Not too much to report today as it was mostly a day of driving. We finally left Prince Edward Island, but not before stopping at the Information Centre in Borden-Carlton where Kevin had given us so much information of possible things to see and do when we arrived on this Island. Unfortunately, Kevin wasn’t working today, so we left a note of thanks with one of his kind colleagues. We returned to the mainland via the Confederation Bridge.
Gas in New Brunswick is substantially cheaper than on Prince Edward Island and even more so at Costco where both the tank and our fridge was filled.
Hillsborough has a railway museum and we’ll visit that tomorrow after spending the night nearby, well protected by an old fighter jet.
Martin’s watch band was disintegrating and he needed some crazy glue to fix it. A Pro Hardware store in Murray Harbour had just the right stuff.
With that problem solved we were off to Cape Bear lighthouse and former Marconi wireless radio station. One of its claims to fame is that it was the first station in Canada to receive the distress call from the Titanic at 12:15AM on April 15th, 1912 which it passed onto Charlottetown and from there to Halifax. (Newfoundland wasn’t part of Canada in 1912, having not joined Canada until 1949).
The weather looked a little bit like rain or thunderstorm so it was time to move.
Northumberland Provincial Park has a campground and day-use beach area and we walked along the beach deciding whether to stay in the campground, take the ferry to Nova Scotia or stay for another night in Charlottetown. A thunderstorm did move in and the life guards closed the swimming area and hid out in their little cabin.
Charlottetown won out and we enjoyed another pretzel, beer and pickle at the Pretzel, Pint and Pickle bar where Rachel warmly welcomed us back.
We couldn’t wait to have scones and coffee/tea for breakfast at the Willow Bakery and Café again. This bakery is run out of what was previously a United Church and is also where the Ceilidh was last night.
It was now time to start finishing the east side of Prince Edward Island and we stopped in St. Peters Bay where we visited several craft shops and bought some chocolate. Ruth ventured behind the shops to capture the beauty of the St. Peters River.
Prince Edward Island had a train network for a number of years and one of the end stations was in Elmira where there is now a train museum with information about the construction and history of operations of this network. The tracks were originally narrow 42 inch gauge whereas the rest of Canada used a standard gauge of 56.5 inches. The railway construction costs nearly bankrupted Prince Edward Island and an offer from Canada to settle these debts was the reason the island became a Canadian province in 1873. Trains were ferried over from the mainland in ferry ships. The last train on Prince Edward Island ran in 1989.
The museum offers a 15 minute “train” ride through the forest for children and their families. We’re big kids, so why not?
At East Point we visited the lighthouse and were greeted by a fox, scratching and sunning himself despite all the tourists snapping pictures of him.
Now tired of lighthouses and craft shops, we drove to Panmure Island Provincial Park where we will be camping tonight after going for a splendid swim.
Today was a beautiful sunny day and we started our morning with a swim at the Bell Aliant Centre aquatics pool. This facility features a 25m eight lane recreation and competitive pool, a leisure pool with water slide, a toddler pool and a hot tub.
The Skmaqn–Port-la-Joye–Fort Amherst National Historic Site was the site of the first permanent European settlement on Île Saint-Jean (now Prince Edward Island). The interpretive centre talked about the history of this land going back to the Mi’kmaq people who inhabited it for 15,000 years prior the arrival of the first European people. The Mi’kmaq and Acadians worked well together but their defeat by the British led to conflict and deportation of the Acadians, many of whom died. The site was also was the homestead of Michael Haché Dit (also known as) Gallant and Anne Cormier who many Acadians today can trace their lineage to.
We made a brief stop at the Argyle Shore Provincial Park where a number of people were swimming in the red water from the red coloured sand.
Victoria is a small artist town with pottery, weaving, candle and chocolate making shops. There is also a Richard’s Seafood location here and we indulged in a Lobster Roll and Fish and Chips on the patio outside.
The race was on to get back to Stanley Bridge for the Proud Islander’s Ceilidh, this time featuring Louise Arsenault and her son Jonny Ray whom we had previously seen in the Abram-Village show. Again it was a lively and spectacular performance!
It was a dark and rainy day…. We spent most of the day relaxing, cooking and catching up on our blog today. Late in the afternoon, the weather cleared up enough to go for a longer walk through the city seeing the diversity from modern business to small older houses. A downtown mall wasn’t doing so well and lots of the space was available for lease.
We came across PEI Photo Lab, a store selling mostly film cameras and film and offering film processing and printing. They do it all manually and are so busy that they have a 6-8 week waiting time for processing. We were told that it is largely the 18-25 and 55+ year olds that are getting back into film.
In the evening we walked along the waterfront again and watched the sun go down.
One of the advantages of travelling in a more unstructured way is that you can exchange tips with fellow travellers. We met a couple from Quebec and through broken French gave them some suggestions on what to see based on our experiences.
