Cape Breton Island

“Look here - on the map,” Jim said pointing, “they have whales printed right there. It’s a guarantee.” He paused and looked intently at the illustration. “I think they’re frolicking”. That was it. We were heading up the coast of Cape Breton Island and we were looking for frolicking whales.

Smokey Mountain was the first stop on our whale watching tour. We had a beautiful blue-sky day and we could see for miles up and down the coast. The Cabot trail wound around the shoreline. Hillside after hillside was draped with deciduous trees - coloured with shades of red, gold and green. The sea was a cool blue.

“Bring on the frolicking,” Jim said, scanning the waves with the binoculars.

“Blows, I see blows.” I pointed to two small vertical puffs of mist far out to sea. We had our first whale sighting (or whale breath sighting to be more exact).

Next morning we were up before dawn to go to White Point for sunrise. No wonder early Scottish settlers felt at home here. The peninsular was mainly made of granite, with the rough edges smoothed by lots of heather. I had the binoculars.

“I see splashing – is it frolicking?” Jim asked. Frolicking it perhaps was – but it was a pod of dolphins.

We travelled to the most northerly point on Cape Breton – Meat Cove. This is the end of the road. Again, blue skies, again more whales, but the part I truly loved was seeing the autumn colours of the leaves. Talking is something I have always considered myself to be pretty good at. Here on Cape Breton Island I was becoming disappointed in my vocabulary.

“Ohh – isn’t that pretty?” or “Look … red”.

I phoned my friend Gisele that evening. She remembered Cape Breton as being beautiful, but windy.

“No, not a breath for us,” I told her.

We hiked the skyline trail the next day. We saw a wet spot on the trail with big muddy hoof prints. We stopped talking and looked intently for moose. She was looking at us out from the bushes just round the next corner. She tipped her head and stared - then went back to nibbling branches. Her coat looked thick and glossy. We passed four more moose on that hike. At the lookout at the end of the trail, (or as they call them here; the lookover) the strong wind made it difficult to even stand. We hunkered down behind a bench and scanned the water for whales. A pod of about six moved up the bay – pilot whales we think.

“Its nice to see them from a whale watching boat but I think I like it even better from here,” Jim said, “when they are just doing their own thing – no boats chasing them down.”

I remembered my conversation with Gisele at our ocean side campground that evening. A park warden came by to relay a wind warning to us. As we watched, the spray was being blown off the top of the waves. Our trailer bounced and rattled – even though we were fully secured. The warning stated wind of 80km hr. He thought we were pretty close to that already.

“See that spot down there,” the warden pointed about 25 yards from where we were parked. “An airstream trailer parked there this time last year was blown three feet sideways during the night.’

The next morning we left very early after an unsettled nights sleep. The wind had picked up and small tornado-like clouds of spray were moving across the water. The sea was afroth.

“The whales would have to jump right out of the water for us to see them frolicking now,” Jim stated.