Saturday, May 25, 2024 (Day 19)

Sydney River, Nova Scotia / 7:46 a.m. / 14 degrees to Antigonish, Nova Scotia / 5/15 p.m. / 13 degrees for a total of 350.1 km of driving.


Glorious beautiful day today.

We stayed at the Comfort Inn in Sydney River last night.  We like the easy walk out from the hotel to our vehicle.  Hotel prices within the Sydney area appear to be a little more costly.  The hotel provides a free breakfast and it was pretty good (bacon, home fries made with real potatoes not frozen and eggs that were sunny side up but similar to a poached egg).

Making our way around the last loop of Cape Breton today.  It was nice to see North Sydney across the water from a different vantage point.  This is where we came in by ferry on Wednesday, May 22nd.

One of our exciting moments today and the reason we love to drive the secondary routes is what you may see that you would not normally see when driving on a main highway or interstate.  We saw not one but two bald eagles guarding their nest.  What a lovely site.  We spoke to a gentleman after our find down the road who was taking pictures of other birds,  He told us there was actually 2 baby bald eagles in the nest.  We did not see them.  That would have been the icing on the cake.

We decided to visit the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site. (Link: ) If you ever get the opportunity, this place is worth checking out, we recommend it.  We are not huge history buffs but the time, money and effort put in to restoring this fortress is amazing.  We were fortunate as they are just starting to open up the park.  Not all buildings are yet accessible but it was nice to walk through with minimal crowds and beautiful weather.  We spent about 2 hours.  They also have a gift shop and small cafe.  For the real adventure seekers they advertise “wake up in the past”, a form of glamping where you can spend the night.  Choose from 3 of the different buildings to spend the night.  We saw a 2024 graduating class on a field trip from Halifax bringing in their sleeping bags preparing to spend the night.

Lastly, they have the exhibit “Louisbrick”, the Fortress of Louisbourg built with over 500,000 LEGO pieces.  A pretty amazing site.

We finished off our day of travelling down towards St. Peter's, via the scenic route.  This route could use some tender-loving-care (T.L.C.).  As we cross the Causeway at Port-Hawkesbury, we say farewell to Cape Breton.

Two bald eagles guarding their nest,

Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site
https://parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/ns/louisbourg




Louisbrick (Lego display)


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