Canada & Beyond - Day 8 - Part 1

Driving into an unknown location, when it's dark and raining has it's upsides. You awake in a totally new world you've never seen before. It's a pretty thrilling experience. That was definitely the case when we crawled out of our tents on the morning of August 20th. We were camped in the Hideaway Campground near Dingwall, right at the very north-east corner of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. 

It was very foggy, and still misting lightly as we made breakfast, and got packed up and ready to go. We could tell we were pretty high up, but couldn't see much of the surrounding area from our tent site.

After packing up, we drove over to another area of the campground to get a better view of where we were. Boy were we shocked to see such an amazing landscape, as we got out of the trees and into the open. It was simply breathtaking! It's not very often you get to see so much variety all at once. Mountains, fog, green foliage, ocean, and shoreline.... It was beautiful.

Had to get some people pictures in before we left, of course ;)

This cute little place, was situated right on top of the hill with that amazing view out front. Not bad huh?!

We got on the road after fully taking in the gorgeous campground, but alas, it kept on being beautiful. So we didn't miss out on seeing allll of it the night before, like we had been worrying.

We did temporarily leave the National Park, but only briefly, before re-entering about 8 miles later.

Rather than driving on the Cabot trail, we took a little scenic road that allowed us to see more of the coast line.  It was so lovely, as you can tell.

These guys are obviously into catching somethin! haha

It was pretty foggy as we drove through the highlands, which added such a wistful vibe to the drive.

We pulled off at this epic spot to get a good view of this massive cliff face.

We didn't stay there too long, as we knew there would be many places we would want to stop and see throughout the drive that day.

It got even foggier as we went inland a little bit, at least I think we were inland. Not that we could see very far in the distance! ;p 

After a while we made it down to sea level and came upon this cute little cove, where the waves were crashing up on the shore pretty intensely. We started looking for a spot to pull off and see it up close.

We found a little place to park and trekked down to the shore. It was quite rocky, but we were able to get out pretty close to the water.

I loved what a bright contrast these flowers brought to the landscape, on such a moody day.

We all loved crawling around on the rocks, checking everything out.

The waves were really crashing! 

It would really be something living up on that hill, with a front row seat to this view every day!

Once again, we kept our time here limited, so we could get a move on to the next gorgeous spot along our route for the day. We knew there was a lot more to see!

We had only made it about 20 miles from the campground before we reached Neil Brook Harbor, but it had taken quite a while to drive through the hills. So we knew we needed to keep on going, with our main goal being Black Brook Beach about 15 miles further on the Cabot Trail. It was one of our favorite places the entire trip, so make sure you don't miss the next post!!