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| Along the beautiful Cabot Trail |
We didn't make it to the National Acadian Day celebration in Cheticamp last night. We did get to watch the parade and it was a blast. Small town parades are always fun. Given the choice between something like the Tournament of Roses or Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or a small town parade I'll take the small town parade. I love the smiles on both the participants and the spectators as they wave at each other like they haven't seen each other in years. The reality is that they had probably ran into each other at the store, barber shop, beauty parlor or post office earlier in the day. There's also great pride in the floats that took at least 15-30 minutes to assemble. Cheticamp's parade had a little bit of it all. Musicians, dancers, costumes, trucks with streamers, residents of the local retirement home on a bus and more. My favorite line of the night came from a friendly local we were talking to at the restaurant. It was getting near time for the parade to start and the excitement was building. Suddenly the local EMS and Fire Department were called into action for what we assumed to be a real emergency. With sirens blaring and lights flashing they blew by us in the opposite direction of the parade route. The lady turned to us and smiled and said "well I guess the parade is going to be delayed a little while". You can't have a small town parade without a fire truck, police or EMS.
The parade made it's way slowly down the main street of the village as if no one was in a hurry to get to the finish at the village market square. Once it was over it took a good 45 minutes for the traffic to clear. Now that's a big time parade in a small Acadian fishing village on the Cabot Trail!
As we made our way out of Cheticamp this morning we continued along the Cabot Trail heading for our next destination which is the town of Ingonish. We made a quick stop to check out the village of Pleasant Bay. As we pulled in we noticed that a whale watching boat was leaving at 10:00 AM. It was 9:52 at that time so heck, why not join in the fun. We were soon on our way into the bumpy waters of the Gulf of St. Laurence in search of whales. We were told that there were several types of whales that inhabited these dark, chilly waters at this time of year. The most common type are Pilot Whales which are actually members of the dolphin family. The adults are around 15-20 feet in length and they are very social, traveling in pods. We learned that they are also called "Potheads" because of the shape of their head which does resemble a large pot.
Before long we had these very social and curious "Potheads" all around the boat. The pods seemed to have about 10-15 whales per pod. There were plenty of babies swimming along with adults closely supervising them. We've seen humpbacks and orca's but this was our first pothead encounter. What made it unique was the number and how close they would come to the boat. I wonder if they ever get the munchies..................I hear that happens with potheads!
http://www.whaleandsealcruise.com/
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| How could you not love a small town parade? |
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| I'm not exactly sure what the one costume is...........Beth thinks it's a sea creature............I think it's the French version of the grim reaper! |
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| I think they lost their rider somewhere along the route |
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| Pilot Whales (Potheads)-Pleasant Bay |
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| Whale Watcher Extraordinaire! |
