Six months ago, at a great campground southwest of Tucson, fellow travelers in the next campsite, Pat and Lewis, told us about this magical place called Meat Cove. Their smiles were wide and eyebrows high as they recounted their time there in a tiny campground perched perched on a cliff overlooking the St Lawrence Seaway at the northern tip of Nova Scotia. We marked it on our map as a saved place, and for the last half year told anyone who asked where we were headed, “Meat Cove!”
Yet they said it was a rough road leading out from the Cabot Trail on the northern end of Cape Breton Island. I called ahead to the campground staff. I googled. I watched motorcyclists’ GoPro videos. And when we got close, I asked the locals. Could we take the fifth wheel out there? The consensus was that the road was just a bit too rough, and the cliff top sites a bit too narrow to maneuver.
So from our safe base at the Hideaway Campground near Aspy Bay, we set out on our bikes for the 20 mile ride. It had been three weeks since we had ridden or gotten much of any exercise at all, so a 40 mile round trip with hills seemed just within do-able.
What a good ride it was. This end of the island has mounded old peaks covered with trees of all kinds, roadways that weave through farmland, working forests, and small harbors setting up for lobster. As we pushed further north, the terrain got more rugged and the hills steeper. That provided the kinds of views like Big Sur, Chuckanut Drive, and the fjords of Norway all mixed into one.
Descending the last big hill into Meat Cove, named for the hunters’ processing place a hundred plus years ago, we wondered what this place would be like, since it was our claimed and purposeful destination for these many months. There it was, a tiny campground with sites on the open grass perched atop the cliffs. This was the domain of truck campers, vans and tents, and while one could imagine a thoroughly careful placement of a 32 foot fifth wheel so as to not slide off the cliff, there was practically only one spot we might have fit. But the smiles on the faces of the other campers was a give-away…this was a fantastic spot.
Their little restaurant had a nice big deck, so we ordered soup and fries to go with our packed lunch and we took in the view. After lunch we left the bikes and took a short hike to a high perch on the point nearby to watch the waves and the diving birds and hoped in vain to spot whales. What a day!
