Anne's House, Angry Surf, and St. Peters Bay

Saturday, June 29, 2013

We are currently sitting in a campground in St. Peter's, PEI waiting to see if it starts to rain and blow again. Greg walked up to the office and sat outside on the wet picnic table to access some wifi to see the weather radar. The wind gusted to 30 mph during the night while the rain continued to fall. I know, I know...I sound like a broken record! The hostess at the visitor center we went to yesterday said that usually from March 1^st until the end of September, it is sunny and warm on PEI. This is our third visit here. Three summers ago it was beautiful and two Septembers ago on our cruise, we had beautiful weather for the day in Charlottetown. Four low pressure systems are coming through. I think we have had two so far. This is the Canadian's “long weekend”, as Monday is Canada Day, the day Canada became a nation. This is the official start of summer, and the weather is not cooperating!


Wednesday we awoke again to gloom and colder temperatures. Where did summer go so quickly? We packed up and left Cavendish campground. As was drove out we saw a fox along the side of the road looking expectant, as if we had food. He crossed the road in front of us and waited for the car behind us to stop for him, as we drove off. First stop was the Cavendish visitor center again, and we posted the blog. There were a lot of other people there using the wifi and it took really long to upload it, and some of the pictures just wouldn't load, so the last post is missing some of my favorite photos. Oh, well, life on the road!

Smarter than the average fox

Next we found a grocery store with some local produce. Yay! We also found the “special” RV TP. We have yet to determine how important it is to use it. Supposedly it breaks down easier in the holding tank, but it costs a lot more and can be hard to find. We've been looking for it the last few weeks in order to resupply before we ran out, so we paid through the nose for it here.



Then on to Anne of Green Gable's house. We ate lunch in the parking lot and noticed several cars from the US, and watched a few buses disgorge their passengers at the entrance. We like to avoid the crowded, touristy places, but our Parks Canada yearly pass got us in for free, so we decided to take a look. Also, we figured our Anne loving family members would never let us hear the end of it, if we didn't go! It was spitting rain as we self-toured the grounds. There was an interesting assortment of visitors, age-wise, and culture-wise, attesting to Anne's continued international popularity. The most interesting were the middle-aged bikers for Jesus in their motorcycle leathers.

Anne of Green Gables house

Greg's Canadian Great-Grandfather was a harness maker. He would have made tack like this.

Barn yard

Cook stove

Anne's Room

Garden

Buggy with jackass inside

 The main attraction is the farmhouse that inspired L.M. Montgomery to write the books. She visited the family with her grandparents and later drew inspiration from the farm and the surrounding woods. The house is the original. The barn and outbuildings have been recreated. The gardens were in bloom and beautiful. There was also a buggy set up for pictures to be taken sitting in it. There was a straw hat with red haired Anne braids attached that could be worn. The only people we saw posing in the hat were men! I couldn't talk Greg into it! Oh, well, missed photo op!



We left as it sprinkled rain and drove through the countryside to the next section of national park along the north coast. There are three non-contiguous areas of the park. We checked into the Stanhope Campground for two nights. During the night before at Cavendish, when I went to bed I noticed a continuous roaring noise that had not been there before. We realized that the wind had shifted and we were hearing the surf. When we got to Stanhope, we could see the angry surf from the entrance to the campground. We spent the rest of the day in the RV, avoiding the wind, rain and mosquitoes.

Stanhope campsite

Thursday morning Greg went exploring the paved coastal trail on his bike. When he got back we both rode to the Covehead Lighthouse and harbor. It was so overcast and windy that we didn't even bother with sunscreen. We saw a mother fox and two kits playing in the lane of some cottages. They let us watch from a distance and then moved on. We rode the other direction to Stanhope Beach and spent some time looking at the surf, watching a family try to launch a kite, and reading the placards with the history of the area. Near here was the first Scottish settlement on PEI. It had previous to that been a Mik'maq site for thousands of years, and before the Scottish came, had been an Acadian settlement. The three culture's historys are entwined all over Maritime Canada, with British, Irish, African, Caribbean, and German thrown in the mix.

