Some days are diamonds

Sorry for not posting last night. Where were staying the service was not very good. Anyway,  yesterday morning started off much as other mornings. It had rained hard all night, and the Atlantic side of the island we were staying on was socked in with a very thick fog. Erin and I went out exploring around outside after a light breakfast. You couldn't see very far, but we began to hear a soft bellowing off in the thick woods. Could it be moose, we thought. Sure sounded like one. We went and got Jenn, and they stayed in the parking lot as I walked out into the edge of the woods. The sounds got a little louder and I could hear something moving off in the woods about 150 yrds. It never got any closer, but it seemed to change it's tone a little and slowly began moving off over the mountain side. I never saw anything, dang it! Could have been a Bigfoot, but in order to not scare the women folk, I told them I was sure it was a moose! We soon mounted our bikes again, and began to slowly plow our way through the heavy fog, slowly making our way up to our first mountain crossing. We got glimpses of huge waves crashing on the rocky shoreline, and Daniel attempted to take some pictures.

 I will see what I can find when I make our trip video. Finally we crossed over a mountain pass, and the fog began to clear. Little by little as we moved westward, we began to see more and more of the beautiful mountians we had been in all morning. By the time we dropped back down to the north west coast of Cape Breton,  the fog was completely gone, and the sun had come out. The folks at the Castle Rock Inn had told us if we wanted to go whale watching, we should stop at Pleasant Bay. So as we were only 40 miles from our stopping point for the night and it was only about 11:30, we pulled into Pleasant Bay to see what we could find out. It is an extremely small community, but besides the numerous lobster boats in the harbor, there were 4 whale watching boats. We decided to go into the one closest to where we parked and thus began the lucky string of events that provided basis for an extremely good day! Turns out there had been very few whale sightings this early in the season.

 They did have a brief sighting of a small Minke whale that morning, but really not much to show for 3 hours of looking. We boarded and the captain took us to the lone sighting that day. After about 1/2 hour of looking, I spotted it briefly before it again dove to begin eating. After about 15 minutes, Captain Gill said "Let's burn some of the owner's gas and go out to deeper waters (300 ft) to have a look. After about another half hour, I saw Captain Gill give a brief thumbs up and quickly accelerate out even further. He had spotted a large water spout out about 2 miles. Quickly we pulled up on first 1, then 2, and then 4 humpbacks, kind of hanging out on the surface.

 One did a deep dive and showed us his fluke, then one came completely out of the water before splashing down right beside us. We followed the foursome around for a while, and ran across 2 extremely large Fin whales, about 60 feet long and weighing 80 tons each! Captain Gill quickly got on the microphone and radioed all the other boats he had found the seasons first big whales. We stayed at the spot until the other boats began to arrive and we began our 10 mile trip back in the extremely fast Zodiac. On our way back to port, Captain spotted a Bald Eagle high on a cliff, majestically atop the highest rock. We motored over and while we were snapping pictures, a Minke whale crossed right in front of our boat. After  getting back to shore Erin was still a buzz with what we just saw, amazing. We thanked and tipped our captain and went to the first place we could stop to eat, as in all the excitment, it was now 3:30, and we hadn't eaten since 8 AM. After gulping our food, we were once again riding through the beautiful canyons and ocean vistas' of the wonderful Cabot Trail.

 Shortly we had gotten to the Ocean View Inn in Cheticamp, and were again greeted with a wonderful surprise. The place we had selected strictly for convenience, was a cabin right on the ocean. While Daniel and I went to get some libation to enjoy the coming sunset, Jenn settled us into our cabin. Erin was soon soundly sleeping, and we went outside with our bottle to watch the sun be swallowed by the water. What a gorgeous sunset. We found some wood around and built a fire to prolong the evening. Finally, we realized it was approaching 11 PM, so we sadly bid goodnight to wonderful "Diamond Day" we had just experienced!