Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

Cape Breton glows with fall foliage colors, and its traditional music fires up the countryside in any season, so when the two events happen together, it's unbeatable. We took in five concerts and a square dance and covered many kilometers between events during the Celtic Colours festival week. This is an island accessible by road, over a causeway, but maintaining its own identity and rich cultural history. The Highland Village with its costumed guides provides a walk through the island's history, with buildings dating from 1790 to 1920, and the guides are personable and ready to be cheeky if you are!

We took advantage of a performance for a radio broadcast at the Gaelic College, where kilts and clan histories were on display around the concert hall. The fiddle, keyboard, guitar, and stepdance talent here is awesome, and it's fostered in kitchen and livingroom gatherings that are a part of the island life.

Hiking trails wind along steep seaside hillsides and follow old roads that used to connect homesteads of 19th century Scottish settlers. Forested hills, a large inland sea, and villages with MicMac, Scottish, and Acadian names provide a timeless frontier atmosphere. An incredibly earlier history gradually returns to the sea in the form of 300 million year old tropical plant fossils in the sandstone cliffs along the shore. (I felt compelled to save some of them!) The winding and climbing Cabot Trail through the Cape Breton Highlands national park lured us to one scenic overlook after another. The Alexander Graham Bell Museum, full of Bell's inventions and photographs of adventures and family, was a fascinating place to spend a rainy afternoon.

We stayed in a small hotel furnished with 1940's and 50's furnishings, then two different cottages, one with a meadow view and one with an ocean view, all enjoyable. I encourage travelers to explore this distant neighbor.