Cabot Trail, Cabot himself and museums

That little town is Bay St. Lawrence.  And it is not so big.  It is at the end of the paved road going north on Cape Breton Island.  There is a dirt road out of Capstick (we went there too, but Capstick is not as far north.  Meat Cove is the end of the dirt road and is further north  — we didn't go there.  

We drove to the end of the wharf, and Betty, we had to back up again.  (This was not long after you and Patt talked too).  There were a couple of motor cyclists who had ridden to the end of the road, some kayakers getting ready to go out in the bay and other than that, the town was quiet.  Pretty day though.

The Catholic Church was prominent.  Not big, but prominent.  We are in Scotish territory.  Lots of names beginning with Mac around here too.  Capstick is a family name, learned that at one of the little local museums.  A Capstick went off to fight for King and Country from 1939 to 1945.  He came home.  Not all of the local men did.  There are frequent monuments and such to commemorate those who left to fight for the Empire and are now buried in "Holland" or France or wherever.

Those purple flowers are about past their prime, but are still pretty.  Lupines Patt thinks they are.  When we ask, we get all sorts of folk names, fire flowers, graveyard flowers to mention two.  Neither of which you would use in a text.

I think this is coming back from Capstick.  Not sure.

We stopped and watched diving birds feeding on fish here.  (what else they gonna eat?)

We have had some pretty drives along the coast too along the Cabot Trail.  And why would the road be named the Cabot Trail you might ask?

Good question.  John Cabot, 1497 landed here, or somewhere - and so this is the spot they figure most likely.  Cabot claimed North America, or the part that Spain was not claiming, for England.  He, like Columbus was looking for a way to India, thinking to go north, but saw mountains, found a place with a sandy beach and landed and said this is England's land despite the fact that he was from Italy.  Cabot and his son had a crew of only 18 men.  Small ship — or very busy men.

And this is the beach.  People were actually in the water here and at other beaches we saw — not lots of people, there aren't lots of people here to go swimming, but a fair number.  The water was, shall we say, brisk.  The day was hot, the car thermometer said 77 and it felt like it too.

Of course we went on a hike through an interesting forest on glacial rock.

 Stunted old trees, lichen, ferns, laurel, fir and spruce, even some pine.

The trail ends at the coast. 

 Driving along the coast, more of the scenery.  

and we have crossed North Mountain a couple of times as we are staying on the west side of the island and we spent today on the east side.

We also visited a couple of little museums today, this was the littlest.  This here is your basic four room museum, not counting the light house, - three of the four rooms had exhibits - not much in the way of exhibits but you could say they had exhibits. Big Whoop. The light house had been moved here from his original location on St Paul's Island and reconstructed here (yes, that's the original height, sat on a rocky cliff high above the ocean). The other museum, the North Highlands Museum, was much better.  That is where we learned about the Capstick name.

We generally like museums, go into these little ones just about every chance we get.  Enjoy visiting with the proprietors, and generally the exhibits, old collections of stuff from members of the community are interesting. This one we could have missed and not missed much. The other one had some neat old stuff, old home movies of the area (1940's and early 50s), old photos, old school room, and was larger - well that ain't saying much, but it was pretty big.

One thing we did learn, we had better quit calling the Outer Banks the "Graveyard of the Atlantic".  They don't even use that phrase and they have had tons more ship wrecks than we do.