Red cliffs and Evangeline

Wilderness! That's what we came to Cape Breton for--rugged cliffs, pounding seas, black/green pine trees. Cape Breton is the most remote, easternmost part of Nova Scotia. The coastlike is desolate and wild.

Cape Breton also has distinctive ethnic areas--the Scotch south of the Margaree River, the French north of the river, and the Irish upstream. And it has quaint, small towns with museums and craftsmen spread throughout the island.

We loved the cliffs, rising sharply from the sea, as we drove through the Highlands National Park, all the way to Meat Cove, a favorite camping spot at the very tip of Cape Breton.

We hiked along the Jack Pine trail, through a forest filled with pines and berries, to the sea.

We appreciate the quaint and colorful wherever we find it, including this bus/trailer, parked at one of the park turn-outs.

Outside the park, we sampled the small town museums and ethnic areas. We stopped at a salmon museum, complete with nets, flies, and rather moldy-looking mounted fish.

We passed a field of sunflowers...

...and paused to check out a collection of homemade scarecrows.

Cheticamp is the center of French Cape Breton. At the Acadian coop, we watched a woman hook rugs, the local craft. A table in the shop was piled high with hooked rugs in various colors and patterns.

In the basement, there was a display of Catholic artifacts, along with spinning wheels and other bits and pieces of Acadian life. Catholicism was one thing that sharply differentiated Acadians from their Presbyterian, Scotch neighbors.

We stopped at a second rug museum in Cheticamp which honored a local rugmaker who was so artistic and proficient that her "famous people" rugs were given as gifts to foreign leaders. Through her efforts, the townspeople formed a coop and sold stylish rugs in New York and Montreal.

I asked the guide about her costume and she replied, "I'm dressed like Evangeline, from Longfellow's poem." Evangeline was Acadian, from Nova Scotia. She and her lover Gabriel were separated when the English removed the French Acadians from Nova Scotia, in the 1760s, and sent them back to France, or as far away as Louisiana (today's Cajuns).

Part of the French experience was sampling a croissant from the local boulangerie.

We were given a "craftsman's map" to Cape Breton, showing locations of artist's studios all down the coast. We stopped at the studios of a photographer, potter, sculptor in iron, and pewter worker. Gretta bought this pewter pendant with a Celtic design.

The road signs on the coast of Cape Breton were in both English and Gaelic.

We finally passed the Gaelic College, which teaches music, crafts, and dress from the Gaelic areas--Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Brittany. Those include bagpiping and fiddling, the wearing of kilts, and speaking Gaelic.

We ordered a "lobster feast" for dinner in St. Ann, before boarding our overnight ferry to Newfoundland. We washed our lobster, steamed mjussels, and berry crumble down with one more gorgeous view outside our window.