Cape Breton - Sydney

Yesterday, Sunday, we went into Sydney. Sydney is the third largest city in Nova Scotia. Until 2000 it was a booming coal mining and steel manufacturing town. Then the industry tanked, and it was "good bye to all of that " (quote from the museum in the visitor's center). Since that economic disaster, they've tried to reinvent themselves as a tourist destination and high tech center.
This is the bridge over a narrow channel of the Bras d'Or lake. I don't think it's really a lake since it has outlets to the ocean, but that's what it's called.

The lake. It's huge.


A church on the way to Sydney.


The giant fiddle of Sydney. Australia has their opera house, they have an 8 ton steel fiddle. The fiddle is important to the local culture because so many of them came from Scotland in the late 1700s. Back when the English Crown was giving land in Scotland to favored nobles, who in turn ran the residents off the land where they had eked out an existence for generations, there was a mass migration to this area. Entire villages would move en masse to Cape Breton, bringing their language and music with them. The oral tradition of story telling, music and dance remained intact into the 1950's. Television did it in, with people choosing to huddle around the TV.


The KOA on Cape Breton. Quite the location, eh?


One thing Jim and I really enjoy is scoping out the local cuisine, things that you just can't find at home. Like this.


St. Joseph's in Sydney.


The mobile Chowder bus.

Today the laundry room has reopened and we are washing. The park spent yesterday fixing a large water pipe break. Tomorrow we're up early and off to Moncton New Brunswick. We'll be there for 3 nights. We'll be going to the Bay of Fundy to see the monster tides go in and out. Then it will be back into the States for us. We have secured lodging for Labor Day weekend in Memphis TN, which has relieved my stress about having to boondock in a Walmart parking lot. Holiday weekends can be difficult.