Prince Edward Island

For the next stop on our adventure, we spent a week in Prince Edward Island. We arrived by ferry, which was only about an hour crossing, and free! But the reason that it's free is that to leave the island, you have to pay a HUGE toll- $45 to cross the Confederation Bridge or $60 to take the ferry back to Nova Scotia... we strategically took the ferry there and the bridge back. The 8-mile bridge holds the record of "longest bridge over ice-covered waters in the world", which if you ask me is a little specific to really be all that impressive (for reference, the world's longest bridge is over 100 miles). It does look fairly cool as you start to approach it, but the drive over the bridge itself is terribly boring- the concrete walls are just high enough that you can't even see a good view!

We did enjoy ourselves on the island proper, though. Our most impressive accomplishment was to visit every winery on the island! (But again, this is too specific to be impressive- there are only three.) Sweeter fruit wines are very popular on the island, much to my delight; one winery even made a blackberry mead which Adam very much appreciated. The second winery we visited had only been open about a month, and was far enough down a dirt road that we almost turned around thinking we must have gotten the location wrong. As such a small winery, this one only had a red blend and a white blend, but since we were the only two visitors, the proprietor took us down into the basement where the tanks are kept and showed us his whole setup- getting into all the details, especially once he found out we are both engineers. The last winery was a bit of a disappointment (for me at least)- it was owned by a Portugese couple and they didn't make a port!

Adam's quest for fresh seafood of course continued on Prince Edward Island, which is famous for its mussels and oysters. We had another interesting attempt at clamming ourselves- this time, we did manage to find a few quahogs (I found one too!) and some more razor clams, but what we didn't notice was that the tide was coming back in- being a fairly calm bay it wasn't particularly obvious- until I went to get my flip flops that I had taken off on the shore and they were nowhere to be found. After some dedicated searching, we did finally find them- fortunately they float, and had floated completely across the bay! From that point on, Adam decided to stick to buying seafood. He did have another adventure shucking the oysters he bought- it's apparently harder than it looks!

We stayed one night with a couple who owned an old five bedroom farmhouse that they had decorated in the most fascinating ways- a lot of antique furniture, interesting picture arrangments, and even an assortment of antique cheese graters! This couple had gone on a three month road trip through the States, and were sympathetic to our laundry plight, so we were even able to do a load of laundry at their house. This is when we fully realized that we are rain charms- everywhere we went, it hadn't rained in ages, and as soon as we started to do our laundry, it would POUR, especially if we were hanging it up on a clothesline to dry. Fortunately this time it only rained on us as we were gathering our dirty laundry out of the car, and our clothes were safe in the dryer. Everyone we stayed with seemed to appreciate that we brought rain with us, so I guess it worked out in the end.

In Charlottetown, we stayed with the nicest trio- a nurse and two veterinary students. They owned two dogs, one of whom was the BIGGEST DOG either of us had ever seen. His name was Ben, and he was an ENORMOUS Great Dane. He made their much more reasonably sized lab mix, Hugo, look like a toy terrier. Dogs aside, the city itself was pretty interesting too. We caught lots of live music- a very talented brass ensemble, a theater show celebrating Canadian history (maybe it's my own ignorance, but I'm not really sure how the Chinese dragon dance fit into the picture), and a live acoustic set on the waterfront. We visited the local Gahan Brewery, which in addition to excellent beers also had delicious food. To get our historical fix, we went to the Confederation house, where the conference was held for the Canadian provinces to unite and become their own country (we decided that the processes for Canada and the US to gain independence from England are fairly similar, with founding fathers and everything- but instead of a Revolutionary War, Canada just had a conference). Finally we spent an afternoon slacklining in the local park, really quite a nice park with lots of fountains to play in.

Getting out of the city a little, we biked part of the old rail system, and visited the "Singing Sands" beach, where the sand is supposed to "sing" when you walk on it. Here I must pause to give some back story- as tourists, Adam and I are frequently duped. We investigated the Garden District in New Orleans to find that there aren't any gardens, we tried to see what was proclaimed to be a great sound and light show only to find it didn't exist, etc. Singing Sands was no exception. We arrived at the beach, kicked off our shoes, and immediately started walking- and we didn't hear anything. Listening closer, we heard what could only be described as a squeak- far from singing. I wasn't even convinced that ALL sand doesn't do that. We confirmed later that we did go to the right beach, and the "Singing" aspect of the sand is greatly exaggerated.

Our final stop in Prince Edward Island was the city of Summerside, which has a beautiful bike path along the coast that we enjoyed. Our campground was in an equally lovely spot, right along a beach with the classic red sands of PEI and thousands of perfect little shells so tiny that they look like glitter on the ocean floor. The only downside was what we have begun to call the "Mosquito Symphony"- mosquitos so bad that you have to hide in your tent at dusk and you can see them covering the outside walls and hear them all aroud you- it's maddening! En route to Summerside, we stopped in the small town of Victoria by the Sea, where the very exciting site of Prince Edward Island's biggest tree awaited us! Again, a bit of a stretch to be a legitimate sightseeing destination, but that seems to be the norm for PEI, if you avoid all of the Anne of Green Gables touristy stuff. However, the island is quite lovely, and not a bad place to visit- just don't get duped by the Singing Sands beaches.

For more pictures of our PEI adventure, check out the Pictures tab!