Touring Prince Edward Island

Friday, September 14, 2007

Yesterday we left PEI over the bridge and drove into Nova Scotia. We traveled along the southern shore of Fundy Bay and stopped overnight in Pictou. Then onto what they call the Gloosecap Trail, which follows the northern edge of Nova Scotia along Minas Basin and the Bay of Fundy. The route then becomes the Evangeline Trail. We took a side road to see the Walton Lighthouse and another side road to see Scots Bay Look off (they call them look offs rather than look outs). Here's the view from the look off. You can see the Bay of Fundy at almost high tide. On the way out of Nova Scotia, I plan to stop at a place called Five Islands where you can see the tides converge. That will be interesting.
After a long day of driving on very bumpy roads, we are exhausted and have stopped at a pretty nice campground.

The roads in all three provinces are really in bad shape. The major roads are OK, but the side sightseeing routes are full of patches, dips, and potholes. It’s sometimes difficult to even stay on the road and it’s quite dangerous driving, especially when you pass a large truck or a large camper (and there are plenty of those).

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

We drove part way up the northern coast of PEI this morning after cleaning up after a very wet and windy night. If you follow the coastal highway signs, you will see all the shoreline of the entire island. The North Cape Coastal Drive is about 300 km, the central Blue Heron Coastal Drive is about 200 km, and the easternmost loop, called Points East Coastal Drive, is about 412 km (that’s where we ran out of gas). Even though it’s not a very big island, you can sure put on the miles when you’re sightseeing. I figure I’ve put on at least 1,000 miles just on PEI while driving around the loops and doing some backtracking. So far I’ve driven almost 4,000 miles since leaving home on August 20th.

We stopped for lunch today at the West Point lighthouse. The sign said the only Canadian lighthouse with an Inn in the lighthouse. It also had a restaurant, which served up a delicious bowl of seafood chowder, including a warm biscuit with butter! The wind was blowing like crazy and they said the fishermen were coming back in because the water was too choppy. Here are a couple of pictures of the lighthouse and the angry ocean. Roxie was even afraid to go too close but she was very excited about all the stuff to smell on the beach.

After all that excitement, we decided to stay inland at Mill River Provincial Park. It’s next to the river and a lovely golf course. I’ve never seen such huge campsites and we have it almost all to ourselves. Here’s the view from the window.

The park employees are winding down for the season. They get to ride golf carts around, and right now they’re cleaning the picnic tables before storing them for the winter I suppose. Everywhere I go I’m hitting the end of the season and they’re starting to close up. I hope Nova Scotia has some parks open next week and the week after. I’d better do some research on that.

The only future reservation I have is at a resort at the northern most tip of Cape Breton. I am really looking forward to a few nights in a luxury setting with a gourmet restaurant right there. After that, there’s nowhere further north or east to go, so I’ll have to settle for returning to the mainland (New Brunswick and Maine), which is not such a bad thing after all…

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Today started rainy and got worse as the day went on. I stopped at an internet café briefly but I couldn’t connect my laptop so I had no way to upload my pictures. Now I’ll put them on my memory stick so if I find another internet café I might be able to upload to the blogger site.

We spent the day driving along the southern part of the Points East Coastal Drive, stopping at lighthouses. Most of these are working lighthouses. The first is the Cape Bear lighthouse, which is way out on Cape Bear off a dirt road. It was built in 1881 and moved back from eroding cliffs in 1947.

The second is the Wood Islands lighthouse, which is situated in a small park on the Northumberland Strait. From the lighthouse you can see the Wood Islands ferry, which goes to Nova Scotia several times a day. It costs $80 for a vehicle between 30 and 40 feet. The Confederation Bridge costs $40 plus $6.75 for each extra axel, but you only pay when you leave. It’s free to come into PEI on the bridge, buts it costs to leave.

The next lighthouse was on Point Prim. It’s one of the few brick lighthouses in Canada; it’s now covered with wooden shingles and painted white.

Then we decided to head to the North Cape area so we can follow the North Cape Coastal Drive tomorrow. It promises to be a mixed day with both sun and rain. We found a campground that claimed to have internet but when I asked about it, the woman pointed to the phone outside (in the rain). They also claimed to have cable TV, which sort of worked. After spending about an hour trying different cables, I finally got a fuzzy picture of a few channels, but with the wind and pouring rain outside, we were quite pleased to have it.



Monday, September 10, 2007

We ran out of gas at East Point, PEI this morning. I took the northern route across King’s County PEI and even passed an Irving station on the way. But I thought, there are lots of little towns between here and the end of the island so I’ll stop for gas somewhere on the way. And there were lots of little towns, but none of them had gas. They just had a sign saying the name of their town but no town to speak of. Some were just a scattering of houses. And suddenly there would be a large church in the middle of nowhere, but no town center. I pressed the pedal to the metal hoping there would be gas somewhere along the way, planning my long walk to the nearest ‘town’ and wondering whether it would be better to backtrack or go forward, for who knew what lay ahead? I coasted into East Point, the real eastern point of PEI. It had a lighthouse and a gift shop, but sadly, no gas. I was surely running on fumes as my gas meter reading said ---- miles left and the gauge was well below empty. Here’s a picture of the East Point lighthouse.

