MONDAY 25 July
I did not get up until 7 AM this morning, and Linda got up not long after. On travel days, Paul and Nancy tend to get an early start. We knew this would be no exception, and wanted to be up to say “safe travels and see you down the road.” They pulled out around 8 AM and we gave them a proper “royal wave” send-off. It was in the upper 60’s F, with a nice breeze, so we opened up the trailer to enjoy the fresh air and take a break from the noise of the heat pumps. We are glad to have them, but they are not quiet when operating.
With another hot day on tap we planned to hang around the RV park and take care of some chores in the cooler temperatures of the morning. Top of the list was laundry, the first time on this trip we would be doing it in a RV park laundry facility. But first, coffee, a few iPad games and puzzles, and breakfast. We also spent some time figuring out what we wanted to do with our remaining time in this area. Rain/heat is on tap for tomorrow, so we will try to visit the Gaelic College in St. Ann’s for their “cultural experience.” Wednesday is supposed to be cooler and dry, so we plan to finish our exploration of the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, including the Skyline Trail.
I was catching up on some blog posts I follow using Feedly, and decided to go back and read the ones I had written so far about this trip. It’s useful to see how they look on a tablet after they are published as I create/edit them on a laptop computer. In general, I was pleased with my writing and the photography, but found way too many typos (or mis-spellings) so I will have to go back and edit them. As a diary of our trip, I want them to be accurate. To the extent that anyone else reads them, I want them to be well-crafted. With people checked out of the park, the Wi-Fi was not getting slammed, so I figured I could do this during the day, but never found the time. Tomorrow, perhaps.
As noon approached the thermometer in the rig was reading 80 degrees F. There was still a fair cloud cover and a good breeze, so it was not uncomfortable, but it was beginning to feel warm rather than cool. I wanted to hold off closing up and turning on the heat-pumps as long as possible, but it was inevitable that we would need them, especially as the wind was too strong to safely deploy the awnings and shade the trailer.
We gathered up the laundry, which included stripping the beds, and carried it up to the laundry room around 10 AM. Three other campers were already there, but one washing machine was still open. We got into a conversation with two of them, and Linda was still taking to them when I returned to our rig. I worked on the blog posts for yesterday and today, and transferred/edited the photos from yesterday until Linda texted me to come pick up a finished load of laundry. At 12:30 PM it was 82 F in the trailer, so I closed it up and turned on the heat-pumps in cooling mode. The final load of laundry was done about then as well, and Linda carried it back to the trailer. We put away the clean clothes and left the beds for later.
One of our big tasks before boarding the ferry for Newfoundland on Thursday is to use up as much of our frozen/refrigerated food as possible, making sure whatever is left will fit in our Styrofoam cooler along with the freezer packs. We split a sandwich for lunch.
Linda (lower right) at the Big Fiddle statue in Sydney, NS.
Linda and Nancy went to North Sydney the other day for groceries but did not find everything they wanted at the Atlantic Superstore. The largest city in the area is Sydney, so we decided to drive there after lunch to do our final shopping before sailing to Newfoundland on Thursday evening. (Both cities actually no longer exist as independently governed entities, having dissolved in the mid-1990s to become part of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. The Sydney area still has the largest population on Cape Breton Island by a wide margin.)
Bruce (lower right) at the Big Fiddle in Sydney, NS (photo by Linda).
Our first stop was the Joan Harriss Cruise Pavilion to see the Big Fiddle. The statue was designed and built by Cyril Hearn in 2005 and, at 60 feet, is the tallest fiddle in the world. The fiddle is associated with Keltic music and culture. The pavilion had shops and a restaurant. One shop sold Scottish hats, scarves, tweed jackets, and kilts. The were pricey, of course, but they were nice.
Our next stop was a Sobey’s supermarket for non-perishable items. Some fellow RVers at the KOA had just returned from Newfoundland and told us that we would need bug netting, so we went to Walmart looking for some, as well as a short (10 to 15 feet) potable water hose. No joy on either of these items, so we tried the Home Depot next to Walmart for the water hose but no luck there either. Our final stop was the Canadian Tire store across the street. They didn’t have the water hose either, but they had the bug netting. Score!
The shopping complex was at the terminus of NS-125, which was our route back to North Sydney where we picked up the T-CH/Hwy-105 back to the KOA. We doodled for a while before dinner, which was a simple affair of vegan chorizo on a bun and corn with a little vegan butter and black pepper. I made my bed while Linda cleaned up a few dishes. We then went for a walk to drop off the trash and recyclables and continued on around the RV park.
We chatted for a while with the two couples that were parked on either side of Paul and Nancy in Cavendish, PEI and are now camped in the two sites to our west. A couple of rigs farther on, we chatted with the couple who have the other Airstream in the park. It is also a Flying Cloud, 25 rear bed, 2021 model year. They came here from the Vancouver, British Columbia, area and are headed to Newfoundland on the Atlantic Marine ferry on Wednesday. Their first stop is the Rocky Harbor KOA, so we will see them on Friday when we get to there. It has become apparent that many of the people who are camped here are either going to Newfoundland in the near future, or have just returned from there.
Back at our trailer, we turned off the heat-pumps and opened the windows. Linda made her bed and then got out the container of dairy free passion fruit and lemonade sorbet. It was a nice finale to the very spicy chorizo, and got one more thing out of the freezer.
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