June 7, 2008

Cape Breton Trail

Length 14km approx

Trail starts and ends in Baline (easterly of Main-A-Dieu)

Cold and wet morning 7-8 degrees and light rain. Started the hike at 7:30am

Tony went with me.

Trail follows coast all the way to Main-A-Dieu. Very rugged and barren.

First part of trail follows along the shore and very edge of coast line. Beautiful view of small bay, two lobster boat in water.

Came to Mesa climbed up and took a number of photos

See some sea birds that were mostly black with with on the outer wings and bright orange/red feet. There was several of them, at least 6 in this location and many more in the surrounding area.

See coyote a bit in the distance looked very large, we tried to hurry and see if we could get a good view of it. But it seen us and took off very quickly. I would estimate it would have been 2 feet tall. It seemed big.

Keep walking stopped at cape breton the eastern most point of cape breton, took a quick break and continued on. We decided to stop for a bit around 10am . While we continued to walk till 10 we noticed an upside down picnic table on the shore. We got closer and there it was a full size picnic table just missing part of one leg. We propped it up on a large rock and had a lunch and untangle the large pieces of rope we found. Also Tony found a large orange buoy (maybe used for channel marking) and tossed it in the ocean it floated out very quickly with the outgoing tide. In about 10 mins it travel completely over to a small island about 1/2 km off shore.

After our break we picked up the pace and walked non-stop till we came to a small fresh water lake that was land locked by a sea wall of rock. In the lake was a pair of ducks (white and black ).

We continue along and looked at several ravines in the bedrock along the shore. the last part of the walk we could easily see the village of Main-A-Dieu in the distance, the path went in shore a bit and was mostly in the brush and woods along the coast. We came out at the far east end of the village behind some houses. We followed a small road up to the highway and walk the highway back to Baline and the car. We arrived back at the car around 1pm

My left knee was very sore by the end of the walk. this walk is not an easy walk and would not be recommended to take unless you were if petty good shape. Most of the walk was in either very soft and bouncy grass/wet bog like conditions, very loose gravel beach or rocks and cliff areas that could be slippery if wet.

I really enjoyed this walk see the various wildlife and scenery.