Day 14-16 Prince Edward Island

My first view of PEI from the Confederation Bridge was breathtaking. The bridge itself is 9 miles long and an average of 40 meters from the water. It cost $1 billion to build and is the longest bridge over ice covered water in the world. The lights from the bridge can be seen from space, along with the Great Wall of China and Las Vegas.

The island itself has beautiful landscapes and beautiful flowers, lupines.

We began our tour at PEI National Park. Their beaches are different than what we’re used to. They called the sand at this beach “white sand” while on the other side of the island, it is red. But, looked like red sand to me…. I can only assume the sand on the other side, must be “really” red.

While visiting North Rustico, we met 87 year old Emerad (not sure of the spelling of his name), the only Protestant family in this area. Everyone else is Roman Catholic. What a character he is. He loves to get his picture taken and was more than willing to pose for us.

What a ham! He was born in 1923 and lived in his house next to the lighthouse all his life. He talked about people from all over the world coming to take his picture. One lady from Ohio won a blue ribbon for his photo and other couple from Germany showed him an advertisement in their newspaper of his house. He is world famous!

A whale’s jawbone washed up on shore about 80 years ago, so Emerad’s family uses it as the border for their garden. Can you tell it’s a jawbone?

While visiting the harbor, hoping to see a lobster catch come in, we spotted a tow truck for those boats that sometimes need help. We liked his slogan, “No Cash, No Splash.”

Lunch was at the PEI Preserve Company, where we met the owner, Bruce. What a character he is! He’s Scottish and always had a dream of owning his own restaurant. After practically losing his shirt, he came up with a preserve with alcohol incorporated into the recipe, TOTALLY BY ACCIDENT. It seemed while working for someone else, who liked to drink, Bruce decided to help his boss drink the Grand Marnier (he was saving him from getting toooooo intoxicated). When Bruce could drink no more, he had no alternative but to dump the rest of the bottle into the vat of preserves. VOILA! Strawberry preserves with Grand Marnier. Once he had a product, he needed a label. The girl he was dating was a good artist, so she designed him a label. He since married her, they bought and old butter factory, started a restaurant, and that is how the PEI Preserve Company started. Check out the quilts hanging on the ceiling.

In the 19 years he’s been in business, he’s become famous for his preserves all over the world, even selling to Nordstrom’s and Neiman Marcus! My favorite is the Raspberry with champagne jam and Peach Salsa. Bill’s favorite is the strawberry with Grand Marnier jam.

Next, it was off to visit the house that inspired the book “Anne of Green Gables.” Anne’s room is just as the book describes.

The author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, was born in New London, Prince Edward Island, in 1874 and was raised by her maternal grandparents (Alexander and Lucy Macneill) in Cavendish 1976-1911. It was here that she wrote Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Kilmeny of the Orchard and The Story Girl.

I was very surprised to find out is that Anne is fictional. I always thought she was a real person. Montgomery found inspiration in glossy magazines and used a photograph of New York model Evelyn Nesbit as the origin for Anne’s face. It was amazing to find all the things that inspired her to write her book. Her adopted cousin, Ellen Macneill, a Nova Scotia orphan girl, provided the final spark for the inspired story of the redheaded orphan.

Haunted Wood Trail

The Balsam Hollow trail begins as Montgomery’s own Lover’s Lane.

In 1831, the farm Montgomery named “Green Gables” was acquired by David Macneill Sr. When he died in 1891 the farm passed on to his son, David, Jr., who lived there with his sister Margaret. In the early 1890s their niece Ada Macneill and her daughter Myrtle came to live with them. In 1906, Myrtle and her husband Ernest Webb took over the farm.

While driving around we found L.M. Montgomery’s birthplace

As well as her resting place.

We also found the site of her Cavendish home. John Macneill is the great-grandson of Alexander, was born and still lives in his grandfather’s house.

While in North Rustico, we bought our own fresh lobster from the wharf. Our first of many lobster dinners was simply delicious!

On our free day, we visited the town of Summerside.

Throughout the town are beautiful murals.

In the park, located in the center of town, we found a few trees that were shaped into artwork. It shows their creativity for trees that were in need of being chopped down.

The Haunted Mansion looked interesting.

We had a great lobster dinner at the Fisherman’s Wharf, complete with a HUGE salad/dessert buffet. While waiting for our soup and lobster, I began my dinner with dessert! I could not decide which dessert to eat, so I had several. After our dinner, the manager invited us to tour the kitchen. They serve between 450 and 500 lobsters per night!

Check out the 3 ½ pounder.

On our drive back to the campground, we came upon a red fox. Bill stopped so I could get a picture. The fox stopped and watched me for as long as I watched him. See how nice he posed for me?

Our campground hosts were wonderful saving us “adult” time on the “balloon jump.”

Our last day in PEI was rain, rain, rain. So this was a catch up day while waiting for our driver’s meeting and bus to take us into Charlottetown for dinner.  Check out the rat Bill found just outside the theater.

Then on to see the Buddy Holly Story.

What a fabulous play. I didn’t realize he was only 21 or 22 when he was killed in a plane crash. He put out 10 top songs in 18 months. Just imagine what would have happened had he not been killed.

