This is not a photo of mulching, but nearby, there was a sign announcing that mulching of the roadside was taking place, had taken place, or would take place, and that got Caroline to wondering why Canada mulches their roadsides while the United States mows them. So, upon getting home, I asked Claude 3.5 Sonnet (one of my go-to handy-dandy AIs) what its thoughts were, and it shared ideas about nutrient return to the soil, better resistance to erosion, a better wilderness aesthetic, and potentially better-insulating properties during harsh winters. Then, after consulting both Claude and Meta AI Llama 3.1-405B about the composition of the photo, specifically the rock, it seems that there is a consensus that we are looking at granite, which they say makes sense considering this is bedrock from the Gander Geological Zone that was exposed in cutting the Trans Canada Highway. I also inquired about the thin topsoil, which they said was consistent with an environment scraped down to bedrock during the last glacial period when the ice was retreating and finally disappeared between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago, which doesn’t allow much time in geological terms for topsoil to collect.

I can’t explain this as I’m unfamiliar with Canadian culture, but why the country adopted the nickname of Joey for Erich Honecker, the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany, baffles my imagination. Maybe back when Canada was part of the Communist Bloc countries during the Cold War, Honecker visited Newfoundland and stood here, kind of like in 1976 when Queen Elizabeth II visited the Trinity Church in New York City, which was commemorated with a plaque noting her visit. Hey, Newfoundland, I was only joking. Joey’s Lookout was named after the former Newfoundland Premier Joseph R. Smallwood, who was born in Gambo. He was called the province’s “Father of Confederation” after bringing Newfoundland into Canada. Funny enough, Joey, as he was affectionately known, worked for the socialist newspaper The Call while living in New York City.

From the moment I saw the view from the overlook, I was intrigued by what lay below, but we had places to be, so we kept going. That was until we began to cross the Gambo River, and I turned around for a better look at the rock-strewn riverbed. While maneuvering, Caroline found a smaller road that might take us right by the area we were looking at from the overlook, so we had to go. This little detour is now responsible for ten photos in this post, thus helping push the total to 55 images, which promises to make for an extraordinarily long blog entry.

I had to wonder when we parked the car what exactly the sign “Use trail at own risk” was warning us about. Just what is ahead that warrants such a sign? Have I seen such a warning before on other hiking trails?

For the sake of brevity, I’ll try to keep the verbiage regarding the following photos to a minimum, as what can be said about cattails? Well, we now know from experience: don’t pick these and take them home because there will come a time when the temperature and humidity reach a sweet spot that will have the cattail bloom, and you’ll come home to an explosion of cattail fluff, a lot of fluff I can tell you.

From the Aster family of flowers, pretty, huh?

A couple of dozen islands in the river channel made the view from the overlook so interesting.

With my jaw agape and eyes peeled, looking for the perfect beauty shot that stood out from all the other beautiful places, I scoured the area, trying to determine the best range of colors and textures of surfaces. It is only now, back at home and writing these posts, that I can understand that part of the attraction I couldn’t appreciate while in Newfoundland was the relative uniformity of the ground reflecting the work of those glaciers that have created the conditions for the land to appear as it does.

Maybe I’ve seen similar things in other locations, possibly in Alaska or Wisconsin, I’m not sure, but I can say that after witnessing countless terrains and ecosystems that have shared an incredible diversity of life, colors, shapes, contrasts, and challenges to my senses, everything is forever feeling new like they are greeting me for the first time.

Sure, the focus is on the aster, but I also hoped the shallow depth of field allowed the lichens to show through, and while difficult to make out, I’m guessing that the rock is something found in the area called amphibolite.

Maybe I’m looking at biotite gneiss or schist; I can’t really know, seeing how I’m not a geologist, but I’m certainly a curiologist.

