Today we had again very nice weather. We drove from the Ingonish-Beach campground to the parking lot of the Skyline trail on the other side of Cape Breton Highlands. The trail there is the most popular trail of the national park and well advertised, meaning a lot of people park there and do the 8km or so long trail. Compared to 30 years ago people are ask to stay on the trail (and in some sections on the board walks). We had binoculars with us, but we could not detect any whales from the main lookout. But it is a wonderful and easy trail, aside from the amount of people that hiked around the same time as us. There is also a significant effort made to reforest the area by using fences to exclude the local moose population from eating small trees. At the end of the trail, significant amounts of board-walks have been put in place with benches to avoid people walking around the meadows. All of this is fine, but does indicate that the trail is heavily visited. The view from above towards the ocean is regardless very nice. It took us around 2 to 3 hours to complete the trail.
Afterwards we drove backwards (we did not drive all the way to Cheticamp). We stopped ad-hoc at various lookouts and has a late lunch at the Rusty Anchor, a restaurant located in Pleasant Bay. The meal there was very good and affordable. Margaret and Gongyu had a lobster roll, (todo: ask Daniella what she had), and I had a grilled haddock with fries and a coleslaw. This was the best restaurant so far together with the Saint John fish restaurant in the market hall. Everyone was happy. We sat outside in the garden and the view from there towards the sea was also super nice. The Rusty Anchor can be recommended.
Afterwards we continued driving back towards the Ingonish-Beach campground. We stopped at the Beulach Ban Waterfall. This turned out to be a 100 to 200m long easy trail ending at a 50 to 100m high rock wall with a small water fall, lots of moss. We spend about 20 minutes for this trail and the time to admire the waterfall and rocks.
We gained a bit of time because the visited to the waterfall was shorter than expected. That time was invested in a visit to the lighthouse in Neil's Harbor. The ground level of the lighthouse is now an ice-cream shop. I skipped the ice-cream, but from what I licked from Gongyu's portion and from the comments of everyone else this was the best and most affordable ice-cream we had so far on the trip. Definitely Gongyu's walnut ice-cream tasted super duper. And the scoops were big and affordable. The ice-cream shop in the Neil's Harbor lighthouse was a winner again and was worth the few km of detour. Also the views from the lighthouse and Neil's Harbor itself was worth a visit.
Our last hike of the day was from Black Rock Cove Beach. We walked a portion of the Jack Pine Trail. It was getting late, but the area turned out to be nice, so we tried to do at least a few lookouts of this trail. Gongyu stayed back at the car and Daniella, Margaret and I embarked on the walk. The first lookout had even 2 of the red Adirondack chairs from Parks Canada. We enjoyed the views from there towards the Black Rock Cove Beach. Afterwards we hiked a few km more to 2 additional lookouts. Everything was rocks, blue water and blueberry to small pines type country. Very nice. But we had to return. It was getting late and we did not want to let Gongyu wait too long for us. So we returned maybe at 30% of the trail in. The whole Jack Pine Trail all the way to Neil's Harbor has to wait for another time. Not many people were on this trail. But it is a very nice one. Definitely on the list for next time :-)
We concluded the day with making the usual tortellini tomato sauce dinner. It was a very nice day. Totally enjoyable.
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