Saturday, July 28th
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| 7 mile long confederation bridge |
The next day we headed to Prince Edward Island via the 7
mile long Confederation Bridge. Sitting so
high up in the motorhome afforded us a view of the water and surrounding land
that in a car you would not see due to the concrete walls. After we crossed, we
stopped at the info center, got directions to our campground and picked up a
mountain of brochures. I really want to
see a Ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee) (a musical performance often in pubs or
community hall featuring foot-stomping, Irish dancing and music). Most often fiddles. But it seems that these are held every
day except the ones we are here.
The campground at Vacationland, Brackley Beach, was really
designed for folks with lots of kids ages 8-12 that want to just run around,
ride their bikes and frequent the rec hall.
It also seemed to have predominantly seasonal trailers, due to their
gigantic decks built around them. We
were lucky enough to get a site that was quite lovely on the water away from
most of the noise. Thank God!
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| Lobster Flavored? |
Prince Edward Island we noted is a very clean (as in no litter at all) island that is mostly flat with a few
rolling hills and miles of wheat and potato farms and its related potato chip
factories. Boy, the chips smell great driving
past! There are chips of every
variety, even lobster flavored! (There were not very many natural ingredients
on the label and at $7.00 for about an 8 oz bag, I passed on the gastronomic possibilities).
The main scenic highways do not often have
views of the water but there are side roads that would lead you down to sleepy
little fishing villages. Much like the
North Shore of Massachusetts (Gloucester, Rockport or Pigeon Cove). Beautiful quaint lighthouses and I
particularly loved all the small churches.
I wished I had started a photo journal of all the different architectures
and paint jobs of the churches.
Since Norm and I had not had the time to really plan this
portion of our trip, we spent time (too much) pouring over brochures trying to
find something to do. We did not relish
the idea of driving all day just for the sake of driving and hopefully finding
something interesting.
Norm had really wanted to play a particular golf course,
rated #2 public course in Canada, but it turned out to be an hour and 45
minutes from the campsite, and away from all the tourist spots, so he didn’t
want to go that far out of the way.
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| View driving in one of Charlottetown's parks |
So
we set out for the day - deciding to drive through Charlottetown to get the
“feel“, then heading toward Summerside because I read it was a cute seaside
village with some nice shops. The shops were really fully of tacky items from
China, so we headed further west down the island. We have been gone all this time, and other than two key chain " Christmas ornaments" we have not purchased any souveniers! I guess we were so unimpressed we didn't take any pictures!
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| miles and miles of potatoes! |
Most of the “scenic route” in
this part of the island was unfortunately away from the shore, so there was not
much to look at other than rolling farms which were really quite pretty and
reminded us of Vermont. We spotted a cove
named “Sunbury Cove“ and had to check it out.
We stopped the car and asked a woman dressed in netting what bug she was
protecting herself against. She told us
mosquitoes, ( which are HUGE by the way ) and then proceeded to spend the next half hour giving us a history
lesson on the Acadians, and where to go and what to see. What a lovely woman.
We guessed she was a retired school teacher.
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| House made of 12,000 bottles |
At one point we explored down one side road then another,
and ended up in some person’s backyard. I felt very guilty, but they just
smiled and waved!
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| notice the pews |
We drove further than we planned to, but when we visited “The
Bottle Houses” in Cap-Egmont, we were glad we did! There were two small houses and a chapel
(including pews and altar) comprised of 30,000 re-cycled bottles of
different colors! Many of the bottles
used for the chapel were actual bottles that held devotion candles that many
churches donated. The builder, Edouard Arsenault, started collecting these
bottles in his spare time, then when neighbors heard of what he was doing,
brought their bottles to him, and somehow people all over the world heard about it and sent him more bottles! The late Mr. Arsenault was also
an avid gardener, and we enjoyed his fabulous perennial gardens.
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The most beautiful sunset I have EVER seen
Just got better and better over the next hour!! |
We found a place to have dinner out, which was " ok " at best, but the really wonerful part was
while we were driving home, we saw the most spectacular sunset I had ever
seen! The sky was absolutely
ablaze! In the picture it is beautiful,
but it kept getting better and better over the next hour! I would have liked to have pulled over and
just watched the display, but it was a long way home, and it was already after
9:30PM. Norman is normally really good
at reading a map, but for some reason PEI 's maps just get him turned
around. Both nights he took us many
miles out of our way. Didn’t really matter
– we were in the car, and in fact, wegot to see the best sights while we were
lost!
Monday July 30, 2012
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| Great day, cool breeze, what could be better? |
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| What a view! |
Today we decided to play a very scenic 9 hole golf course
along the ocean before getting on the Ferry at 6PM. This course was at Belfast Highland Greens in
Belfast, PEI. The views were lovely on
many of the holes, with a great view of the red sand and cliffs. It was weird to see red sand bunkers. We arrived
at the ferry terminal early and as we drove up they asked if we wanted to take
the earlier boat; we drove right on and the ferry left the dock just like that!
We stopped at the obligatory info center and proceeded to
our very nice campsite about an hour away in Pictou, Nova Scotia (not big or
fancy, nor really private, but had a “nice feeling “ ). I went out to say “hi “ to the neighbors who
had a campfire and they invited us to join in with some other neighboring
campers. We swapped stories and called
it a night!
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