Day 11-13 Caraquet, New Brunswick

What a great night’s sleep we had back in our own RV.  Helene at the RV Park where we left our RV was the best hostess! We thought we had closed all our windows when we left, but when the rain came in, she closed them for us. She was so thoughtful. She bid us farewell and off we went to catch up with our group.

Our route took us over some patchy roads and a few steep grades.

As we drove along the River, we saw a few covered bridges. We stopped at the largest.

It was this high… and this wide.

Inside the flooring was very warped. We tried to capture it in a picture, but not sure if you can tell.

As we went thru the town of Saint-Damase, Bill laughed and wanted a picture of the sign. I’m sure he was not pronouncing the word Damase the way they do.

GET IT?

As we drove along Rt. 132, we saw one of our guests drive by. We thought they must be lost because they should not have passed us at this point. We had yet to get back on route. Next thing we knew, another guest drove by. We then thought omg, maybe we missed the turn to the bridge which would take us over to New Brunswick. The log said it was easy to miss… We tried to reach them by radio, but that was a no go. We pulled over at a gas station to figure it out. We were correct in that we had not yet gotten to the turn for the bridge, which meant they missed their turn. They were heading to another bridge farther off route. As we were asking directions to make sure they didn’t have any low bridges to go under on the route they were about to take,(apparently there were a few low bridges on the other side that our log cautioned us on) another one of our guests drove by. We were able to catch them on the radio and waited for them to turn around. We decided that the turn that everyone seemed to be missing for the bridge over to New Brunswick was a good place to stop and have lunch. We caught quite a few of them who were about to miss the turn. The funniest one was when one of our couples was arguing about whether the turn was the correct turn or not and as they went by, they heard a voice over their radio saying very calmly, “You missed your turn.” LOL It was Bill! They went by so fast, Bill didn’t see what number rig it was, so he decided to just let them know they missed the turn. When they heard the voice, they stopped arguing immediately and looked at each other. They thought it was God talking to them!

Once everyone got into the campground at Caraquet, New Brunswick, we celebrated with a BBQ, compliments of one of our guests, who just happens to be a BBQ competitor. How lucky are we?! He did a fabulous job on the pork BBQ and everyone brought sides. If anyone went away hungry from that feast, it was their own fault. Everything was so delicious that they decided to collect recipes and make a booklet.

Our only full day in Caraquet, we visited an Acadian Village. Between 1755 and 1763 an important part of the Acadian population was deported to the English Colonies because they refused to take an unconditional oath of allegiance to the British King.

The Acadians fished in order to make ends meet. Most of the big companies did not pay their
workers in cash. Instead they gave them tokens that could be used only in the company’s stores. The Acadians were at the mercy of these monopolies.

The General Store seemed pretty small from the outside, but they sure had quite an assortment of things to sell inside.

Shore fishing produced clams, mussels, algae, and smelt. Coastal fishing (in vessels for less than 24 hours) produced lobster, scallops, oysters, mackerel, herring, and certain species of groundfish such as cod. Mid-shore fishing (slightly larger vessels out for 3 to 4 days) produced lobster, crab, shrimp, herring and mackerel. Offshore fishing done mainly off the Gulf of St. Lawrence with a base port in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia produced groundfish, shrimp, and scallops.

It took some time for the Acadians to learn that all of these species were edible. For a long time lobster, spring herring, and crab were used only to fertilize gardens! Then it was only the poor who ate them.

Different species of fish required various methods of dressing, but the most widely used were salting, drying, and freezing.

Cod was the most popular fish and could be stored up to one year after salting. Lobster was canned by the pound, half pound, or quarter pound. Fresh fish included salmon and herring was most often salted. Mackerel, haddock, halibut and eel were also caught.

Most of them led a very simple life. We visited a few of the homes.

The nicest home we visited was owned by the magistrate, who had 7 children. Seven children was actually a small family back then. Many of the families had 10 or more.

The blacksmith was busy making square nails.

We watched as he made one nail. We should have timed him. He can’t make too many of those in one day.

The town of course had a one-room school house and a print shop.

It took the printshop a whole week to typeset 4 pages!

I personally liked the old gas station. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always thought the old gas pumps were so cool looking.

Covered bridges are also one of my favorites. This one had an interesting sign. “$20 fine for driving on the bridge faster than a walk.

But the grandest of all was the hotel, which is currently in business and you can actually stay the night.

Inside, we found a barber shop, sitting room, and restaurant.

Day 13, on our way to Prince Edward Island started out on the same foot as day 5 when we had several breakdowns…. We didn’t get 20 miles away from our departure campground when we found one of our guests on the side of the road with a broken diesel fuel pump. THAT’S NOT GOOD. I do have to say that the Canadians are so friendly and helpful. Every one of our break downs found Canadians stopping to see if they could help. Even if we pulled over to the side of the road for lunch, we would find people stopping to see if we needed help.

Luckily our guest who broke down had “Good Sam” road service. They were great. The tow truck was there fairly quickly and towed them to a place who fixed it and they met up with us that evening.