On to Baddeck

So, on Tues., Aug. 24th, we drove on to Baddeck, midway up on the southeastern shore of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The big reason for going here was the Cabot Trail drive everyone told us about - but more on that later...


The rural countryside and wooded areas enroute to Baddeck were very lush and pretty - and there were some handsome farms, like this one.


We stayed at the Bras d'Or Lake campground, which indeed abutted up to said lake. It was quite a pretty spot, and we enjoyed walking all the critters down on the lakeshore. The strange thing, however, was seeing the jellyfish and kelp on the beach!!! Yes, in fact, it was rather a beach! This is a saltwater lake! And how is that so? Two natural channels on the northeastern side connect the lake to the Cabot Strait, while a manmade canal on the southern end connects it to the Atlantic Ocean. Interesting, eh?

A pretty area nearby, at sunset.

Interesting clouds/contrails? at same spot.

Tractor reclining on a rainy day.

One of the sculptures of Alexander Graham Bell and his wife, Mabel, that dot the cute lakeside town of Baddeck. One of the coincidental parts of our visit to this area was most fortuitous, as it became a favorite part! A stop at the Alexander Graham Bell museum on a rainy day amazed us with what we didn't know about this truly great man and his incredible wife. To get more of it read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell. Bell, originally from Scotland, moved to London, and then ultimately ended up in Canada due to health reasons (his two brothers died of TB and Bell was also sick - the move was to a better climate, one which had helped heal his father earlier). Bell followed in his father's footsteps, taking Melville's studies of speech and elocution, and his invention of "visible speech" (or "physiological alphabet") even further. And it was in the teaching of the deaf to speak, using these techniques, that he met, fell in love with, and married Mabel, who was one of his pupils. While we all know Bell as the creator of the telephone, his interests, talents, and accomplishments were all over the map - he was a more modern-day DaVinci. His first invention (a wheat dehusker) was at the young age of 12! And I'll bet you didn't know that Bell (and a cohort) built one of the earliest record-breaking hydrofoils? Or that he also put the Bras d'Or Lake to good use with the first aircraft flight in Canada with the Silver Dart? (that endeavor largely made possible by Mabel, who gave him the idea and much of the financial backing to establish the Aerial Experimental Association. The AEA was begun with four other men, notables such as Glenn Curtiss) Between Bell's own outright inventions, his experiments that provided fodder and facts for others' later "discoveries," and his improvements on others' work, he deserves credit in a wide scientific field - one that also encompasses metal detectors, magnetic recording, air conditioning, the phonograph, selenium cells, solar panels, and on and on. But one of the things that also sets him apart, in my opinion, is his love of family and community, and his caring and generosity of spirit. So many creative geniuses are reclusive and eccentric. Not Aleck. His main goal was always to help better peoples' lives and society. And he enjoyed, and was surrounded by, his extended family right till the end. His last years were spent either in Washington, DC, or at Beinn Bhreagh - his home (named after his ancestral Scottish highlands) in Baddeck.

Alexander Graham Bell, 1847-1922.

Time to go - scenery on our way back west.

Check out this windmill propeller blade! We saw lots of those on this trip. Too bad they aren't really a viable, economically feasible power source...!!

The End

No wait - there's still the famous Cabot Trail to show you! And then, the end - and we move on to PEI, or IPE in French!