Today we left Halifax and drove to Baddeck, NS on Cape Breton Island. It was about a four-hour drive and relatively uneventful.
As we were travelling along the highway we noticed that a number of trees had leaves that were starting to change colour. Even though the leaves look brown I'm hopeful that it will eventually turn a colour. I suspect they are just in the early stages after the recent frost warnings. I recently read that the change of colours is caused by cooling temperatures, lack of moisture and less sunshine, and that freezing will actually dull the colours. Apparently maples turn the brightest red with cool morning temperatures but without freezing.
We initially planned on staying at the Adventures East campground just south of Baddeck but we were unable to find an attendant at the office so we drove across the road and and arranged to stay at the Baddeck Cabot Trail campground. I like the price here as it works out to about $40 a night including taxes and our Good Sam discount.
Once we set up camp had a quick lunch and headed into Baddeck about 10 kilometres further north and visited the Alexander Graham Bell museum. Fascinating museum explained all of the things he worked on after he invented the telephone. One of his biggest accomplishments was helping to create the Silver Dart which was the first aircraft to fly in Canada, on the lake here at Baddeck, Nova Scotia. He was a remarkable man and inventor who played with a lot of things and developed a lot of interesting technology including hydrofoils. Even though the Americans like to claim Alexander Graham Bell as their own he was actually born in Scotland and spent much of his early life in Canada near Brantford, Ontario. While teaching the deaf in the US at Boston he managed to put together the pieces of his original telephone. After he invented his telephone, he spent 16 years in the courts proving that he was the true inventor of the telephone and then most of his later life in Baddeck, pursuing his many ideas and inventions.
On the way back to our campsite we visited the Baddeck waterfront, complete with a statue of Bell and his wife seated on a park bench.