Cove Head Beach

Beach Pea

Sea Rocket

Cove Head Village

Cove Head Light

Stanhope Beach

We had more rain Thursday afternoon and night. Yesterday, Friday morning we wanted to leave the resort area and find a spot for three nights to wait out the long weekend. Without reservations we were counting on getting into a private campground further east on St. Peter's Bay. After a short drive,(nothing is very far away on the island) and getting diesel, ($5.08, the most we've paid in Canada), we found a site on the bay at St. Peter's Community Campground. There seem to be a lot of trailers here for the season. It's a town park and has a pool and mini-golf course, but no one is using either. It's too wet and cold! Just behind our site is a small strip of woods and the Confederation rail trail and then the bay. If the rain stops long enough we can bike it. A close drive nearby is the third section of national park with no campground, but more hiking and biking trails to the sand dunes.



We checked in around noon and then drove to the PEI visitor center in St. Peters. After checking e-mail we wandered over to Rick's Fish and Chips for lunch. It had maybe 8-10 tables inside and more outside, but no one wanted to sit in the cold and wet! They are known for their fish and chips (which Greg ordered) and have been featured on the Food Network on a Canadian road food show. After lunch we traveled along the north shore to the far eastern tip of PEI. We made that drive three years ago, under sunny skies, but it was still lovely in the overcast and rain. That area of the island has farms and is more sparsely populated, so it has a wilder feel. We made a quick stop at the Prince Edward Island Distillery which we discovered on the previous visit. It, and the nearby inn, are run by a pair of American women, who winter over in Florida. The woman distiller comes from a long line of distillers in North Carolina. Their spirits have been winning awards even though they have only been doing this a few years. They specialize in potato vodka from the famous PEI potatoes and blueberry vodka from the wild island blueberries. We don't care for the “dirty” taste of the potato vodka (reminiscent of potato skins that were not washed thoroughly - Greg), but really like their gin.

Lunch Time!

PEI Distillery

Tasting Room

Our next stop was the East Point lighthouse at the far eastern end. When we visited here before, we parked in a lot on the side of the property. Now it's gone! The constant pounding of the surf on the island cliffs really is slowly, or quickly, eating away the island. When they post signs to stay away from the cliff edge, they mean it! We walked around the site and watched the car ferry in the distance heading for Iles de la Madeleine, a group of islands 134 km off the coast. Then we continued our drive along the south shore and back west to St. Peters. On the way back we stopped in Souris at a busy grocery store. There appeared to be a bunch of vacationers stocking up for the long weekend. Groceries are still a bit of a challenge. The prices are higher on the island, and we expect them to be even higher when we reach Newfoundland, so we'll probably stock up on Cape Breton before we take the ferry. I am still finding the majority of fresh vegetables and non-perishables are from the US. I did buy carrots, potatoes and parsnips from PEI, and every store has hothouse English cucumbers and tomatoes from Nova Scotia. Otherwise, it's all shipped up, and some of the US produce is from Mexico. Many of the non-perishables are in Canadian packaging, but say in small print, product of the USA.

Wind Turbines

East Point Light

Parking lot from three years ago is gone

Ferry

Today we were able to wear shorts again because the temps were in the low 70's, but it was windy and the sky threatened rain all day. Greg finally got tired of waiting for the rain, so he unhitched his bike and rode over to the national park and back. I decided to be lazy and read and write and watch more people arrive at camp for the weekend. A few kids got in the pool, but farther south it would not be considered pool weather! Not sure what we'll do tomorrow. The forecast is the same as today, chance of rain!



A quick update- Today, Sunday, the rain held off after showers during the night. It was very windy, warm and humid, but there were actually breaks in the clouds and we saw some sunlight! I took a walk on the Confederation Trail, while Greg rode it farther west. Check out my next posting with a photo essay of my walk! Tomorrow we will post this at the visitor center in St. Peters, go to the local section of the national park for a short hike and then travel along the southern coast of PEI and over to the western side to camp for a few days while we explore new territory.