the outside of the place looked like until this morning. It was just a nice house, nothing special. But the people that run the B&B and the guests were all really nice.
It was kind of funny because there was an older couple there and an early 60s fellow, John. Naturally, I assumed that the older couple were his parents. Well, the story was far different. The older couple actually own the B&B and John is their neighbour and lives two properties down. Early in the pandemic, John lived with his family in northern Ontario. However, during the pandemic he and his wife, his daughter and her husband and their kids plus his wife’s parents packed up four vehicles with four trailers and drove all the way to Cape Breton. They purchased the property two doors down with the intention of building a series of houses on their large property. However, because it was during the pandemic, it was basically impossible to get any dwellings built. So apparently the 13 of them lived in the original small house for the duration of the pandemic. Four generations under one roof! Hard to imagine. I suggested that they must get along extremely well. From the look he gave me, I sensed that it must’ve been quite challenging. They have now built a major addition to the original house and his daughter‘s family have built their own house. I think there’s an additional residence on the property as well. We saw most of it as we drove past this morning.
At breakfast, two of the three other couples left just after we arrived. However, there was a couple from Florida starting their breakfast at the same time we were. I heard them say something about Florida, and I kind of thought, oh, here we go. However, that wasn’t to be the case. The first thing they did was to apologize to us for their horrible political situation. They were democrats!😂 I suspected that they were because that’s usually who I meet from the US when I’m traveling. Rick worked for the US Navy his entire life and travelled all over the world as a ship designer. He’s been to all the continents except South America and Africa. I suggested that he might enjoy them, and even at 80 years old he was clearly interested. This made me wonder how our good friends Jim and Corrie are making out in Argentina? There hasn’t been a blog post for several days, though we have exchanged emails. I’ll have to look again tonight.
From the way Rick spoke I had the sense that he was well informed. We had a very interesting conversation about the situation south of our border. I won’t bore you with the details, but he was very passionate about the mess that the US find itself in. This was the second conversation we’ve had with an American couple who are upset with what’s happened in their country and are looking for ways to change things. It will be interesting to see how things shake out.
And then we were off for our day. As expected, it was pretty cloudy, but unlike late afternoon yesterday there was still a little bit of zip in the colours.
We didn’t have any sort of formal plan today, but John had mentioned that his daughter and husband had hiked up to the Uisge Ban Falls which is located in a provincial park on the way to Baddeck. To get there, we had to continue on the Cabot Trail Highway, which suited us just fine. We drove across a gravel road a some point that was quite loose after having been just re-graded. There was dust everywhere!
We eventually found the narrow gravel road up to the park and arrived to find several cars already there. There’s a nice pathway up to the falls.
Was a very beautiful walk with lots of color, but a different sort of texture to the landscape. This time we walked through the trees, which provided a very colourful canopy overhead.
I could tell from the amount of water in the stream bed that the falls weren’t going to be too energetic. There’s been very little precipitation in the area for months. In spite of that, there was still a fairly decent amount of water dropping over the two falls. The location of the falls, high up in a gorge, provided a lovely setting.
The walk out of the gorge was like a completely new route. All the scenery was different!😅
We returned to the car and back underway again. Along the way we realized that we hadn’t yet tried the Capes’s famous seafood chowder. We haven’t been eating much in the way of lunch because we are having a full breakfast each morning.
We recently got into a conversation with a couple about the best chowder that they had tasted so far. Realizing that we were a bit behind, we decided to stop for lunch and to look for a good bowl of chowder. After doing our usual research, we decided on a restaurant called the High Wheeler Cafe and Bakery.
And there we found our chowder! It came complete with a beautiful cheese biscuit.
I’m not saying that this was the best chowder I’ve ever had, but it was certainly the best chowder I’ve had on Cape Breton…so far! Everyone seems to talk this way about the chowders in the Maritimes.😂 I guess it’s just a way of life here.
Another reason for coming to Baddeck, aside from finding the best damn bowl of seafood chowder yet, was to visit the Alexander Graham Bell museum. The museum is a federal installation and is very well done. We probably found out more than we really wanted to know about Mr. Bell, but I concluded that he must have been a very intelligent person with a very inquisitive mind. The sort of fellow that you would want to work with on a school science project.😊
One thing I didn’t realize was that Bell was part of a four person team to design and successfully fly Canada’s first airplane in 1909. We found it hanging from the ceiling above a large auditorium where a Celtic Colours performance was underway.
The duet was very good. The young woman told the story about how she had being away in Ireland for a period of time before returning to the Cape, where she had been raised. She learned more about her family history, previously having no idea that her grandparents were buried just to the west of town. She reconnected with the area where she had grown up and recently married a fellow from the town. She has played the fiddle since she was six years old and even toured at a very young age. She played very well, and we are both discovering that we like the sound of the Cape Breton music. The piece she played today was lovely and deeply emotional.
We’ve been travelling at a fairly brisk pace these past seven days, even for us. Annemarie found us a very good accommodation tonight in a heritage home just outside North Sydney. We have booked in here for two nights and plan to spend a good part of the day tomorrow on the East Coast of the Cape visiting Louisburg, a place with significant Canadian historical significance.
We will shortly go out to what our host tells us is a very good restaurant in North Sydney. That’s two meals out today, a definite breach in our budget! 😬 Just kidding. Looking forward to it!
Dinner was as advertised!
Now back at our place to recover and to try and get some sleep caught up.
That’s my report for today.
Cheers!
Geoff🍷
Distance Walker - Wandering & Wondering! 