This old bridge is a remnant of the railroad that once ran across Newfoundland, but in 1988, after suffering years of financial losses, the Trans Canada Highway made it fully obsolete, and on September 30th of that year, the last train made its final run. This is also the end of our detour, but not before I note that the old railway line was converted into the Newfoundland T’Railway Provincial Park that runs from St. John’s to Channel-Port aux Basques with branches going to Bonavista, Carbonear, Lewisporte, Placentia, and Stephenville, thus creating a trail system that is 549 miles long (883 km) and suitable for hiking, snowmobiling, or mountain biking. A couple of days ago, Caroline noted that we spoke with a couple at the Lobster Cove Lighthouse in Rocky Harbour. Something they shared was their lament that they’d only visited Newfoundland for the first time the year before and now wished for more time to explore the island, which brings us to Reason #8 for a return that might be an impossible dream: riding the length of the T’Railway while balancing other obligations, curiosities, and the fact that we are aging. Reading our notes at the bridge, I’d be amiss if I didn’t share that we were just as quickly gone from there as it was extraordinarily windy, but not before we spotted a seal spying on us from the water.

Crossing over the Terra Nova River means we are only a couple of miles from the border of Terra Nova National Park and about ten minutes from its visitors center. Regarding this name, Terra Nova is Latin for New Land and was the original Portuguese name for the island.

I’ll never remember the woman’s name at the visitor center who helped us navigate the course of our visit, but I hope never to forget how incredibly friendly and enthusiastic she was about guiding us into a course of exploration that would make for such a memorable day in the Terra Nova National Park and allowed us to gather the best sampling of the diversity found here.

At Newman Sound, we crossed a small arm of a much larger arm leading to the Atlantic Ocean while walking over the bridge pictured above this photo. This is one end of the Coastal Trail, a 5.9 mile (9.5km) out-and-back hike of which we’ll only be exploring a small part for a quick impression before moving on.

We walked about a half-mile along the coastal inlet before turning around and heading to our next location.

On the north side of the visitors center, we explored the Goowiddy Path, which was supposed to lead us to an interesting feature a short way up the trail. Goowiddy is a Newfoundland word for low shrubs.

That area of interest is what is called a Barachois, which means a sand or rock bar that forms a lagoon. It was the recommended end of our walk here on the Goowiddy Path, which has been popular with birds, especially a couple of kingfishers, which we were lucky enough to hear before seeing them fly off. This bird is more likely a sandpiper as the willets have typically migrated by the end of August, but we can’t really know as this is all we saw of this little guy.

From that obviously busy and overcrowded area near the visitor’s center, we made our way to the Southwest Arm Trail, where we did not encounter another person. The truth is that we didn’t bump into anyone else on the Coastal or Goowiddy Paths, either. This national park is pretty quiet at this time of year.

Here it begins: the trail, the mottled sunlight, shadows, and shades of greens, grays, and browns conspire to pull us into a trance. The visual song of the forest is a lullaby that brings us deeper into ourselves as we sink into the environment.

To linger here and return again and again, even if only by photos and words, is the clear objective of giving in to the seduction such places can affect upon those of us with inclinations towards being in love with the world when for a short amount of time, we have escaped the chatter of minds concerned with things human and are returned to being one with nature.

The beavers that built this pond are not concerned with yesterday or tomorrow. They, by their nature, live in the moment where the instinctual tasks demanded by their existence allow them to tend to a life with purpose in a universe shaped largely by their actions to sculpt such places.

Our opportunities to escape the noise within our heads are rare. Even when looking out upon perfection, there’s often a critical mind that, through our ignorance, suffering, or other afflictions, we cannot escape those situations to allow ourselves to fall into these scenes. Those who kayak these waters, fish, and camp along their shore are the fortunate ones. They are returning to the solemnity of presence after having learned the important life lesson: this is what feeds your soul.

Somewhere under that entanglement of twigs and branches is the palatial mansion of a beaver family in whichever way that is configured in their kingdom. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a grandiose beaver lodge, but I’d wager that if I were a beaver, I’d feel like the winner of the billion-dollar lottery and that I was living on easy street.