I talked with the woman (Nancy) who managed the lighthouse and she called a friend who would be happy to bring a few liters of gas for 20 bucks. While we waited for her friend to arrive, we chatted about the island and how she got there. She was originally from Chicago and then moved to Toronto where she owned a high-tech marketing company, and finally moved to PEI. She said she knew she had to live there from the moment she set foot on the island. It does affect you that way, with its beauty and quiet. Her friend was a slight Frenchman who used to be a race car driver. He arrived in his rusty old Volvo station wagon with a huge dog in the back. He poured a couple of liters of gas into my tank and then jovially agreed to follow me to Wilson’s (a gas station) which he said was about 6 km away. At the gas station, he told me to always keep a full tank of gas on the island because you never know where you might find a gas station on the far extremes of the island, and I will take his advice seriously.

I had planned to go south to Brudenell Beach but Nancy pointed out that Red Point Provincial Park had a beautiful beach. So here I am, camped right on the beach. Nothing between Tabette and the ocean, except for a cliff of red earth and 33 stair steps to the beach below. We spent a wonderful afternoon walking on the beach and sitting above the beach looking for seals and whales with my binoculars. There is almost no one else here, and they close the park for the season in just a few days. We feel very fortunate to have almost run out of gas, so that we met the lady in the lighthouse who told us about this wonderful campground on the ocean.

This is the first time Roxie has been able to walk on the beach. After a few times trying to bite the waves, she gave it up and just ran into them for the pleasure of it. She thought there were lots of new and interesting smells on the beach too.














Before leaving "Anne's Land" I wanted to show you a couple of pictures of the landscape here. The farms go right to the edge of the ocean. Here's a picture from a viewpoint looking north.

And no, they're not huge white worms, but just those same rolled haybails wrapped in white plastic. Apparently they have a machine that wraps the rolled bails and it looks like they leave them in the fields for the winter. Come to think of it I haven't seen a whole lot of hay barns on the island.

Cardigan PEI

Hi All,
I just stopped at an internet cafe for the first time but unfortunately I can't upload pictures. It's a rainy day so I'm traveling south along the shore of King's County.The island is divided into three counties: you guessed it - Prince, Queen, and King counties.
They predict sunny days tomorrow and Thursday so I hope to get set up somewhere on the shore so I can enjoy the sun.
Hope you are all well and thanks for all your comments. It's really fun to read them and helps me not feel so far from home.

Anne's Land on Prince Edward Island

We’re staying at a nice large campground called ‘Vacationland Campground.’ Here’s the view from inside my screen room looking toward the Brackley River.

Here's another shot of Roxie enjoying herself at the camp site.

On Saturday we took a walk along the boardwalk outside Cavendish. It was a beautiful day with just a light breeze. These people have it made here on this island.

We toured ‘Anne’s Land’ farm and drove along the coastal highway to Malpeque. I wanted to see Cabot Beach but didn’t find the turn off. Hopefully I’ll see that on the last leg of the tour (North Cape Coastal Drive). We toured the house that Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote about in her stories "Anne of Green Gables."

We went out for a drive on Sunday. It was another beautiful drive first to Brackley Beach and then to Dalvay and Stanhope beaches in PEI National Park. The beaches are unspoiled and it’s like stepping back into time. The Stanhope Beach parking lot might hold 15 or 20 cars. There was a very plain changing house; one side for men and one for women. Look at the sign showing a woman’s silhouette with a clothes hanger. There was also a separate bathhouse and a two-seater outhouse. Very quaint.

At an access point near Stanhope Beach, I talked briefly with a woman who was dragging her wind sail up from the beach. She said she learned to wind sail when she spent a year in a camper van on the west coast. She’s an elementary art teacher and her husband just retired. She said all their friends were retiring but she had a few more years to work, being younger than her husband. She said she lived for a few months in Colorado and New Mexico and she loved those states; the only places where she didn’t yearn for the smell of the sea air. She also said she lived for a few years in Ontario for love; that is where her husband is from. She says she has an old farmhouse on PEI and comes for the weekends. She lives and works in Halifax NS. It was very interesting to see her having such fun wind surfing in what she called a very ‘friendly’ ocean.

We drove up Route 6 and then to Route 2, which took us along the coast on East Coastal Drive. Everywhere I looked was beautiful and picturesque. The entire province that I’ve seen so far has been pastoral, neat, uncluttered, green, and very well cared for.

We decided tomorrow that we would head for the campground at Brudenell River Provincial Park. Then spend the day touring the northern loop and the next day touring the southern loop. After that we’ll explore the North Cape and then on to Nova Scotia. It should be around Friday or Saturday by that time.

Touring New Brunswick Canada

Hi All,
We left St. Andrews on Tuesday. It looked like another beautiful day was going to happen in St. Andrews. I decided I might try to spend more time there on the way back.

