A few fun shots to finish off the posts from our Maritimes adventure:

Flashing what's under my skirt

Amber waves of hair

Just outside Baddeck, NS, there is a very special place. We only noticed it as we went past. As soon as it was safe to do so, I slammed on the brakes, pulled over, and made a U-turn. If you look closely you can see I'm holding a Timbit with a bite taken out of it.

Thanks to everyone who's been reading along.

Maritime living:

St. Martins, NB

Hopewell Cape, NB

Neils Harbour, NS

Peggys Cove, NS

Lunenburg, NS

Lunenburg, NS

Boats:

St. Martins, NB, high tide

St. Martins, NB, low tide

Alma, NB

Bay St. Lawrence, NS

Halifax, NS

Lunenburg, NS

Lighthouses:

Saint John, NB

Cape Enrage, NB

Neils Harbour, NS

Lunenburg, NS

Peggys Cove, NS

At our bed & breakfast in Cheticamp, NS, the husband of the owner made small talk with us on the porch. "So, where are you from?" he asked with a bit of an Acadian french accent.

"Oh, we live in Pittsburgh these days."

"Pittsburgh!" he replied emphatically. "Sidney Crosby... you stole him from us."

A few last photos of the Cape Breton Island coastline:

We had clear night skies on both Aug 11 and Aug 12, which were within the peak viewing time for the Perseids meteor shower. We got to see a bunch of shooting stars, some of which made some impressive streaks across the sky.

The most incredible one was still the fireball we saw on Aug 7, though, while camping at Fundy National Park. Apparently, we weren't the only ones to spot something unusual:

http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.ca/2013/08/mbiq-detects-nova-scotia-prince-edward.html

We've had the chance to see some pretty neat wildlife on this trip. The bird-watching has been very good, with lots of aquatic and shore birds, hummingbirds, but also a surprising number of raptors. We saw peregrine falcons at Hopewell Rocks (including one that was seriously freaking out for some reason), several different types of hawk (my favourite was one that kept tracing along the cliff line right by our campsite at Bay St. Lawrence), and close to a dozen bald eagles.

This bald eagle was being harassed by a red-tailed hawk. It must have been flying a little too close to the red-tailed's nest, cause the hawk was repeatedly swooping down at it, provoking the eagle to perform barrel rolls - its talons readied for defence.

The dragonflies have also been awesome on this trip. At one stop on the Fundy Trail Parkway back in New Brunswick, we just stood in place for a few minutes and watched them zoom around, at times zipping just past our heads.

One of the most incredible experiences of the trip, though, was whale watching in Bay St. Lawrence. We went out with Capt. Dennis Cox, who agreed to take us on his zodiac even though we were the only 2 customers interested in his last tour of the afternoon. We ended up traveling alongside a large pod of pilot whales. In the zodiac, we could get so close to the whales without disturbing them that it almost felt like we were just swimming right with them.

It's still mating season for the whales, which involves rolling around underwater and occasionally flipping up right out of the water. We were lucky enough to witness one such flip, where the whole 5-6m long animal came right up into the air in a huge spray of water.

There are also lots of moose in northern Cape Breton Island, but we didn't have any luck with those guys on this trip.

We spent the last couple days in Bay St. Lawrence, on the northern edge of Cape Breton Island, a little ways off from the more tourist-heavy Cabot Trail. We found a gorgeous campsite, and it was very nice to slow down the pace a little bit.

The original idea to cycle-tour this part of the trip fell through when we got our rental bikes and realized they were pretty inadequate for hauling our gear up and down (but mostly up) the local hills. We still managed to get out for a nice bike ride, though.

We also squeezed in a quick kayaking excursion; finally one with no thunderstorms chasing us off the water!

Cormorants!

We are finishing up our northern kick off the Cabot Trail in Dingwall, where we found a cabin for the night with a view of the beach.

On Saturday night we had dinner in Chéticamp, which is in the heart of Acadian country on Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia. Although the food was great (I had lobster, Monika had chowder and blueberry salad), what really made the evening for us was the live entertainment.

Nova Scotians in general, and Acadians in particular, are known for their fiddling. We had the fiddling of a young woman by the name of Chrissy Crowley accompanying our meal. We liked it enough to pick up one of her CDs, which has been acting as the soundtrack to our drive around the Cabot trail. We'll be continuing on bike for the next few days, with no opportunity to listen to CDs or blog, but I'll report back with more updates on our adventures soon.

Waves and rocks; Cabot Trail, Nova Scotia:

I figure you'll forgive me one more nerdy post.

Saturday morning we visited Joggins Fossil Cliffs, our final stop along the Bay of Fundy (now on the Nova Scotia side). Here a huge slab of sedimentary rock had subsided unevenly, leaving its layers slanted at an angle. That slant allows the 15 km of cliffs along the (horizontal) coastline to act as a timeline through about 15 million years' worth of (vertically deposited) sediment, all from approximately 300 million years ago. The area back then was mostly populated with plant life; giant ferns and trees.

The cliffs feature amazingly preserved fossilized tree trunks. We took a 2 hr walk with a guide who was great at pointing out the really neat ones.

The tides from the Bay of Fundy are constantly eroding the cliffs, exposing new fossils every so often. This rock broke away from the cliff this summer, right along the impression from a prehistoric tree trunk.

The tree fossils formed in 3 main stages: In the first, sediment would start piling up around the tree; in the second, the soft innards of the now dead trunk and root would rot away and be replaced by more sediment, while the hard bark remained intact and formed an impression on the sediment around it; finally, millions of years of pressure compressed the sediment into rock and the bark into coal. You can see a bit of coal around the outer edge of the fossilized root above (top left corner).