Come to think about it, here Caroline and I are in the rare position of finding ourselves 3,988 miles (6,418km) from home, standing over a lush green carpet of moss. At previous times in human history, it would have required no less than 235 days to walk here, and that would be with the availability of a trail, ease of finding food and water, and weather that would have worked in their favor. Instead, people can come here from just about anywhere else on Earth in fewer than 24 hours to enrich their lives, should they begin to understand what the attraction to such sights can do for them.

Missing one wing and completely motionless, we thought that this dragonfly was dead; that is until I got closer than this, and those wings started buzzing as it lifted off the boardwalk and moved on to somewhere else.

If my puny brain worked on my behalf with the rigor I’d like to exercise, I’d share a story here of the infant slug and mushroom that would carry a valuable lesson loaded with knowledge as important as any of Aesop’s fables, but my abilities fall distantly short of manifesting that type of genius.

With this image, I bring you to the end of our visit to the Southwest Arm Trail.

This is the fourth destination we visited in the park today, the Blue Hill Overlook. The view looks out over the boreal forest of the park, and the sliver of water towards the foreground is the Blue Hill Pond, while the larger body of water is the long finger of the Atlantic Ocean reaching far inland from the Bonavista Bay.

We’ve found these Muskoka chairs seemingly everywhere as we travel through the Maritimes, and while Americans might want to call them Adirondack chairs, the Canadian version has a curved back (yolk), distinguishing it from the American variant.

Need a mountaintop privy? Caroline did, and this outhouse served its purpose. Strangely, there was no sign pointing out that this toilet was nestled away for the convenience of visitors back in the trees. I didn’t peer in, so I can’t share what one should expect in a Canadian outhouse in a national park, but Caroline has that first-hand experience. Maybe she’ll tell us a thing or two about what to expect at the end of summer. [All I can say is that it was in good shape, not bad at all. – Caroline]

We are back on the Coastal Trail, but at the other end, where the Pissamare Falls are located.

By the time we leave Terra Nova later this afternoon, we’ll have walked approximately 7 miles (11km) of the trails in the park, leaving about 42 miles (67km) of trails to explore should we return to Newfoundland. Is this Reason #9? Let’s ask Caroline. [I’d love to come back and, this time, climb all the way to the top of the… oh wait, we’re not there yet! Keep going, gentle reader. Caroline]

Our second-to-last destination for the day is the fire tower at Ochre Hill. When we arrived at the tower, it was a bit more overcast than seen here, but the sky had time to clear while we talked with a German couple who’d been traveling around North America for months in a camper van they had shipped over from Germany. After talking with them for a solid half-hour, another couple came walking around a corner, who also turned out to be Germans. There we were, five Germans and an American, not a Canadian in sight – what are the odds? [Even funnier was that they were all from Bavaria – Caroline] Before leaving, Caroline wanted to go up the tower. She made it two-thirds of the way before the metal grating that allowed her to see the ground below and the strong winds convinced her she’d seen enough. The photo of the view she took is terrific on her phone, but should you want to see just how terrific it is, visit Terra Nova for yourself. It’s well worth the effort.

My fear of heights stopped me from stepping on that tower. There were witnesses below who might have noticed my display of fear. I preferred to be aloof and appear not to care about such things because I’m an idiot. This view sucks compared to what my wife saw.

On our way down Ochre Hill, this ruffed grouse was apparently trying to figure out life because right there on the road with our car heading towards it, it seemed to be contemplating its options. I expected the bird to skedaddle as I stepped out of the car and that my opportunity to get a closer shot would be lost, but no, it just moved around and continued to pose for my camera. That only lasted until I pressed my luck, trying to get even closer to capture more details of this gorgeous bird.

