We ate breakfast at Coastal Restaurant in Ingonish. They are the "Home of the Ringer," a burger that was featured on the Canadian Food Network. Naomi had ringer sauce with her eggs. The food was great. Highly recommended.
We jumped on a whale watching tour right after breakfast. The water was insanely calm. I am pretty sure you could have seen a guppy from a mile away if it broke the surface. The count included: 3 minke whales, 2 sea turtles, 2 sunfish, 1 eagle, and a seal.
We drove back up north on the Cabot to get to Meat Cove. We heard awful things about people in Meat Cove-- the kinds of things people say about country bumpkins. We wanted to take the turn to drive up to the northernmost tip of Nova Scotia anyway, and it turns out those things are all wrong! The last several miles of the drive were very hilly, dirt roads that traced the corners of sheer cliff faces.
We ran out of road at a campground that was built into a cliff. A few crazy and determined RVs had made it up there. We hadn't planned to stop driving yet, but the place was so amazing that we got a site on a grassy edge of a cliff. The site had a perfect view of a huge pebble beach.
As we finished setting up our campsite, a group of bikers were getting ready to kayak. One of them, a guy in his mid 50's who was a dead ringer for the Dude, asked us if we wanted to join them. His name is Bean're. There was a waterfall not far away, and he wanted to use it for the ice bucket challenge. They had asked for one too many boats and had a tandem waiting down at the beach ready for us.
After kayaking, we climbed up to the top of the campground and had beer and mussels at the little shack next to the office. We shared a table with a couple from London and France (no underpants). She quit her job to go on this trip, and is using the trip to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up. We finished our beer on the porch with the motorcycling group.
Bean're was uploading the video of the waterfall to YouTube, and was trying to do it at prime time. It turns out that Bean're is something of a celebrity in the motorcycle rally world. He makes his living off his blog and paid appearances at rallies. "Prime time" on the internets is Sunday night according to Bean're. This is when he gets most of his traffic. He hasn't had an address in 7 years, and traveled the entire globe on his purple chopper. You can check out his blog, and follow his travels on Facebook.
He had a bit of an entourage of really great people with him. One of the other guys, Scott, was an even deader ringer for the Dude. He has been on his Goldwing and hasn't been home in 9 months.
They had bought 25 pounds of mussels, and invited us down to the beach to share them. They invited us to stay at their place in Stewiacke to join them for mud sliding the next day, and they offered us a place to stay in Digby where there was going to be a big rally. In the morning one of the guys, Timo, offered us coffee and oranges, and asked us to go to Digby again. We realized hat he had passed us the day before on a little Harley on the way up to Meat Cove. He is a bike builder and leather craftsman, and will be showing there.