Up and at them to Cape Bretton!  Some discussion as I loaded up the bags pointed out I was probably losing a good day of riding to all the packing/unpacking.  I hadn’t thought about it that way – and I think if it were earlier in the trip, I might have gone to MEC or REI and ‘refactored’ the bags.   But I’m so far in that changing things and losing stuff is a higher risk than the time I’ll likely save now.   Something for the next trip…

Riding in the morning wasn’t bad in Halifax itself, but quickly got gloomy near Truro.  Nothing bad, just a little on the cool side.  Would have been perfect with the rain liner in, but not bad enough to make me bother.  Cleared up by the time I was in Antigonish – but I hit awful traffic, as forewarned.  Single lane/alternating traffic meant lots of time sitting in the sun waiting to go.  Combined with a McD’s breakfast – I went in to take advantage of the free coffee – I was quite sleepy.  Not exactly a good combo while riding.  Gonna have to cut back on McD’s food.

Pulled over after the Canso Causeway to ingest some caffeine.   Also got some nice pictures from the Visitor Center:

Back at Peggy’s Cove, I had seen a flyer for wool/sheepskin goods.  I decided that since it was on my way, I’d stop in and check things out.  Eventually settled on a sheepskin to use as a buttpad.  Not sure how useful it will be, but even if it was awful, I figured it’d make a nice souvenir.

Mendy’s staring to look very cluttered:

Arriving in Cheticamp fairly early, I decided to set up camp and do one of the recommended hikes – The Acadien Trail.  Great views up at the top:

Definitely worth the effort getting to the top.  This being me, it was still rather late in the day, so I put on a pretty good pace getting up to the top.  And chose an even faster one going back down.   This meant I was mostly looking at the path rather than around me looking for wildlife.  Rounding a corner, I blundered into a moose!

Fortunately, it wasn’t mating season so he wasn’t all that excitable.  He munched on a few more things before wandering off.  I hoofed it back to the bottom and called it a night, intending to repeat things and go hike the other end of Cape Breton.