Bras Dor Lakes Campground

Kinda just a stopover for us and it generally ticked the boxes, but nothing inspiring. Rows of trailers on grass and gravel. Not really on the lake. There's a walkway leading that direction but not real view. If we didn't want to be a shorter drive into town, we might have checked out the provincial park farther south on the lake.

A nice surprise in town was the Alexander Graham Bell Historic Site. Nice museum with huge models (and some originals) of air and watercraft he designed and tons of info on his life and eventual death near Baddeck. Good kids Xplorer program (think Junior Ranger) including a hill outside for testing out kite designs and a dedicated kids learning/play area downstairs. We enjoyed this stop.

Rate was $59 CAD, which came to $45 USD with Good Sam discount. This was a pretty nice campground, and worked fine as a base for exploring the area. RV sites are close together, all back-ins (back-to-back) along the inside of one narrow loop. The RV parking pads are a narrow strip of raised gravel, which I am guessing is to help with drainage, but it also means you have no flexibility in where to park on the site. There are some young trees interspersed through the RV area, but it definitely has that "Commercial RV Park" feel, i.e. a long row of RVs parked close together with little to break up the view. The rest of the campground is more attractive, with a grassy tent area, a small field, and easy access to the salt water lake. The staff was very helpful in finding us a site for four nights with relatively short notice (a few weeks). The location is pretty central for visiting Cape Breton, but since the island is so large, a lot of driving is still needed to visit most sights. The free WiFi was slow but worked during the day, but was unusable in the evening. AT&T roaming worked very well. The campground is pretty small, and we quickly ran out of places to walk our active dog. Unfortunately, since the campground is right off the highway, we found no other places to walk (i.e. no side roads accessible or nearby). While we found the look/feel of the RV section to be just "average", it seems typical for most Canadian campgrounds we visited, so it may still be one of the best options in the area. Normally we'd have no issues staying here again, but if we were planning a longer stay we'd likely need to find someplace with access to places for longer dog walks.

We had a full service pull-through requiring all the level blocks we had. Very un-leveled towards the lake. Our picnic table was on a mound of crushed stones three feet away from the neighbor's sceptic connection. No possibility of moving it. The other lots with less services seemed better. Definitely not a campground to spend your day at but to visit around and discover that awesome region. Pool area needs refresh and the kids playground is from the 70's.

Two excellent reviews of this campground precede mine; the only reason I'm posting is to say their observations are still current in 2019. However, I found the wifi to be excellent; ditto for ATT. Access to Baddeck and the Cabot Trail was very convenient. Site five, closer to the road, was nicely flanked by trees and although the noise from the main road was apparent during the day - when we were gone mostly anyway - it is quiet at night. Public facilities VERY clean.