Our seventh and final location in the Terra Nova National Park today is at Sandy Pond, where we encountered another winged object of beauty, this red admiral butterfly. I suppose this place right here is a good spot to note that a few days ago, Caroline learned of the passing of her dear friend, Sandy Gally. The two met on August 8, 2008, at a natural dying workshop in Blue, Arizona, and have been friends ever since. Sandy had experienced health issues for some time, but still, like so many deaths, hers arrived out of thin air in some ways.

It took Caroline a few days for the news to sink in, and it was here in the park that she felt the first inklings of grief and the loss of her friend.

I just learned a lesson about writing. It’s difficult to come back from sharing information about a friend’s passing to the flow of discovery and delight.

Mortality, though, is an important topic, one that I’m well aware of and consider often, possibly too often. At 61 years of age, with some morbidities potentially accelerating my demise, I cannot ignore the significance that on my horizon stands an exit, hopefully, a distant one. That portal may not be paved with the verdant cover and abundance of life growing out of what has come before it, such as we see in the forest. My death is not of much concern to the inevitable state I will fall into, as I understand that any potential future will not include my presence at some point yet to be determined, but there is the matter of what I leave behind. I don’t mean the fertilizing potential of my ashes or remains; I’m more concerned about the woman who will find herself alone. True, the reverse could be my situation where unexpectedly, she departs before me, skipping out on the pain of being without the other who has brought so much shared joy into each other’s life. On the other hand, this is a futile exercise of thought, as none of us have figured out how to read the future, and we never know the fate that awaits us, even what tomorrow or the turning of the next corner has to offer.

For now, the next corner offers ferns in a light that begs for capturing by my lens and putting away those other thoughts that are, at best, amorphous and entangled in a complexity of threads that have no resolve.

If AI is to be trusted (and why shouldn’t it?), this lichen is likely known as Old Man’s Beard, and I suppose mine resembles this description, so I’ll go with it and state that unequivocally and without a doubt, this is Old Man’s Beard.

There are moments when we are on these trails and then again when we are at home looking at these images that we are absolutely incredulous that we were allowed to be here, that we had the wherewithal to place ourselves in such an environment, and that life has smiled so kindly upon us that this was our fortune. We are not millionaires; we have not inherited a thing, and we must sacrifice other things to bring ourselves into these rare experiences. How rare? Only about 40,000 people visit this national park annually, so just how many actually bring themselves out on this particular trail that is merely one of a dozen? It is more common in the United States to be a millionaire, as there are nearly 25 million of them, but we are part of that tiny group of 40,000 who know a fraction of the delights found here in Terra Nova.

Add to this that we are likely the only humans who have or will have ever seen these mushrooms, and this should inform you of the kind of wealth we collect. These are our unicorns, our genie in the bottle, the found diamonds in the rough waiting for our arrival.

Black spruce trees are a certain indicator that we’re in a boreal forest, also known as taiga. Dwarf plants and low shrubs make up large parts of the biome in these ecosystems due to the poor soil quality following the last ice age when glacial activity scrubbed these lands clean. Almost shocking for me was to learn that this type of environment is only about 12,000 years old, coinciding with those retreating glaciers and that they are the second in size only to deserts, covering 11.5% of Earth’s land area. Not only is the black spruce popular for making chopsticks, it is the provincial tree of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Recently, one of my social media feeds that drops random bits from history brought my attention back to Tollund Man, the 2400-year-old body found in the Bjældskovdal peat bog in Denmark, which had me thinking about our encounter with bogs (actually, I think we were visiting fens) and the sphagnum moss at their surfaces that is the most obvious indicator of the peat below. The difference between a bog and a fen is simple: a bog relies on precipitation for water, while a fen receives its water from the ground or accumulating flows draining from a slope or accumulating in a depression. This took me on the chase to learn more, and I found that these types of moss contain antimicrobial phenolic compounds that are high in acidity, have tanning properties, and are conducive to preserving things, including peat itself. Without peat, whiskey aficionados wouldn’t enjoy the same drink, some cultures would have gone cold with no other source for keeping a fire in their hearths, and a vast store of carbon wouldn’t exist. I wonder where else this exploration of sphagnum moss would go if finishing this post wasn’t my objective.

