The ASK GPS Tours Blog

We are both pleased and excited to announce today the appointment of Shelly Pollard as our Social Media Expert. Shelly comes to our firm with a plethora of knowledge on all avenues available via the social media network. Shelly’s primary role is to develop and create the buzz that we already know about our product and services. She will immediately begin to champion all social media opportunities: Facebook, Twitter, our Blog, etc. We are confident in Shelly’s ability to enrich our Social Media with interesting facts and content all related to our ASK GPS TourGuide and mainly our beautiful Cape Breton! Go Get’em Shelly!

Our ASK GPS TourGuide takes you around the Cabot Trail and shows you around. We found this great article by Nancy Parode that describes more in perspective what the drive is like and what to expect!

Click Here to read the article and enjoy!

The husband-and-wife team of Arnaly Arriaga (left) and Ken Shasky are preparing to launch their first two editions of Ask GPS Tours.

WALKERVILLE, RICHMOND COUNTY- Visitors to Cape Breton are about to get a whole new perspective on the island’s communities, attractions, music, history and culture.
ASK GPS Tours is preparing to launch the first two editions of a multi-language motorists’ companion that plugs into any car stereo and guides drivers to dozens of Cape Breton’s most notable sights. The Ceilidh Trail and the Cabot Trail are the subjects of the first two tour guides, which feature voice-overs in English, French and German layered over a wide range of music from artists located across Cape Breton and northeastern Nova Scotia.
The brainchild of husband-and-wife duo Ken Shasky and Arnaly Arriaga, who make their home in the Richmond County community of Walkerville, the concept of a GPS-driven tour of Cape Breton arose when Shasky entered the couple’s home recording studio and found Arriaga working on a Spanish voice-over for a guided tour of Miami Beach.
“It was very interesting, but I was thinking to myself, ‘There’s nothing like that here – why can’t we do something like that here?’ And that’s when we started researching it,” Shasky recalls.
Inspired, the couple contacted retired educator and local bed-and-breakfast proprietor Sandy MacKenzie, who applied his extensive knowledge of Cape Breton’s history and culture to the script for the ASK GPS tour guides.
“It is amazing how he knows this place, and it’s crazy, the knowledge he has of the island, so we kind of took advantage of that,” says Arriaga.
“He knows intrinsic things – he’s the type that would take you anywhere around the island, and not on the main road, on the back roads. Through him, we got to know so many things that we didn’t know.”
With a script taking visitors to 167 individual stops on the Cabot Trail and another 58 on the Ceilidh Trail, ASK GPS Tours enlisted Texas radio personality Bonnie Currie for the English voice-overs, while Ottawa-based Radio-Canada host Jean Bruyere provided French translation and the German script landed in the hands of Michaela Amler, whose eclectic resumé includes the translation of Milhouse Van Houten’s lines on the German edition of The Simpsons.
“We were looking for people who would be able to talk for five hours or more without sounding monotonous,” Arriaga smiles.
A generous sampling of Cape Breton and Celtic music is included in each translation of the tours, with veteran Richmond County troubadour Cyril MacPhee acting as the production’s musical director.
“It’s kind of boring if [visitors] just hear a voice,” Arriaga points out. “This place is so musical, we wanted to make it more like a radio station that tells you about the place while playing the beautiful local music.”
With the Cabot Trail and Ceilidh Trail tour guides soon to be available in six locations across Cape Breton, ASK GPS Tours is already developing follow-up guides for the Fleur de Lis Trail, the Bras d’Or Lakes Scenic Drive, and the Marconi Trail. Shasky is hoping these ventures will help lure and retain visitors to various parts of Cape Breton.
“People think that, when they come here, they’re going to drive around the Cabot Trail in a day,” Shasky notes. “So we’re hoping that this will keep people and make them stay longer.”
For more information on ASK GPS Tours and a sample of the Cabot Trail tour, visit the company’s Web site: www.askgpstours.com.

