The Hideaway Campground retains its high rating, as the showers did indeed have both hot and cold water available – at the same time and everything.  What a great night – the temperature was perfect, and there was complete silence.  So peaceful.  The morning had Jenny hustling to get coffee made and camp packed up, since she read her watch wrong and thought we were already an hour behind.  We managed to get out of there before 9:00 even!  After a deformed, melted and re-solidified snickers bar for breakfast with the coffee, we hit the road ready to take in the rest of the Cabot Trail.

The East side of the trail is not quite as majestic, but it does have one decent from the top of a mountain down a number of near-switchbacks right to sea level.  Coasting along in 3^rd gear does the trick, making it a smooth, easy (and purdy) ride.

Amusing side note: the signs that are supposed to warn you to watch for deer make it look like the deer are tiptoeing across the road.  Maybe they are dancing between the cars…

We were hoping there would be some breakfast in Ingonish, which is just out of the park, but all there was was fuel for the bikes.  Just when we were getting sick of the construction along the 105 we came to the tiny town of St. Ann’s, where the Gaelic College of Arts and Crafts is located.  They have a museum there called the Hall of Clans where we spent an hour learning about the Scots who came to Nova Scotia and their history back home – dating back to 6000 BC.  We discovered that the Rosses did very little of note, but they had a huge territory and many Sects (that’s Sects, people) under their Clan Chief.  (Make sects love not war?)  We also discovered that the Sutherlands did nothing much more than fight with other clans (and usually win).  One Sutherland clan chief beat another to death in battle with a dismembered horse’s leg after losing his sword.  For some reason there was no mention of battles between the Sutherlands and the Rosses, even though they were neighbours…  how is that for coincidence?

After our break, we rode another couple of hours and had brunch at Tim’s around 2:00 in Baddeck – halfway down the island.  Somewhat refreshed, we looked up the next attraction on our list which was the Orangedale Rail Museum.  This time we were not 5 minutes late.  We were 3 days late.  We still got to see a big plow and the old railway station Jenny knows from Jimmy Rankin’s song.

Since we wanted to make it to Truro today, we decided to zip down the 104 the rest of the way.  We had forgotten about the heavy construction between Antigonish and the causeway to the island, and we suffered through some delays in the record high heat.  The air temperature readings on the bikes was 33 degrees while we were riding and about 38 when stopped…  We finally made it through, and stopped for gas and Gatorade in Antigonish then spent the next 2 hours trying to cool down in the wind.

When we arrived in Truro, we followed the signs to the Victoria Park, which is a nice looking city park complete with baseball diamonds, a kiddie pool, huge picnic area and some walking trails.  We hung out for a bit and Jenny went on her favorite ride while I looked up the nearest campgrounds and hotels.  The nearest campground that the Google reviews said both existed and ranked more than 0 stars was still an hour away, so I picked a Super 8, 4km away instead.  After spending the last few hours in the blazing sun, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to do another.

Number Of Days Without a Tipover: 0