Brews, Buddhists, and Battlements: A Trip to Cape Breton

(Note: This is a guest post by Will, about events that transpired before meeting up with Kelly in Boston for a visit to my family there over the summer of 2013) 

This is the story of a road trip I took with several of my closest friends up to Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, on Canada's North Atlantic coast, north-east of Maine. They had been traveling for a couple of weeks on a long trip starting in Los Angeles, and I flew in to the Halifax  them for the Cape Breton adventure

Our friend Ben has family connections to the area, and his parents have a house up in Nova Scotia that we had all visited several times before, but none of us had ever made it to Cape Breton, an island connected to the northern end of mainland Nova Scotia by a small causeway:

Of course, the first place we had to visit after crossing the bridge was a distillery that makes the only true single malt whisky in North America (not a true "Scotch," since it's not from Scotland, but as close as California sparkling wine is to Champagne).

The name of the place is Glenora Distillery, and it's nestled in a scenic clearing along a small stream, the source of the clear water they need for the distillation process:

We had lunch at the inn and then took a tour and tasting of the distillery, which was a lot of fun, although we concluded that Scotland didn't yet have much to fear from Canada, especially since their bottle prices were higher than the genuine article (even in a province with very high liquor taxes and a state monopoly on sale of beer, wine, and spirits). After our tasting, we made our way up the coast to a friend of Ben's parents who lives near Inverness, and who had very graciously offered us a place to stay for the night and a meal with friends and family. We had a great time looking out over the Gulf of St. Laurence (the awesomely named Sea Wolf Island is in the background of the photo below), lighting sparklers, and eating and drinking with a great group of people.

The next day we woke up early to get a great breakfast at the Dancing Goat Cafe & Bakery down the road from where we were staying. After that, we headed north to Cape Breton National Park, where the famous Cabot Trail road winds through stunning hills overlooking the water. Here's a picture taken at the end of a short hike from the parking lot along the Skyline trail, the most popular route in the park:

And here we are after a grueling half-hour mostly level walk through the woods:

We could have easily spent a whole week up there exploring all the trails, beaches, forests, and sights just within the borders of the park. But, considering the pace this party of adventurers was on, we only had time for one more stop, Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist community in a secluded spot on the coast in the northern part of the park:

Gampo Abbey was founded by Chögyan Trungpa and his followers, who also established Tibetan Buddhist communities in Colorado and Vermont in the 1970s. We didn't have an opportunity to take a full tour, but the wrap-around views from the field in front of the abbey were breathtaking, especially on a pleasantly breezy summer day:

I loved this Buddha statue carved from moose antler next to a full-size antler in the abbey's garden:

After getting back on the road, we made a quick food stop at the Keltic Lodge, a renowned hotel dating to the 1940s on a thin peninsula jutting out into the north Atlantic. Ben had the lobster roll sliders, and they really never stood a chance.

Our destination for the night was Cape Breton's lone urban area, Sydney, a drab post-industrial community that hit its peak population of 33,000 people in the 1960s, when the nearby steel and coal mines and the harbor linking Cape Breton and the rest of Nova Scotia with Newfoundland and the UK. 

The most interesting part of town was the self-governing Membertou First Nation, a self-governing Mi'kmaq jurisdiction of native Canadians from the people located just outside of Sydney. Here's a photo taken of a stop sign in English and Mi'kmaq:

One of the strangest aspects of life within the Membertou Nation, besides the many unlicensed stores selling tobacco and snacks out of small ranch houses and trailers, was the gleaming hotel and "entertainment center," a massive building that turned out upon closer inspection to be devoted entirely to bingo. This was by far the most polished small-stakes gambling operation we had ever seen, drawing patrons from far and wide for something that seemed almost aggressive in its benign boredom. There were no Vegas frills here, just poutine, a smoking section, and a main hall filled with row after row of elderly Canadians, waiting for their numbers to come up.

We didn't stay long enough to play, but it turned out that Downtown Sydney had a more conventional gambling establishment of its own, the Casino Nova Scotia:

After the group promptly lost a good number of loonies and twonies at the blackjack table and slot machines (excluding the author, retired and up against the house since a $200 net gain in Vegas in 2008), we hit the town looking for food and good cheer. We ended up splitting ranks for a mediocre pizzeria and a pricy "date night Italian" restaurant (don't worry ladies, no dates for Jimmy and Ben), then reconvening at a very strange Irish pub in which the staff enforced a strict "no standing" rule. There was also a Harley convention in town, and what seemed like a Magic: The Gathering convention in a games shop on the main street. Sydney is pretty strange.

