Canada & Beyond - Day 8 - Part 3

We left Black Brook Beach around noon and got back on the Cabot Trail. It was just amazing to me that this entire side of the Island had such a different feel than the inland side we had explored the day before. We were able to be down by the water almost the whole drive, and get out and explore several different places throughout the afternoon.  

This was one of our favorite little spots, it was especially windy out on this point, which added to the adventure of climbing around on the rocks down by the water. It was totally sunny by this point, so the water shone bright blue and was just beautiful!

I love this view, the contrast of the rocky beach with pine trees down by the water, not something commonly seen many "beachy" places.

I wish you could have heard the magnificent sound of the waves crashing up on this shoreline. Between that and the roar of the wind, we had to yell loudly to hear one another even within a few feet of each other. It was breathtaking, literally ;)

Tia, Hayley, and Nathan were the big explorers, they got all the way down to the bottom of the rocks and to the water line.

We didn't hang around there too long though, we were all getting hungry and decided to find somewhere to stop and eat. We weren't far from Ingonish, a little big bigger town, so thought we might find something there.

Snazzy name eh? haha

We pulled in at this restaurant and thought it sounded good! Plus, being big Food Network fans, were excited to eat somewhere that had been featured on there!

It was a quaint little place, but nice and seemed homey!

Let's just say that the portion sizes were not quaint at all, and the food was amaaazzzing!

Delicious creamy/cheesy salsa dip, and homemade chips.

The burgers were huge!

If this place was any closer than a 5 day drive, I would have a very hard time not eating there like every day!! I think my quesadilla meal could have fed 3 people, I was totally blown away by how huge it was! 

Definitely can tell why this place made it on TV!

Even their beer and desserts were unique and to die for. We were very satisfied with our dinner :)

Once we were stuffed to the gills, we got back on the road with one last beach stop in mind. 

Ingonish Beach!

It was a much more popular beach we discovered, as we made our way down to the water. The fact that it had warmed up a lot as it got closer to the afternoon, didn't hurt either. There were people out swimming and surfing on the water. Definitely could have stayed there allll day... or longer ;)

Imagine waking up in that hotel and looking out at this view every day!

As per the usual, it came time to leave another beautiful place, and it was hard to say goodbye. But we had a lot of ground still to cover that day, so got a move on.

Still had some pretty views for a long while, even though we knew we were about to head away from the beach.

We were climbing back up into higher elevation as we made our way into the highlands, to head back towards the mainland of Nova Scotia.

Stopped in here to grab a few jugs of water and take a pit stop.

Eventually we made it more down to sea level again, and had an ocean view once again.

It wasn't long before we had officially reached the end of the Cabot Trail, and got back on the main highway. It was such an incredible experience, driving along that long and winding road. It's so surreal to me, even to this day, that we were able to see all those amazing places! But there were still lots more to come!

By around 4pm, we were back down at the river separating Cape Breton and the mainland. It was similar to what we had seen coming in the day before, but had it's own unique views that were breathtaking!

We had a beautiful view of the sunset as we went up and down over the hills of the Nova Scotia countryside.

It was 10pm by the time we arrived in New Brunswick. We had originally planned on staying at a campground near Fredericton, NB for the night. But we discovered that they were closing their offices at 10, and we weren't going to make it, obviously. So stopped at a Tim Horton's to use their WiFi and try and find somewhere else to stay. We had no such luck though, and were pretty stumped!

At the last minute before leaving, we remembered a mutual friend that actually didn't live too far from where we were wanting to spend the night. I got a hold of her and worked out a plan to stay at their place for the night, even though it was further than we had planned to go that night. It was almost 3am before we finally got to their house, only about 15 minutes from the US boarder of Maine... They were so gracious to welcome us in and we all got a good rest of the nights sleep.

Needless to say, it was a very long and eventful day (and night), but oh so worth the adventure and all the memories we made along the way :)