Sometimes, when you find the name of a plant, you want to share it for no other reason than that it’s an interesting one. This is royal dwarf sheep laurel.

Being in a national park, we knew better than to harvest anything, but upon getting home, I threw some Labrador tea into a shopping cart so we could try the drink popular with Athabaskans and the Inuit.

Circling around the eastern shore of Sandy Pond, we are reaching the end of the trail and are beginning to look forward to a break from our race to see as much of Terra Nova as we have.

Maybe the name Sandy Pond should have made it obvious, and then after we arrived, the signs pointing to the swimming area could have been another clue, but a sandy beach was not in my book of expectations.

We had one more raised boardwalk to traverse before returning to the parking lot, and again, outside of my expectations, there was this series of ponds to the east of Sandy Pond. I shot 480 photos on this day, and while sitting in a coffee shop writing this post a couple of weeks later, I cannot remember the circumstances surrounding this waterway, but I had an inkling of a memory that told me to check those photos I’m not including from that day. Sure enough, just before this series of four images stitched together in a panorama, there was a close-up shot of the entangled mess of branches that formed one small part of the beaver dams sequestering the waters we are walking above.

Sometimes, our ability to execute our movements in coordination, allowing for the most accurate chasing of remaining light, hits the mark. Our stop at an Esso Station in Lethbridge also hit that mark, where I spotted a sign for the Dairy Bar that claimed to have dozens of soft serve flavors. Caroline tried insisting that we needn’t stop, but I prevailed, and lucky for her, I did. She left with a maple and blueberry mix of soft serve, and happiness doesn’t begin to describe her joy. We made one error, though: we paid before ever looking at their selection of hard ice cream, and they had Grape-nut ice cream. In addition to the maple soft serve her friend Christine had recommended, Caroline had also read about tiger tail and Grape-nuts ice creams on one of her favorite Internet sources, Atlas Obscura, and here it was. I ordered a scoop so we could try it, knowing that we’d probably throw most of it away, considering how much soft serve she had in the cup she was already eating. To my astonishment and her regret, she finished both.

From the randomly painted trash bins in front yards to boulders and mailboxes, Newfoundlanders enjoy adding a splash of color to their environment.

We were on a detour, not a big one, but one that was taking us up the west side of the peninsula where, in Hodderville, we encountered foxes that appeared far too familiar with passing humans, as in they were looking for handouts. This was our first time seeing black foxes, and while I got a photo of them, it was on the street, and this pretty red fox in the grass looked sweeter.

What a lovely room we checked into at the Russelltown Inn in Bonavista, but if we were going to have a hot dinner, we needed to get moving right back out of our luxury accommodations. A quick scan of options showed me that the Boreal Diner was our best bet, but they recommended reservations. I called, but they couldn’t seat us for another hour. But we could sit at the small 4-person bar immediately, and with that, we locked our room and walked over. Going over the menu, it only took a moment to decide on the 5-course tasting menu until we waffled, considered a 3-course variation, and finally settled on sharing the 5-course while adding an extra scallop appetizer and a tasting size portion of the maitake, carrot polenta, and mint sauce entree.

The restaurant is in a small two-story house and is an absolute gem, surprising us that something so grand should be in such a small town of 3,200 people. The scallop appetizer was the only dish that was wanting; it needed something, but it wasn’t there. No matter, the local bluefin tuna appetizer was amazing, especially the emulsion made from bluefin tuna bits and bobs. The duck preparations, one with a fennel puree and the other with a parsnip puree, were both perfect. The maitake dish hit its mark, and finally, our final entree was the seared ribeye cured in koji served with pickled mushroom puree, celery root, and pickled shallot. Remember all that ice cream and soft serve? That didn’t stop us from ordering dessert, one of which came with us; yes, we ordered two because we couldn’t settle on one. The blueberry cake was packed up, and the strawberry cake with local strawberries and a scoop of partridgeberry sorbet was packed in. It seems futile to point out that this was one more epic day in a sequence of epic days.

