Annapolis Royal, Thursday, 8-Jun-2023
For our last full day in Annapolis Royal, we drove over to Cape Split Provincial Park to hike out to Cape Split. While the other hikes we've done on this trip have been short, this one was what would be a normal full-day hike for us.
Wanting to get an early start getting to Cape Split Provincial Park, we did as much as we could before the breakfast room opened at 8am. We got everything done, so once we returned to the room all we needed to do was put things into the car and head out.
Other than a 45-mile stretch on the freeway, our route included a lot of turns; the trip was about 1:45. We got on the trail at about 10:15am.
We treated the trail as a lollipop, taking the south (Scots Bay) trail on the way out and the north trail (Minas Basin) on the way back. While going out, we took the spur to the Lobster Hole Lookoff and got our first peek at New Brunswick, our destination for tomorrow.
Going past the Big Cove Lookoff #1, we followed the trail up the hill and inland, then back out to Big Cove Lookoff #2, where we had lunch.
Back to the Scots Bay Trail, we went the rest of the way to Cape Split. The photos you see are shot from drones looking back towards the cape, but even from land, you still get a great view. You also see a lot of great black-backed gulls. It wasn't until I looked at the photos later that I realized there were chicks, too.
It struck us that there wasn't a lot of wind, even though we were fully exposed on three sides to the water. The cliffs are quite steep, so we double-checked the ground before stepping closer to the edge.
After looking at the cape from several angles, we went back, this time on the Minas Basin Trail. While we only got a peek-a-view look at the water from the Fundy Shore Lookoff, we got a great view of New Brunswick from the Mines Basin Lookoff.
It was about this point on the trail that I realized we had heard songbirds on the way out to the cape, but we weren't hearing them on the way back. It wasn't until we started losing altitude that we heard them again.
When we got close to the trailhead, we were still seeing people just starting out. The signs say that the Scots Bay Trail to the cape is about 2:15, while the Minas Basin Trail is about 2 hours. Fortunately, we're pretty far north and close to the summer solstice, so sunset is pretty late.
We drove back to Annapolis Royal and had dinner downtown, then returned to the room. We finalized some plans for the next few days, which included how many meals we needed to buy food for the next day. You could say that kind of planning is how we relax.
