A Night in Jersey Cove, Cape Breton

Jersey Cove is a beautiful community on Cape Breton Island.  It's close to everything, it has mountains, hills, ocean, forest, hiking trails and scenic look-offs.  However, I never really spent much time there until recently.  Sure, as a child, I visited the Giant MacAskill Museum on the Englishtown side of the ferry and beachcombed along the beach near the ferry docks but on most of my visits to this pretty little community, I was just passing through to get somewhere else.  Most of my visits consisted of waiting for the car ferry to pick me up and take me across the little channel to the highway on the other side that would take me to Ingonish or around the Cabot Trail. 

I had the chance to spend a little bit of time in Englishtown this summer.  Well, it was Jersey Cove on the other side of the channel to be exact. I got on the ferry and instead of driving through  to go somewhere else, I stopped at the Joyful Journeys campground and spent an evening with a friend who recently parked her camper trailer there for the summer. 

I'd been to that campground a few times in the past to visit friends of friends on the way home from Ingonish. I admit, it didn't do much for me but to be fair, whenever I stopped there, it was dark and the visit only lasted 20 minutes at most. I didn't seem like my kind of place.  It looked small, there was no sandy beach and the trailers looked they were too close together for my liking.  I'm used to camping at Broad Cove in Ingonish where there are lots of trees, a long sandy beach and plenty of space for privacy between lots. 

The visit I enjoyed this past July was different from the past ones.  It was daytime and I had more time to explore and actually enjoy it. 

A trip to a nearby beach that I never new existed was one of the highlights of the trip!  I love finding new beaches and this was a nice one, too! A walk along the shore, a drive around the area (there's a hiking trail I never knew about  so, of course, I made a mental note to check it out next time!), watching some adorable humming birds in the bird feeders, watching eagles soar above the water, stargazing on a picnic table by the shore and relaxing around a campfire before turning in for the night were some of the other highlights.  

 Now that I know there's more to Jersey Cove than I thought, I'll stop there more often and enjoy its natural wonders!