Here we are on the famous Cabot Trail in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, feeling the Scottish sense of things that Nova Scotian Premier Angus L. MacDonald wanted to impart on these lands nearly 100 years ago for tourism purposes. That was some great insight from a politician during an age when murmurs of World War II were first being sounded, and industrial manufacturing and natural resource exploitation were in full effect. We made our first encounter with the Cabot Trail last night when we arrived at Margaree Harbour for sunset, and our hotel in Chéticamp, 15 miles farther north, put us in a perfect location to enter the national park first thing this morning.

I’m not certain if the gray skies were a curse or blessing, but without sharp points of light on this pond and the bleached grasses and trees reflected in its still waters, I can only wonder if this scene would have been as intriguing as it was. Stepping from the car to capture the image, I startled a beaver into returning to the water from where it was tending beaver business on dry land. What it was doing remains a mystery, as only its quick motion alerted me to its presence. In the tangle of monochromatic reflections to the right of this image, you might be able to spot its lodge.

While the beaver that ran back to the pond disappeared, another one closer to me apparently didn’t notice me admiring it and swam by as though Caroline and I were invisible.

Our first “look-off” of the day, which is the Canadian term for pull-out or scenic overlook. Well, seeing how much we enjoy taking in tilted strata, we don’t mind taking advantage of today’s first look-off and imagining the continental shifting and uplift that has to occur to create such a phenomenon. While not shown, the coast up here is a rocky one, not a bit of sand for sun worshippers looking to improve their tans, not that the weather is cooperating on that front either.

Hopefully, not ever look-off demands we do so, but this overview of the area to the south that we have traveled up so far couldn’t be ignored. Below and to the left is the cove we had just stood in, we are atop that cliffside.

Reflecting on reflections where thoughts cannot always adequately mirror feelings that this is the domain of poetry and music.

Angled, gnarled, and storm-and-wind-worn surfaces are like the faces of people who have lived hard lives with deep lines and creases etched into their character. Nature is showing you her old face, but can we recognize her?

The wish for clear skies may yet be granted, but the heavy gray and billowy white clouds looming over the highlands have their own appeal in shaping a dramatic landscape.

The Cabot Trail was named after the explorer John Cabot, who landed in the Maritimes of Canada in 1497. It was a nice gesture of remembrance, except he apparently landed on Newfoundland, not Cape Breton Island. No matter, since the branding is simply great, and exacting historical details are better left to the pedants.

Our first hike of the day was on the 4.1 miles (6.6km) long Corney Brook Trail (these are not those falls).

These are the falls to which this trail leads. Should you wonder about the forest trail that brought us out here, we started hiking in the shadows of the overcast sky, but reaching the halfway point back to our car, the sky cleared and opened in a glorious blue, changing the appearance of things. Considering how many other photos we wanted to share from the rest of the day, those from most of our hike needed to be pared.

Be quiet, walk with a soft step, leave your dog behind, and be patient, and you, too, might encounter a ruffed grouse on your trails.

Approaching the end of the Corney Brook Trail, we encountered the glorious blue ocean, following the peeling away of the heavy clouds that had threatened our day with a slight pallor of gray.

The brilliance of slicing such narrow bands of roads at the edges of the sea cannot be overstated. We are forever grateful to those laborers who toiled under the conditions of rain, mud, and blistering sun to carve these pathways through dense forests on steep slopes next to precarious cliffsides.

I don’t know if Canada ever clearcut this forest in the national park. I’d like to believe that it wasn’t and that this diversity of tree types, heights, and colors represents the same diversity of flora that has lived on the north end of this island for many thousands of years.

Had you asked us prior to our visit to the Bog Trail where we’d rank such a path, it would probably be at the bottom of our choices, but after arriving here, there’s some likelihood that we spent as much time exploring these wetlands on a 0.5km/0.3m boardwalk as it took us to hike the 4 miles of Corney Brook.