I drove through St. John, which looked like a very nice city and it had a huge cruise ship in the harbor. So far, I have not run into alot of traffic in New Brunswick. I have run into lots of people who are curious about my T@B - what's inside, how is it to tow, how cute it is, etc. Lots of folks with huge travel trailers appear to be considering downsizing - they might have what we call 'trailer envy.'


On to Fundy National Park. Although it is very nice, it is heavily wooded and I'm looking for beaches and sunshine. So I spent one chilly night there and then moved on up the coast. Here's a picture of the coastline just outside a prettly little town called Alma, right on the coast but still inside Fundy National Park.
I sidetracked to a place where people like to rock climb - a place called Cape Enrage. It sounded intriguing so I took the 20 mile detour to see it. Well, I was the only one there! I guess all the rock climbers went back to school? Here's a picture of the lighthouse up at the top of Cape Enrage, which was up a very steep and twisty road.


Then it was on to Hopewell Cape with the famous flowerpot rocks. It's 99 steps down to see them and 99 steps back up to the top. Whew! They had a very nice visitor center. Here's a shot of the rocks from above and then from the ocean floor. The big deal is that you can walk on the ocean floor at low tide and then when the tide comes in, the top of the rocks look like small islands which people like to kayak around.


















We drove up the western coast of New Brunswick to Kouchibouguac National Park. Again it was a beautiful wooded park with lots of marshland to explore. It would be a wonderful place to visit in the summer because there were lots of bike trails and opportunities to kayak. But I was there three days after they closed up the bike and kayak rental places as well as the restaurants. There were a few birds sitting in the river, looking for a free dinner.
Roxie has been a good girl on this trip, although she's had a few 'oh no' moments. One was just yesterday when I left her in the camper and forgot that I had two sandwich rolls within her reach. She made short work of them, and there went my dinner. She's actually been quite patient but was acting up a little after having several days of freedom at my cousin's place where she had several people taking her for walks through the woods several times a day. Unfortunately, Canada does not allow dogs on the beach so we got as close as we could this morning at Kelly Beach in Kouchibouguac National Park.

On the way out of the park, we saw not one but three bear cubs cross the road. First one trotted across and stopped quickly to look at me. I waited to see if the mother would cross and a second cub crossed, looked at me, and ran off into the woods. Then again a few seconds later, the third did the same. How cute. No sight of the mother. I tried to get a picture but was not very successful. Here's the only shot I could get - look closely at the lower left corner and you'll see the back end of the third bear cub!

Route map - Hancock Maine to St. Andrews NB

Here's the route we'll take throughout the Canadian provinces. Not sure yet which way we'll go first. We're going to decide as we go so we can move on if we don't like a place or if the weather turns bad. We checked into the ferry from Yarmouth NS to Bar Harbor Maine and it would cost $450. Needless to say I'll have to revise my plans even though it means I'll have to do some backtracking to get back to Maine.

Tabette goes island hopping

Hi All,
Today (Labor Day) we're in St. Andrews, New Brunswick. We traveled yesterday from Hancock Maine to St. Andrews via Campobello Island and Deer Island. We took two ferries to get from Maine to New Brunswick. Here's the view of sunrise from my window this morning. I'm camped oceanside in St. Andrews.










While on Campobello island, we toured Roosevelt's summer 'cottage.' Very beautiful grounds. The cottage had several guest rooms and at least three servant's rooms. It was quite simply and tastefully decorated. Given the lack of closets, it was obvious they did not have a lot of stuff. They did have several children and even a small school room, with a bedroom for the tutor. Here's a shot from the spot they said was the best view of the cottage and also a picture of one of the many flower gardens.














Driving north on US 1 on Sunday, we drove through Lubec, the easternmost town in the US, and crossed over into New Brunswick at Campobello Island. People there are very proud of being the easternmost anything. There was even a sign for a gift shop that claimed to be the easternmost gift shop in the US. I didn't stop to see if their stuff was any better because of it.

Before we left the US, we stopped at Quoddy Head State Park. There was a wonderful light house (this picture is for Jeannie). It's called West Quoddy Head Light.










From there you have to take a ferry to Deer Island and then take a second ferry to get to the mainland. The second ferry is free. The first one cost $15.00 plus a dollar a foot for the trailer. This is the first ferry - it holds about 20 cars when packed full.






Cindy and I went to Bar Harbor on Saturday afternoon. We tried to catch the ferry from Winter Harbor but we missed it by just a few minutes. We were impressed with this sign at the 'parking arer' which was around behind a barn-like structure. And there were refreshments available while you waited for the ferry.














It was a beautiful day in Bar Harbor with the bluest sky and biggest cumulus clouds I've ever seen. The ice cream cone was also the largest I've ever seen or eaten.

While at Cindy and Jim's place, we spent several lazy hours lounging under their apple trees and then later in my front 'porch' when the bugs got bad. We had a good time getting caught up on all the family doings. Here's my front porch, aka tent/screen room. It comes in real handy when the mosquitos find us at dusk.

Route map - Niagara Falls to Maine

This is the route we took to get to Maine. We dropped down into Vermont and then cut across New Hampshire and Maine, all on Route 2.