Water, Water, Everywhere!

 Since Cape Breton is an island, you'd think that we're surrounded by water, and you're right.  There's a lazy river in Glace Bay, right next to our little town of Dominion.  A nice walking path, and Sister J with her ever-present picker for any trash that's been left behind. 

There are warnings at the cliff edges and "black rocks" which are the large boulders at a steep angle leading down to the sea.  And with good reason:  within the last month, 2 people in Nova Scotia have ignored the signs and warnings, slipped on the black rocks and fallen into the sea with fatal outcomes.

These hardy motorcyclists - a group of 8 all the way from Oklahoma are waiting in a heavy rainstorm to load their bikes onto the ferry for an 11 hour trip to Newfoundland, where they are likely to see .  .  . more rain!  I spoke to them a bit while I was waiting in the queue to load a mission car onto the ferry to send it to the missionaries in St Johns, NL.  Just after this photo was taken, the bikes got to load, and a driver appeared to take the car keys, so I didn't even have to drive the car on.

And just how do the vehicles get loaded?  The nose of the ferry lifts up, exposing the multiple decks, a hydraulic ramp aligns to the desired deck, and you just drive on.  There were at least 200 vehicles:  semis, motorhomes, pickups and campers, cars and of course motorcycles that were loaded on for this voyage.  Then it's 11 hours across the North Atlantic to Newfoundland.  Not really a pleasure cruise.

We haven't been on a big ferry (yet), but we have been on a little one.  This is at a place named "Little Ferry", and it's only about 200 yards across, but instead of a bridge, they have a cable ferry.  The ferry winches back and forth across by a wheel that grips the cable.  The ferry schedule is:  5 minutes after the first vehicle loads.  So all the cars ahead of us got there within 5 minutes after the first one loaded.  If you're late, you have to wait til the ferry comes back again.  It's drive on - drive off, and takes less than 10 minutes to cross.  No fee either!  There were about a dozen cars lined up to come back when we landed, the ferry will probably hold about 15 or so.  They could just build a bridge .  . 

Speaking of bridges, here's an old one not in use anymore.  It is balanced on the middle, and (without any cars on), could swivel to let boats through.  Pretty clever, these Canadian fellers.

Here's some of the lobster boats tied up for the night at the Lingan pier, which is at the far side of the Dominion causeway.  There's a gap of about 150 yards that the tide goes through each cycle (about 6 hours) into a small bay.  So it looks like a river - but it changes direction 4 times each day!  Lobster at the pier about $11/lb CAN.

Dang, $11/lb.  There are a few washed-up lobster traps on the beach.  Now if I only had a boat, I'd collect them and go into the lobster business!  It would be a lot simpler just to hand over $11.

This is a view of the North Atlantic on the perimeter road to New Waterford, just a few miles from us.  It was just a mild wind this day.  I'm hoping to get out here when there's a real storm blowing in and get some pictures of REAL waves crashing in.  After seeing just a few mild storms and reading about the shipwrecks on Cape Breton (from the early 1700's to 1960's), you'd never get me to be a sailor.