Cape Breton

     More on our weekend trip for a baptism in Sydney with a detour along the Cabot Trail.

Aptly named (notice the guardrail). We think the words on the bottom are in Celtic.

     You many have noticed in last week's post that the pictures got a little "fuzzier" by the end. That's because we got about 75% of the way around the park before a storm hit. If you look closely at the picture above you can see it's snowing. Even with the treacherous driving, it was beautiful, BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL! We're grateful President Pratt encouraged us to close up the office and take an extra day to travel.

     There were several homes with boats in the front yard. We didn't get pictures of those, but snapped a few in more public places. Lots of boats have been pulled out for the season.

     Because it was off off-season, many places along the way were closed. We'd heard of several places we wanted to try out, but we'll just have to take another trip there when the weather is warmer.

     Because the weather turned, we were glad to get to our hotel in a town called Baddeck. We chose it because of the name (Lynwood Inn, in case you can't make it out through the snow--it was even spelled right!). They don't run the Inn's restaurant during the winter but they gave us a list of a few restaurants that are open year round. We got take-out from Tom's pizza--it was really good! We highly recommend Tom's if you ever get to Baddeck.


     The storm continued to rage and we were glad we had made it safely. SO glad to be out of the storm. About the time we were getting ready for bed, the power went out. The room cooled quickly, so we piled all the bedding from both beds on one bed and pulled out the extra blanket from the closet. After an hour the lights came back on and we slept warmly. We really appreciated the people who worked in that storm to restore power. And were really grateful to be off the road.

     Saturday morning we called the one restaurant from the list that was open for breakfast, except they weren't. Open, that is. They must not have wanted to brave the snow for the chance of maybe having a customer (obviously they hadn't heard we were in town). We figured we'd get something along the way. The only restaurant we saw didn't open until 11, so for breakfast we had a nice lunch in Sydney.

     Something most people do here is pull the windshield wipers up at night so they don't freeze to the windows (something we never thought of at home since we park in the garage). This was our car the next morning with the wipers peeking out of the snow. We finally got on our way and felt a funny vibration. When we could we pulled over and discovered snow and ice were caked on our rear tires and it took quite a bit of work to get them cleared off.

     Instead of feasting on fast food for breakfast, we got to feast on more scenery. It was a beautiful winter wonderland and there wasn't much traffic, almost eerily so. Sometimes the roads were cleared well and then started fading into not so cleared. Never figured out why, never saw a snowplow.

Bridge over part of the Bras d'Or

     Bras d'Or is Canada's largest inland sea, unique in that it is not quite ocean, not quite salt water, but a blend of both. It's kind of like a reverse island with land all around a huge body of water. And it is just as beautiful.

     We had planned to go to the Fortress of Louisbourg before the baptism, but we got to Sydney later than we'd planned because of the roads and we figured it would probably be closed because of the weather (it was) and wouldn't have wanted to traipse around in the snow anyway, so instead we looked around Sydney a little.

     One thing we'd heard so much about is called the Big Fiddle of the Ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee). We made a brief stop for pictures. For some reason there weren't a lot of tourists braving the brisk wind coming off the harbour, so we couldn't get a picture of both of us together and the fiddle. There was less snow by the harbour than there was farther inland. After that we went to our hotel and asked for an early check-in. They said they were about half full that night, and about 50% of those were people from Sydney who were still without power. We were grateful all over again to the guy in Baddeck who braved the storm and restored power. We enjoyed a relaxing afternoon and Elder Holbrook was able to do a little destressing after all the white-knuckle driving he'd done.



     After dinner we headed to the church and our reason for being there--the baptism. It had snowed harder at the church. Notice the straight edges on the snow. They do that a lot here. The snow was almost to the bottom of Sister Holbrook's jacket. The next day we wore our Siberian coats.

     They cleared a path to this door as per fire marshal regulations, but with the wind it didn't stay cleared. Fortunately there are other doors on a sheltered side of the building. They probably won't use this one until spring.

Elder Lerimez, Jia Sheng/Margaret and Elder Nielsen (who confirmed her the next day) 

     Margaret is a very shy, bright 19-year-old student from China. She came to Canada three years ago by herself for a special English program. She's shared the gospel with some of her friends who have set tentative dates for baptism in the next few weeks. We found out it's been a year since the last baptism in Sydney, so there was a lot of excitement.

     The members of Sydney Branch were very warm and welcoming, and so pleased that President Pratt would send someone from the mission to attend the baptism. The next morning at Sacrament Meeting we met a few more people, one of whom was the mother to a woman in our Sackville Ward.

     Driving home Sunday wasn't as bad as we'd feared. However, we learned that although "the grass is always greener on the other side" is a fallacy, it was true that the other side of the road was always clearer. We didn't think to get a picture for proof. Maybe the snowplow was following us. The roads were all passable and the closer we got to home, the less snow there was. Glad we had pictures or they might have thought we were exaggerating the storm! It was a relief to get back home Sunday night.

One of our friends in Canada posted this on her blog and we thought it was especially appropriate with Margaret's baptism. God loves all of us and everyone is important to Him in ways we can't even begin to comprehend.