Who wouldn’t want to visit a place called The Toy Factory? This started as a grandfather’s workshop in 1972 and continues to manufacture wooden toys that they sell as well as toys from other manufacturers. Not much in the way of toys for big kids like us.

While we’re on the subject of wood, our next stop was at the Fine Crafts Gallery of Gaudreau Fine Woodworking and the Susan Christensen Art Gallery (both at 46.40127N, 63.22302W). This gallery features not only wooden creations but also ceramics, quilting and other crafts from local artists.

The upper floor of the building has a woodworking shop and a gallery of Susan Christensen’s paintings and prints. We were lucky that Susan was there today and we had a long and interesting conversation on how she creates her paintings and mixes her paints. She only uses red, blue, yellow and white paint and mixes these colours to create any other colour she needs. Her images range from almost photo-realistic to much more abstract landscapes showcasing the beauty of PEI.

Before even driving onto PEI we saw “GOT SOAP?” billboards for the Great Canadian Soap Company. They make soap with goat’s milk and have an amazing variety of different soaps in pretty much any scent you can imagine. A lot of their soaps are 100% natural and some are 98% natural (some scents being artificial). Other products include shampoos, creams, lotions, etc. While most of the soaps have a scent testing sample, if you want to try the effectiveness of the soap, there is a sink in the back where you can see and feel how they lather and clean.

It was a beautiful sunny day and Brackley Beach was calling. This is a Parks Canada site and as we discovered last year on Vancouver Island, some Parks Canada staff don’t seem to be all that familiar with the permits they sell. Again today, we spent way more time than should be necessary to learn and decide what permit would be best for us. Once we got past the toll booth, the beach more than made up for the aggravation!

The beach is nice and sandy and the water was 20C and the waves were rolling and showed their white caps. We had so much fun swimming in the water!

Hungry, we stopped at the dock in Stanhope for dinner at Richard’s. A long line suggested that the wait, both in line and for food pickup would be worth it. Ruth had a delicious lobster roll while Martin stuck to the fish and chips. Both were really good and the views were beautiful from the upper deck of the restaurant.

After dinner we walked along the wharf and took in some of the sights.

The Parks Canada campground was full so we drove on to Charlottetown which we plan to explore tomorrow. Everything on the island is relatively close.