It was a grey and cool day today, great for doing a walking tour of Charlottetown. We found a van friendly parking spot near Founder’s Food Hall and Market and proceeded to explore the market. Two Beggars, a pet accessories shop, had a window to the outside and a bell where dogs could ring to get a treat. There was lots of dog activity!
A quick stop at the information centre gave us a map with various walking tours and made us aware of the Mayor’s opening BBQ outside. Free hotdogs, chips and drinks – why resist?
We started on the Waterfront Walk which took us by various shops, some with funny slogans, the yacht club, and then onto streets with beautiful historic houses.
The highlight of the day was The Cook’s Edge, a shop with a seemingly excessive number of mostly Japanese fine cooking knives with prices ranging from below $100 to over $3600 for a single knife. Marcel and his colleague Chase spent close to two hours enthusiastically showing us exquisitely made knives and teaching us about the blade geometries, sharpening techniques, types of steel and use of each of these tools and pieces of art. In the end, impulse buying got the better of us, and we left the store with a finely detailed knife capable of cutting potatoes tissue paper thin, and a fine ceramic honing rod to keep our new investment touched up. No electric sharpener for this one, Martin is going to need to use the water stones from the workshop that also keep chisels sharp.
Feeling slightly guilty, we stopped at St. Dunstan’s Basilica where a soloist and an organist were rehearsing. We spent quite a while listening to the singing and music while admiring this magnificent beautiful church.
Dinner was a pretzel, pint of beer and a pickle at the aptly named Pretzel, Pint and Pickle bar followed by a short walk back to our van.
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.
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.
In 1980 at the age of 66, Edouard T. Arsenault, a fisherman by trade, started collecting bottles from his local community that would otherwise have gone into land fill and started building his Bottle houses in Cap-Egmont (46.40168N, 64.10182W). Today, over 25,000 bottles of various shapes and sizes make up three buildings and the adjoining gardens complement this fantasy world.
In Miscouche, we visited the Acadian Museum (46.43235N, 63.86544N) and learned of the history, struggles and triumphs of the Acadian people from their arrival in what is now Nova Scotia to their deportation by the British in 1755, their movement to PEI and efforts to preserve their language and culture. Several well-known Acadian musicians such as Angele Arsenault were featured.
Our next stop was at Malpeque Fine Iron Products (46.42907N, 63.71171W), the maker of Bug Away, a small stove that produces smoke from burning (smouldering) things like egg cartons. They also produce a variety of ornamental iron work, some of it adorable.
Our home for tonight is Cavendish, which seems more like a tourist town with water park, and various attractions for kids and adults. We did have a beef brisket grilled cheese sandwich at the Moo Moo BBQ Grilled Cheesery which was really good.
The Sunset Campground has 450 sites, many of which are seasonal campers. The internet was good and we used the opportunity to apply all the software updates that were pending.
The lovely red sandy beach and water were still there in the morning, so before showering we had to take a dip. The tide was higher this morning making swimming even more enjoyable.
We always have the goal of driving to where the road ends and today the end of the road was the North Cape. There’s a lighthouse to be found here along with a wind farm and interpretive centre.
To ensure we did go as far as we possibly could, we walked to the end of the spit hoping that the tide wouldn’t rise fast enough to cut us off from the main island.
The jellyfish, on the other hand, was waiting for high tide to get off the rocks.
About a third of Canada’s potato production is from Prince Edward Island, so it seems fitting to have the Canadian Potato Museum (46.70335N, 64.23479W) on the island. Here you will learn about the history of the potato, how it made its journey from the Andes to Europe via the Spanish and British, different diseases potatoes can get, the different varieties that exist, how it is harvested, processed and used.
Initially viewed in Europe as animal feed and food for the poor, it has an extraordinary nutritional value, high in vitamins B and C, iron, calcium, magnesium, sulphur, potassium and trace elements. An average potato packs all of this into only 80 to 100 calories.
The cafe at the museum offers a variety of potato dishes and although we had dinner booked already, we indulged in a baked potato each.
As for the aforementioned dinner, this was at the Village Musical Acadien (46.45392N, 64.07681W) in Abram-Village. What can we say – this is not something you want to miss! We learned of this dinner-show from Karl at the Proud Islander’s show in Stanley Bridge a couple of nights ago and immediately booked tickets online. His wife, Louise Arsenault, plays fiddle and a variety of other instruments together with a band and this evening they were playing at the Village Musical Acadian. The show is entitled Hommage and takes you on a musical journey through Acadia and even into Louisiana. All five musicians were exceptional, playing different instruments throughout the show and even performing in two short skits on Acadian culture.
Dinner consisted of either seafood casserole or Acadian variety, complete with mussels, green salad, bun and dessert. Our table of six had two sets of sisters and we had a wonderful conversation about Prince Edward Island and travel in general.
