Last Half of our Trip to PEI

11 Sep

My walk down to our beach.

We headed up to North Cape this morning. I wanted to get some photos of it while it was sunny however they were bringing seaweed up from the beach and the stench was too much so didn't get many photos. I also wanted to look at the gift shop.

Who called this meeting anyway?

In the afternoon we visited Gordon's photography friend, Rosemary who lives just down the road from the motel.

Bluejay in her yard. There were a lot of them!

Here's our motel

Island's End Motel (with me taking the photo)

For sunset we traveled about an hour south to West Point to have a look at a lighthouse. Most of the lighthouses on the island are now decommissioned so Gordon was disappointed with that.

This lighthouse is now privately owned and has been made into an Inn.

Sunset from Hwy 14 on the way back from West Point Lighthouse

12 Sep

We headed out early this morning for Summerside and Borden-Carleton. More tracking down of lighthouses, looking at gift shops, lunch at Subway and some grocery shopping. We each got a PEI baseball cap. We also got another look at the Confederation Bridge from a different perspective.

Zinnias at the downtown boardwalk in Summerside

Indian Head lighthouse at Summerside

Blue jay along the boardwalk

Nice feature in Summerside. It goes for a long way.

Seacow Head Lighthouse

Confederation Bridge from Seacow Head

Old shingled school near McCallum's Point

Anne of Green Gables statue at Borden-Carleton

 Both of us were tired when we got home so just relaxed for the evening.

13 Sep

The tide was out when I walked down to the ocean (it's actually the Gulf of St. Lawrence on this side) so I got to walk a bit more on the beach. It was a beautiful sunny day, no humidity.

It was a laid back day. Did some laundry at the motel in the afternoon, sat outside for a while and read. Drove up to Seacow Pond Harbour and took some boat photos, looked at the windmills and some barns. Out for sunset.

Seacow Pond Harbour about a mile from us

Fisherman looking out to sea (with me)

Just generally did what a vacation is for!

At sunset we went back to Stompin' Tom Connors Road to the beach.

Lobster traps

Heron at dusk

Steps to the beach

Sunset from the beach

14 Sep

I had my last walk down to our beach area this morning. I picked up a little beach rock to bring home with me.

Our last full day here on the island. I have mixed feelings about leaving. We didn't see the whole island as planned, just too far to travel nor did we go to Nova Scotia but what we did see was fantastic and we might be back. We didn't do much all day but went to North Cape for sunset.

15 Sep

We left around 6 a.m. Atlantic time, returned via the Confederation Bridge again and made it to Edmundston around 2 p.m. with a stop to photograph the longest covered bridge in the world at Hartland, NB. It had started to rain just before we arrived there but managed to stop or nearly stop so we could take some photos.

Here we go back over the Confederation Bridge again

Hartland Bridge still in use

It is loooong!

We decided to stay at the same hotel in Edmundston that we stayed at on our way to PEI as it has a small (very small) kitchen. Gordon went out to photograph butterflies while I unpacked the coolers. Traveling with food is such a pain!

We had sun, cloud and rain but it was warm and humid.

Cloudy skies did give way to rain

We spent a quiet night getting ready for the longest leg of our return journey.

16 Sep

Happy Birthday to Gordon! One reason we decided to go this week is because it encompassed both of our birthdays. So this was a trip for us!

We left our hotel around 6:15 a.m. but turned the clock back an hour due to Atlantic time so we arrived home around 2:00 p.m. I'm still unpacking. Packing and unpacking are two of my least favourite jobs. Thankfully we had an uneventful trip back and it was mostly sunny and nice (once the sun came up) for the whole trip.

Here's some scenery on our way through Quebec.

First Half of our Trip to PEI

We did a rush trip down because we wanted to stay ahead of the rain and wound up also doing a rush trip back because Gordon's back was acting up.

7 Sep

We left home around 7 a.m. and arrived at our hotel in Edmundston, NB around 5 p.m. It was a very long day especially getting through Montreal. Traffic was horrendous and our GPS, Miss Pinky had no clue where she was going. Montreal is forever changing their roads! So we followed the signs for the Champlain Bridge to get to the south side of the St. Lawrence River. It was mostly a beautiful sunny day with a bit of cloud thrown in for good measure. Miss Pinky got confused again trying to find our hotel in Edmundston but after some backtracking and a phone call to the hotel we found it.

We stopped about four times, probably not as much as we should have.

Neither of us slept much and we were on the road around 7 a.m. the next day as well.

8 Sep

It was foggy and misty when we left on Saturday morning. We eventually got some sun and it turned into a nice day. We stopped often, once at a cute little Tourist Information Centre that looked like a covered bridge replica. The longest covered bridge in the world is in that area.

We had a nice lunch at Skipper Jack's in Moncton then headed on for the Confederation Bridge to take us to PEI. I was a bit concerned as I'm not a bridge fan (crossing them) but it turned out to be a non event. The bridge was completed in May 1997. Before that you had to take a ferry to get to the island. It is 12.9 km (8 mi) long and it took us about 10 minutes to cross. The concrete sides are high so you really can't see how high you are above the water. Mostly it's like a causeway with a higher part for ships to go under.  We took some photos of the bridge from Tourist Information Centre before we crossed.

Anyway we arrived on the island and took more photos of the bridge from the PEI side as well as some photos of the park. We drove around the little town of Borden-Carleton a bit. They have quite an interesting shopping area there that I hope to get back to.

We stopped in Summerside to pick up some groceries not knowing what there would be for grocery shopping, especially with our food problems where we were going. We arrived at Seacow Pond around 5:30 and got set up in our little motel room complete with kitchen, living room, bedroom and full bath. We are out in the middle of nowhere but I can walk to the red sand beach from the motel and it's a short distance to North Cape lighthouse where Gordon can get both sunrise and sunset photos so we drove there last evening for sunset.

9 Sep

Happy Birthday to me! I was thinking of a Beatles song on my birthday. Wonder why. I can't believe I'm that old! After our morning walk to the beach between showers and a nap, we headed out to find some fuel for the car. No 24 hour gas stations here! Then we took a little drive and wound up in Miminegash where they have a pretty nice little harbour.

We also took a drive to Alberton with some stops along the way. We saw a lot of great blue herons and some pretty beach scenery. Lots of red side roads.

10 Sep

Woke up to rain but it moved on quickly. Needed some stuff from the grocery so went into Tignish to the Co-op. They sell pretty much everything there from hula hoops to garlic to toilet plungers. Got most of what I needed. Back to the motel to unpack groceries then took the Black Marsh hike at North Cape. Talk about Stinky Beach! Reminded me of Goose Island SP in TX except much worse. There was a backhoe bringing all the seaweed up from the beach and putting it in a pile. Yukky! I didn't mind the smell of Stinky Beach in TX but this was awful!
Quite a bit of rain on and off all day and into the night.

Went out for sunset at Skinner's Pond, home of Stompin' Tom Connors. Beautiful beach and dunes! Boy was it cold and windy though. Lucky I had on my new raincoat!