Saturday, July 6, 2013

Cabot Trail West side, Skyline Trail, and Moose

 

It was warm again here today, touching 32C around our campground. Luckily it was cooler in the Highlands, down to 24C at times. We toured the west side of the Cabot Trail today, including a (for us) challenging hike. 

That's the Cabot Trail winding up into the hills
 

From this rest stop we watched a flock of Northern Gannets diving in the distance:

 



This is the third day of gorgeous weather for us here, better than any we've had on other trips to the area. There was some haze, but still a great touring day. It's cooler today, nice because we took an 8 km hike around the Skyline Trail. Part of the trail was nicely gravelled, part is stony dirt with lots of exposed tree roots. Luckily we did the tougher part of the loop first, and the return route was easier going.


Interesting antler display, Moose antlers are really heavy.

A bit of the tougher part of the trail


Here's the native life we encountered on our hike. These were taken with little or no zoom on the lens, except for the closeups of her(?)  head:




 

This is the closest we've ever come to a moose in the wild (or in a cage either for that matter). It was a young one, likely last year's calf, but a LOT bigger than us!

Here's a couple of tourists on our hike, the Skyline Trail. The hike was rough in places. The payoff is this spectacular look-off about halfway around the trek:




That's part of the Cabot Trail road down there

An easier part of the trail

 


 

We paid a short visit to a local Abbey. Odd place for one, and we'd never have even heard about it, let alone found it, if not for a woman we talked to in one of the shops. No signs to it, but the Abbey offers guided tours Mon-Fri for an hour or so. This being Saturday, no tour, but we were welcomed to wander around outside. A place of great tranquility, just past Pleasant Bay:

 



 









No comments:

Post a Comment