Well, we didn't wake up to any tropical storm like I thought we may have. Since it was predicted that we were going to have some crazy winds here in the afternoon with some rain, we decided not to venture too far in the morning in case we wanted to come back and spend the afternoon in the camper.

In the morning, we went to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck. For those of you who don't remember who Alexander Graham Bell is, he's the man who invented the telephone. He also had a hand in designing some of the first airplanes, the hydrofoil boats, and other things he tinkered with throughout his lifetime. His brain must have always been on overdrive!

While we were in the museum the winds got pretty strong for a while and eventually it started to rain, and I thought that this must be it - we're in for a storm now! But nope - it rained pretty good for a little bit, then it stopped and the winds let up a little big. And it didn't really rain again. So much for the tropical storm in this area! (Halifax and Yarmouth areas were a different story - there were more than 100,000 people without power by 11:00 am there, and numerous trees that were blown down.)

Since the weather wasn't really all that bad here (other than being overcast and windy), we decided to go for a drive around the Bras d'Or Lake as it was supposed to be pretty scenic. Unfortunately, because it was overcast it wasn't the best day for enjoying the scenery, but there were some good-sized waves on the water that we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Eventually Dad did some checking as to what else would be good to do for the afternoon, and it turned out there was a concert starting at 4:00 in St. Ann's where the Gaelic College is located. It was the last day of Kitchenfest and so they were having a wrap-up concert there, featuring local musicians and the Barra MacNeil's. We all knew the name of the Barra MacNeil's and we've seen them perform on T.V. years ago, and remember them being good (plus, they have a pretty good reputation out here.), so we decided to head there. We weren't going to get there for the start but figured we should stop in to see how late it was expected to go. If there was still quite a bit of it by the time we got there we would stay. Turns out they expected the concert to go til at least 8:00 (and it was about 4:30 when we got there), so we got our tickets and stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. Money well spent! The tickets were only $20 each and it was well worth it. All the music was great, and the Barra MacNeil's were fantastic (if you like the Cape Breton style of music, that is!). Definitely happy we decided to make the stop in there.

One thing that you'll notice out here is that the fiddle songs they play seem to last FOREVER! (We timed one of the sets that a group played - they played for 11 ½ minutes straight!) In Cape Breton, it's the style that they play songs in 'sets' or 'groups' - they will string at least 2 songs (often 3 or 4) together for continuous play. Sometimes they switch to songs in a different key so that the listeners can identify that there are multiple songs being played in the set. Because each set is a few songs strung together, each group that came up to perform would only perform one or two sets, and then a new group would come up. So even though it would seem like they were playing one really, really long song, each group was probably playing three to six songs each at least.

And in terms of the tropical storm Arthur hitting us, well, he never seemed to make an appearance today. I guess I'll have to experience a tropical storm another time since we don't really get those in Manitoba.