We woke up early in order to prepare for our kayaking trip in Mahone Bay with East Coast Outfitters. We were part of a group of 8 kayakers for a 4 hour tour, a 4 hour tour. We didn’t have any kayak experience, but the guided tour was open to all experience levels. The sky was overcast and the weather was slightly cool when we started out at 9 am after a brief introduction on kayaking basics. We were in a two person kayak. I did the steering in the back which took time getting used to. You need to use pedals to steer the rudder and row at the same time. The bay in town was very pretty, with a nice tall church and views of the small downtown. We worked fairly well together on the kayak, staying in sync with our paddling. The problem was that I kept on splashing Theresa while I was paddling. Less than halfway to our destination, Andrew’s Island, it began to lightly rain. The rain, in combination with the cool weather, made us slightly uncomfortable. The top halves or our bodies were soaked but the bottom halves were better since it was covered by the kayak skirt. Once we reached the island, we had a light snack underneath some absent campers’ tarp. On the shore, I found a piece of bone from what appeared to be a deer jaw, complete with teeth. At this point we were all cold and wet and were ready to make the journey back to home base in the rain again. When we got back to the store, we were literally soaked and couldn’t wait to change back into dry clothes.

Since we didn’t get to see the Citadel the day before, we went back that day, even though it was still raining. The fort was very huge, with great views of the city. Since it was raining, there were few visitors. The museum had exhibits about Canadian history and the uses of the fort throughout the years. The central area of the fort, on good days, was supposed to have bag pipers, people in period dress, and other happenings. We barely heard one bagpiper and saw only a few people dressed in historic military uniforms.

Our next stop was to be our campground, HyClass Campground in Havre Bucher, at the base of Cape Breton Island. We hit lots of traffic on one of the main highways due to construction. The highway actually had a traffic light in the middle of it! We also stopped for the first time at a Tim Horton’s drive through for coffee and hot chocolate. It had stopped raining long enough for us to set up our camp and eat. Then of course, it started raining again. The campground was nice, and had clean bathrooms decorated with red and white reminiscent of a 50’s diner atmosphere. It sounds weird, but looked cool.