We finally gave the final touches to the points on the tour pictured on Google Earth. For reasons of space, all of the points are not visible. Click on the picture to see it more in detail.

Our tour starts in Port Hastings and goes via the Ceilidh Trail or the Trans-Canada to the Cabot Trail and around. You will also visit the Margaree Valley, Bay St-Lawrence, along with the towns around the Trail. We also marked all the trails and lookouts on the Cape Breton Highlands National Park and added some great music from great local artists like Natalie MacMaster, J.P.Cormier, Buddy MacDonald and many others along the way. The tour takes several days to explore it thoroughly and you will find beaches, golf, hiking, music, sightseeing, whale watching, puffin and wildlife watching and many other interesting things to do. Let us know what you think!

Company offering GPS tours of Cape Breton
BY NANCY KING nking@cbpost.com
Cape Breton Post
03 May 2010

PORT HAWKESBURY — A new company is hoping that visitors to Cape Breton will want to take guided tours of some of the island’s most scenic routes in the comfort of their own vehicles.

On June 1, Port Hawkesbury-based ASK GPS Tours will launch its new service renting portable GPS units that offer guided audio tours of the Cabot and Ceilidh trails. They will offer information about the culture and heritage of the area, as well as highlighting local landmarks.

Ken Shasky and his wife Arnaly Arriaga, who moved to Cape Breton a few years ago, were doing voice-over work for a similar tour in Miami when Shasky thought it might be a good fit for Cape Breton.

“ Where we live, I’m always having to field people, they come and ask me, ‘ Where do I go see a moose, and where do I go see this, and where do I do to a ceilidh and what is a ceilidh,’ and so the idea came,” he said.

Shasky said he had to find someone originally from Cape Breton with a good knowledge of the island, which is where retired educator and bed and breakfast operator Sandy MacKenzie came in. They formed the company late last year and co-wrote the two tours that will be initially available.

“A lot of people don’t know where they’re going, whether it’s a campsite up on Cheticamp Island or you want to go on the Skyline Trail or you want to understand a little more about the Scottish heritage, it’s all in this tour,” Shasky said. “They’ll be able to get a real sense of the heritage.”

Richmond County musician Cyril MacPhee has come on-board as musical director, with some music included in the audio for the excursions, and they plan to develop a CD for each tour available for sale as well. The audio is available in English, French and German.

A number of businesses around the island have come on-board as locations where the GPS units can be picked up and dropped off. Bookings can be made online.

Shasky said they’ve gotten a positive reaction from people in the tourism sector.

They are also developing tours for the Bras d’Or Lake Scenic Drive and the Fleur de Lis Trail, and are working with Celtic Colours International Festival on another tour.

A demo is available on the company’s website, www.askgpstours.com.

read more…

Sandy is one important part of ASK GPS Tours. He posted the paragraph below as a comment to our first post and we thought his writing merited more than a mere placing as a comment on our blog. Please read on:

“Living on one of the most beautiful islands in the world provides us with many subjects to talk about. However, one of the features which makes this such a wonderful place to visit is the nature of the people. While visiting Cape Breton you will find there are entertaining activities of one type or another throughout the year. Attendance at these functions always results in interesting conversation with the local people. The topics can vary from volcanoes to wildlife but you will find the people to be receptive and inviting. Have you ever attended a “Ceilidh”. It isn’t long before you start to feel the music and see the “dancing feet”. If you let it be known you can play an instrument the invitation to join in is common. Want to know the name of one of the dancers or the fiddlers simply turn to your left or right and request the information. If they don’t know they will find out for you. The accommodating and inviting nature of the people who live on this lovely island add so much to the experience of visiting Cape Breton. From Arichat to Cape North you will be impressed with the manner and nature of the people who call Cape Breton their home.”

For those who don’t know Sandy, he is the person in charge of writing our Cabot and Ceilidh Trail tours. He will keep us posted on more information about what to do on this beautiful island of Cape Breton.

Cheers!