Day 9: St. Peters, 💨💨☁️🌥️14°

🎼 Cape Breton 🎵 & Lobster!🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞

Our morning started nicely with breakfast shared with a couple of fiddlers from Philadelphia who had been performing in the Celtic Colours Festival. Dave and Sue were very nice and of course they were from the blue part of Pennsylvania. Dave described his state as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Arizona in the middle.😬 I’m pretty sure you can figure out his meaning.😉 It’s considered an important swing state in US federal elections.

We’ve had some interesting conversations with our new acquaintances. They generally feel comfortable speaking about their situation while in Canada, but less comfortable when at home. They sadly describe a steadily deteriorating situation. But they all certainly like it in Canada! 🇨🇦

Today we had a major Celtic Colour event to attend on the SE coast of the Cape at the small village of L’Ardoise. With plenty of time available, I suggested to AT that we drive the quieter coast road south. It was more than quiet…it was empty. Bonus, we were driving through more beautiful Acadian Boreal forest! Detraction, there were no beautiful leaves.🙁 Oh well, I promise more beautiful leaves in the coming days.🙂

We drove right along side the water on a somewhat beat up road called the Fleure-de-Lis route. This area is occupied by many Acadian people.

An Irish mist would visit us from time to time, but definitely not something one could call rain.

Late in the drive we passed a sign that said World Class Beach. Turned out to be a beach attached to a provincial park. We stopped. Had a look. Then took a walk. 😅

It was quite brilliant and even the clouds parted to show us a bit of blue sky.

The tide was well out and the small foreshore birds were out in abundance.

After walking most of the beach in the pressing wind it was finally time to find our event. We had noticed in recent days that the small coastal villages each have some sort of community gathering place. The village of L’Ardoise was no different.

A craft fair run by the local ladies was available downstairs while the local men’s club had set up for the Celtic Colours events. A nice small community feel. The tour groups must have paid more because they have the front tables reserved for them. We left overs get to pick from the rest. All makes sense because local businesses would be operating the tours and the folks on them would have paid more.

We were joined by a nice couple from Melville, Ontario just to the west of Toronto. We were talking about all sorts of things when just by chance John and Wendy from Vermont joined us. You might recall that we sat with them at our Thanksgiving dinner. Just before we originally met them, they’d had a rather disappointing experience sharing a meal with some of our rather more conservative Canadians from Alberta who were all for Alberta leaving confederation. John and Wendy were frankly quite shocked, but they have slowly regained balance and confidence in Canada after meeting other more centred Canadians.🙂 There sure have been some rather interesting political conversations during this travel!

While the music was underway inside, outside on the back deck the principal dinner guests were being prepared.

The lobster season is still open to the south and these lobster were caught fresh yesterday and trucked up for today’s event. They were then cooked, but I have no idea how that was managed. I used to cooking two or three large crabs at a time, but how do you cook up 250 lobsters?

I enjoyed a nice visit with the crew preparing the lobsters. They taught me the process and we had a discussion about everything lobster and crab, including how to pick your lobster. They also discussed the huge Chinese tariffs placed on Canadian sourced lobster. The Chinese government is not very popular in these parts…

With my newly gained knowledge I eventually went back inside because I was afraid that they might actually put me to work!😳

As the live music played on, the main gourmet event began! Wow! Amazing! They even provided each diner with a special crab bib that hung from your neck. We will soon be passing these on to our grandkids!

This is one of the best traditions in Nova Scotia, and not to be missed!

Things eventually wound down, and we all said some nice goodbyes and exchanged bits of contact information. Who knows when paths cross again, but I’ve learned that they often do.

We travelled the short distance down the road to St Peters where we already had accommodation booked for tonight.

Now settled in after our very early dinner we have made our plans for the coming three days. With accommodations booked, we can put up our feet, relax and digest until bedtime. We haven’t been able to watch the Blue Jays games, but I have kept up by watching the highlights. So we are aware that the series is tied up in the momentum is with the Jays. The games in Seattle don’t start in Nova Scotia until 9:30 PM. So you have to be a real fan to stay up until after midnight. I might see if I can see the beginning of game five, but I know that I won’t see the end of it. At least, not tonight.

That’s about it for today. I will definitely look for more colourful leaves tomorrow! Promise.

Cheers from Cape Breton!🍻

Geoff