In the early morning a shower went through, but not a lot. We broke up the tent and packed the car. Our bench was still wet. So we decided to have our breakfast at the Alma parking lot at the entrance of the park. I had noticed that there were a few benches earlier. The parking lot was fully exposed to the sun and the benches were dry. Having breakfast while looking at the beach and river delta was nice.
Afterwards a decision was made to visit Hopewell Rocks again. Our entrance ticket from the evening before was still valid (24h ticket). A chunk of us wanted to see the scenery again (at high tide) from the lookouts on top. What was planned to be a 20 minute stop was probably more of a 1-hour stop: We visited multiple lookouts.
Afterwards we continued driving to Moncton. The area closer to Moncton has now much more housing along the river there. 30 years ago this was marshland with huge swarms of migrating birds. This time we did not see lots of birds. Maybe they moved already south or the main migration has yet to happen.
At Moncton we rejoined the TCH and the driving was uneventful again. We had a stop at Masstown. The intent was to stock up on produce and have a lunch. It turned out that the various shops there were super popular (lots of lengthy line-ups), a good number of items relatively expensive. Maybe this was because they were open at Labour-Day and the people had to stock up on food before returning home from their vacation. I could not really figure out why the grocery shop was so popular. There was also a butchery that was selling steaks and ground beef galore with a lineup of people. The steaks looked good, but their pricing felt more or less the same as in Ottawa. We stocked up on some bacon strips and a cabanossi. We also bought a tomato sauce that was probably double the price of an equally good one at Costco. The Masstown Dairy was interesting to visit. They are a cheddar shop, which is not so much my thing. We bought a smaller chunk at the usual "artisan cheese" prices. No wonder the line-ups in the dairy was less. I could never figure out why the grocery/produce store was so popular (it was the most popular shop). The produce on offer was ok, but nothing I would rave about in Ottawa and not cheap either. There was also a seafood shop which we ultimately skipped, because the line-up for a meal in that shop was 30 minutes. Supposedly people order their food via phone and have it when they arrive 30 minutes later. We ended up going for some sandwiches in the butchery/dairy complex: The waiting line there was something we could stomach.
The drive via Antigonish to Cape Bretton was uneventful. The usual TCH 4-lane stuff. All these multi-lane highways look recently build. From Cape Bretton onwards the road changed to 3 lanes. The scenery along Lake D'Or was nice. We did not make it to the Bell Museum in Baddeck (it was about 5:30pm at that time). The scenery improved even further when we took the turn towards Ingonish (smaller road and more ocean views). We arrived at about 7:30pm or so at the Ingonish-Beach campground. By the time we had put up the tent and had made dinner it was dark.
As we progressed north-east, the weather became more cloudy but it did not rain.
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