While sharing some visual characteristics of tundra, this boreal bog is not that, but it is nice to be experiencing glimpses of that type of ecosystem. This blossom is from the purple pitcher plant, a carnivorous specimen also known as the side-saddle flower or, my favorite, turtle socks.

I could easily be mistaken because, regarding the effectiveness of my memory, I forget a lot of things, but I believe this was our first encounter with sphagnum moss during all of our travels. Should I be wrong, Caroline will leave a note pointing out the dozens of other locations we’ve fallen into the visions of fractal recursiveness that grows out of place we’ll never identify. How do I know that? I reached in to not only touch the moss itself, but I was wondering how thick and soft the bed of mosses was before sending fingers probing for the ground but pulled back after thinking better of the idea, wondering if there might be another type of carnivorous plant in the depths just laying in wait to snack on fat man fingers. [I tried to remember when and where we might have seen this moss before but couldn’t come up with a location either, so it certainly was our first deep encounter with sphagnum moss. By the way, we also learned that technically, this bog isn’t a bog at all but a slope fen because there is a steady source of water, and the surface area lies on a mountain slope. Caroline]

The infamous finger-eating pitcher plant makes an appearance after lurching out of the moss, hungry for what I fortunately denied.

Green frogs were talking with each other around this pond. By our count, there were three of them. We lingered a while longer, hoping that in our stillness, they’d get squawking again; sadly, our patience was for naught as they fell to silence. That’s relative, though. Here we were on a slow crawl over the bog trail, taking an inventory of everything our eyes and ears could take in. We’d be the first to admit that the very idea of visiting a bog doesn’t at first blush sound all that exciting, but now that we know, we’ll never second guess the potential held in this type of wetlands. With only a single day to explore the park and one more trail we knew we wanted to hike, our departure from the bog was bittersweet.

Farther down the park road, we were soon at Benjie’s Lake Trail.

Hints of the fast-approaching autumn are showing up here and there, such as the ferns next to our trail that are turning orange.

While the park’s elevation isn’t all that high, there is something top-of-the-world feeling out here. [I had that feeling too, and I believe that was because of the stunted trees. They are kept short by the poor soil conditions and harsh winters. Caroline]

Reaching the lake, we caught up with a couple of German guys who’d raced past us and ended up talking with them for a good 20 or 30 minutes until a couple joined the small viewing area, and we decided to leave them to a moment of solitude.

The trail out and back is easy peasy and easily negotiated by almost every skill level of hiker, the same was true for the bog trail.

Emotions swoon at the vista with a perfect blue ocean punctuating the scene, motivating me to bring the car to a quick stop. We both leap out of the car, proclaiming this as the best view ever, even when we already know with absolute certainty that the previous look-off was, without a doubt, the best ever.

But then we see clouds reflected on the ocean’s surface, and now we have to admit that we are being gobsmacked by Mother Nature’s relentless onslaught of all that is beyond terrific.

Down the hill in Pleasant Bay, the devil found in the signs announcing soft serve and ice cream takes a commanding spot on our shoulders and, speaking louder than any angel, tells us “No.” It forces us to pull over for yet more indulgences, reassuring us that vacations were created just for this reason. Caroline finally found tiger ice cream, a typical Canadian treat of orange-flavored ice cream with dark streaks of black licorice (or, in this case, chocolate), and I opted for maple walnut. I got the better deal, and when she was finished with hers, we returned for a scoop of the yummier stuff for her. By now, I’m trying to reassure her that all the soft serve and ice cream are not making her fatter, just a little fluffier. Sitting here in front of the small shop, windchimes sang to us in the gentle breeze that, like the name of the town, was pleasant at 61 delightful degrees. Crickets chimed in, celebrating with us that we were still in shorts and short-sleeved shirts, with the glow of summer carrying forward for a little longer.