The next day, we started off towards the east to check out one of Cape Breton's most renowned historic sites, the immaculately restored 18th-century French Fortress of Louisbourg. This was a very cool stop, one that seemed almost criminally off the beaten path for Anglophone tourists (most of the other visitors were from Quebec, and paying a visit to a relic of their own Lost Cause).

Louisbourg is situated on a narrow, marshy peninsula on the eastern end of Cape Breton island that has been entirely protected from modern development, and is only reachable by electric buses from the visitor's center several miles back. Like a more authentic version of Colonial Williamsburg, the fortress is staffed with guides adorned in period costume and willing to hold forth in English and French on various fortress-related topics at length:

Needless to say, our band of history nerds was in heaven as we scrambled around structures that would have looked at home in half a dozen European capitals, but with none of the ATMs, billboards, and other relics of modern life around them to break their spell.

Ben is really feeling the moment in this one:

One solitary monument stands to commemorate the site of a church whose iron cross was stolen by marauding Yankees during King George's War (one of the French and Indian Wars) in the 1740s, and hauled back to New England, where it was displayed triumphantly at Harvard for over 250 years before finally being given back in 1995 (on "permanent loan;" stay classy, Crimson!). The outdoor cross shown here is a replica, lest an overeager undergraduate try to repeat the feat:

Apparently the winters were long. Sometimes, building wooden horses was the only way to pass the time.

We made lots of new friends, like this Quebecois gentleman with a zest for photographic barrage:

They even have a historically accurate bakery and restaurant within the town, where you can feast on soup, turkey pie, and french toast, all with one gigantic spoon (apparently the only cutlery that was frequently used at the time):

After stuffing our faces with pie, we hit the road again, aiming to reach Ben's parents' house in Chester (past Halifax, several hours drive away) before dinner.

We made a quick stop to pay our respects to Alexander Graham Bell at the museum devoted to his life and works run by Parks Canada across an inlet of the giant Bras D'Or Lake from his sprawling estate, Beinn Breagh still in the Bell family. Bell conducted experiments on powered flight and hydrofoil technology in the area (see photo above, of the HD-4), and fellow inventor Guglielmo Marconi built powerful wireless transmitters on Cape Breton (along with sites on Cape Cod and Newfoundland) to beam radio signals across the Atlantic.

All this learning left us with the proverbial scholar's thirst, one that we knew would be soon quenched when we saw this fateful sign:

 

Yes, we had tracked down the lone nanobrewery on Cape Breton, a highly respected outfit called Big Spruce that was doing some really interesting things brewing beer with, you guessed it, spruce tips!

After a brief stop for provisions in which I was almost left behind after I ducked into a used bookstore (typical), we made our way back down through mainland Nova Scotia, past Halifax and down to Ben's family's house in Chester (not far from the mean streets of Chester Basin). We only had one night to spend together with Ben's parents, but we made the most of it, with a lobster boil feast:

Canoeing, swimming, stargazing, Big Spruce drinking, and finally, the next morning, an epic game of bocce, Chester style:

Our gracious hosts saw us off the following day. Jimmy had some crazy flight shenanigans as always trying to make it down to the Caribbean, but he was able to change his flight to leave from Boston in order to join me and J Zac on one last leg of the epic road trip. After saying goodbye to Ben, Peter, and Mathea, we hit the road:

We made a quick stop at Frenchy's, our favorite Canadian thrift store chain (essentially to Goodwill what Tim Horton's is to Dunkin Donuts; cleaner, friendlier, and with a better selection). There are always a few gems (Rule #1 of thrift treasure hunting: always go to thrift stores in places with more old people than hipsters!), including this record:

After a strenuous day of driving, including a solid lunch and tasting at the Pump House Brewery and Restaurant in Moncton, New Brunswick, a tour of the scenic harbor of St. John, dinner at a truck stop diner (Dysart's, with a justifiably famous corned beef hash), and brief stops at both Steven King's house in Bangor and the Maine State House in Augusta, we finally reached our destination, a hotel in Portland, Maine. Jimmy left us after an hour of sleep to begin the next leg of his journey, so J Zac and I had the prospect of the first laid-back day of the trip to look forward to, and we indulged ourselves with a barn-storming tour of Portland's gourmet establishments. Seriously, that town packs more delicious food and drink into a smaller area than just about anywhere in the country, and is well worth a visit for any New Englanders and New Yorkers. 

We started with some delicious pour-over joe at Bard Coffee, followed by a dozen local oysters at Eventide Oyster Co., duck confit sandwiches and fries at Duckfat, and, best of all, a free tour and tasting at one of our favorite breweries, Allagash Brewing Company, just outside town. Here's a picture of some of Allagash's more experimental brews aging on site at the brewery:

The tour was a great way to toast the end of an amazing road trip, one in a long line of adventures that this group has shared, and will for many years to come.

Let's keep things weird, guys!