July 17, 2008

July 17, 2008

We wake to another day of beautiful weather to finish our drive around the Cabot Trail of Nova Scotia. The east side of Cape Breton Highlands National Park is not as dramatic as the west but the landscape is beautiful nonetheless with a rocky coastline. We make numerous stops to enjoy the view.

With the Cabot Trail complete, we head towards the city of Sydney. Along the way we stop in the town of Sydney Mines to visit the Fossil Center. The Sydney vicinity was once a major coal mining area. Along the shoreline near the coal seams, lots of plant fossils have been found from the Carboniferous Period. I take a quick dash thru the museum to see the artifacts while Aimee reads in the RV.

Continuing east to Glace Bay we stop next at the Marconi National Historic Site. Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian born in 1876, invented a way to use the newly discovered radio waves to transmit Morse code. At the age of 23 he formed a company to exploit the new technology. In 1901 he successfully transmitted the letter “S” between Newfoundland and England. Sued by the monopoly that had recently laid a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean, Canada helped him move his transmitter and antenna to this rocky outcropping on Cape Breton Island. In 1902 he sent the first official message transatlantic wirelessly to Cornwall, England. The site is very small with a short film and a few exhibits but it is manned by an aging Morse Code fanatic who gives us the grand tour. He comes in every day to use the radio to communicate with the rest of the world via Morse Code! He is a dying breed. I shake my head as he laments how the new generation is addicted to the Internet instead of wanting to learn Morse.

From Glace Bay we follow the Marconi trail to Louisbourg where we spend the night at a private RV park.