And that’s it for our visit to the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, but we still have some driving left today on the Cabot Trail.

Was that a national park sign we passed? Nope, it showed a turn-off from the Cabot Trail that leads visitors to the Beulach Ban Falls outside the park. Caroline’s quick search-fu abilities told her to insist on us turning around, which I promptly did because what else do I have on my agenda besides nothing other than making my travel companion, best friend, wife, and Love-ah from the prestigious Welshley Arms Hotel happier than she was seconds ago?

Do you see them? No, it’s not pareidolia this time. There are no faces, well maybe there are, but I’m more interested in the many capons gracing the length of the waterfall. Have I just discovered caponidolia? It’s as though the white streaks of water are the fat dripping from my love-ahs fingers. Reading the tea leaves of the future, first when Caroline edits this and then subsequently years from now after returning to it again, she’ll groan, wishing I hadn’t gone to that Saturday Night Live skit that’s been haunting us for decades. She’ll wonder, has this knucklehead run out of oomph on what to write next, or does he really feel this way regarding such a beautiful place?

This is awkward. I don’t know how to follow up on that moment of idiocy without continuing the nonsense, but even I grow tired of my half-hearted attempts at well-worn grandpa humor that doesn’t always hit its mark. I suppose I can point out the obvious: this photo contains dark red and brown soils, lit with mottled light from the sun that manages to find a way through the canopy, combined with the moss, roots, dark shadows, and abundance of green has all the elements of a perfect spot on the trail that even had there not been an exquisite whispy waterfall at its terminus, would have nevertheless been spectacular.

Two guys from Toronto were sitting at this look-off. They had it all to themselves until we came along to share the viewpoint with them. As I chatted with them, Caroline busied herself among the nearby plants. What could she have been doing over there?

She and this red admiral butterfly were communing, and somehow, it kept hanging around long enough for her to pull me over to see if I could get a photo of this guy, too. Maybe it was high on milkweed, or there’s an herb that acts to hypnotize it, but it wasn’t budging from its perch. I had brought my walking-around lens, my telephoto lens, and my super-wide lens along on this trip, but somehow, the macro was a lens too much; it’s back home in Phoenix doing absolutely nothing for me. Come to think about it, that macro would have come in handy at the bog.

This is Dingwall Harbour; it is not Meat Cove. It is also the farthest north we’ll travel on Cape Breton here in Nova Scotia. Meat Cove would have been even farther at the absolute northern end of the island, but as you can see from the low position of the sun and lengthening shadows, we couldn’t afford the extra couple of hours that would have been spent going to and fro. With 42 trails still to hike in Cape Breton, 14 more in Kejimkujik, more than a dozen provincial parks, and at least two wildlife refuges of note, it would be easy to spend a solid ten days on Nova Scotia familiarizing ourselves with an abundance of beauty that I feel exceeds what our expectations might have been before coming to the Maritimes.

There’s still 1.4 degrees of sunlight slicing across a thin layer of the earth’s surface above sea level; if we hoof it, we can capture a new level of astonishment, joy, and delight, the wife says with excitement that I cannot deny.

While she’s out finding her happy place here on Green Cove Overlook, I found mine with this cairn.

Caroline found her happy spot here with a slightly different angle, attributing it to the intrusions of the pink pegmatite dikes sandwiched in the granite with that awesome cairn too distant to play a significant role. The truth is that she took a better photo but with a caveat. Using my cell phone, which she now calls the clown camera, Samsung’s automatic HDR function can create emphasis in colors where my DSLR fails. [However, in some situations, the colors look ridiculously fake, which is where the “clown” thing comes in – Caroline].  The problem with the “clown photos” is their poor resolution. They are not low res, but they were created to look awesome on a small hi-res phone screen, not on other devices or large screens. Unable to choose which photo was better, we decided we could both be happy by posting both, even if the pink bands are not as luxuriantly saturated as they are on my phone. Speaking about luxuriant saturation, that’s where we are here on vacation.