P. E. I. (07-05-13)

Many times, in our travels, we come across small towns, with no apparent industry in the area, and we wonder how the residents make their money.

On PEI, the rolling hills of farmer’s fields, and small, picturesque harbors full of working boats leave no doubt as to how the islanders earn their living-the island is known for it’s potatoes and it’s lobster.  I am sure it’s not an easy life, but you can feel the pride of accomplishment and the sense of neighborhood everywhere you go.

With a population of just 140,000, you won’t find many urban cities on Prince Edward Island.  Most towns, or villages, have very small populations, with the only local grocery store being a food Co-operative. Charlottetown is the only major “city” and visiting it was the only time we saw a population density that would even be considered suburban where we come from.

The nightlife in Charlottetown was pretty awesome though.  We only had one evening to spend in town, so we had to spread ourselves very thin, moving from venue to venue.   We started the evening early, with drinks overlooking the harbor.

Our second stop was for appetizers on Victoria Row.  Victoria Row is closed to vehicle traffic, and boasts a small bandstand in the center of it..  There are 4-5 restaurants with outdoor seating nearby, so we took advantage of the incredibly good weather and listened to some music while we ate at Fishbones.

Our next stop was just around the corner, where we once again enjoyed some great live music while we enjoyed our dinner al fresco. 

We finished up the evening inside, at the Old Triangle, where we had a drink while listening to live fiddle music.  All in all, we crammed a lot of good times into one evening!  

Part of our time on PEI has been spent with family.  My uncle’s wife is from the small village of Tignish, on PEI. The last time I was here, I was about 12, and I met a lot of her family.  Her dad, Eugene, owned the general store in town, and it’s now owned by her brother. Tignish was settled by Acadians in 1799, when they were forced to leave Acadie.  My aunt is Acadian and her family was one of the original 8 families to settle in Tignish.

Canada Day was celebrated at my uncle’s cottage on the river.

 

I’d never heard of an octopus before, in this context at least, so my cousin Greg showed his off for the camera before he ate it. (It’s a hotdog).

PEI has three “scenic loops” and Paul and I managed to drive most of all of them. That’s a lot of driving! 

The North Cape loop took us through the town of Tignish, and out to the northern point of the island, where we encountered the Wind farm, complete with interpretive center. This small wind farm supplies 5% of the electricity needed on the island.  These wind turbines don’t look that big- until you see them laying on the ground:

The interpretive center was very well done, and worth the visit.  I am sure I knew at one time what a BTU is (British Thermal Unit), but it was nice to be reminded that it is the amount of energy required to heat one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit.   There, now everyone’s memory has been refreshed. 

On the east side of the island, the scenery is just as beautiful.  We passed by numerous rivers and harbors.  We sat and had lunch overlooking this river, where we watched a pair of bald eagles for a while.

 

With temperatures hitting 30 degrees (86 F)  we were tempted to go for a swim but contented ourselves with a stroll in the shallows.

PEI actually boasts a small distillery where they make, of course, potato vodka, among other things.  We took the short tour- very worth it- as our tour guide was very personable and knowledgeable. The vodka is distilled 4 times, at which point it is 180 proof. 

The blueberry vodka sits in blueberries for 2 weeks, then gets distilled again.  All spirits are colorless when they are distilled, and the rums etc.  receive their colorings from the oak barrels.
The last process is the marrying, or blending process. He said basically, since they don’t want the vodka to be 180 proof, they add water back in, but no one wants to use the term “watered down”, so they use fancier names for it!

The final stop was the tasting room, where we sampled two vodkas, a rum, and an apple brandy.  Having never been to a distillery before, he taught me that the first sip of vodka is the “neutral sip”, and the second sip is where you really taste the flavor of the vodka. Blueberry was my favorite.  We talked about the “burn” and he said that all spirits will have a burn, but with quality spirits, the flavor will come first, and the burn will be an afterthought. 

The tour was interesting, but we left empty handed. As it actually says on the rum bottle- it would be a crime to ruin the flavor of the  rum by adding coke, and we agree- at $55 a bottle, it would feel criminal to dilute the spirits with coke, but that’s the only way either of us would drink vodka or rum so there you go.  It would be like using Don Julio to make a Margarita!


As fulltimers, we make all our plans in chalk- easily erased, and that’s just what we’ve done.  We originally decided not to go to Newfoundland.  It’s an expensive 7 hour  ferry ride to get there, and everyone who goes says you need at least 2-3 weeks to see it.  Well,  we’ve changed our minds and decided that we need to take advantage of the fact that we are here and don’t know when we’ll be back.  We’ve booked the ferry to Newfoundland for July 23. We plan to be there 16 days, but we talked to someone who grew up there and he looked very skeptical.  He thinks we’ll regret not staying longer,  so we are already thinking we might add a few more days.  That means we’ll have to bypass other things we wanted to see, like Georgian Bay, Toronto, and maybe Montreal, but we reasoned that those places are nearer to Michigan, and more accessible to us in general.

Moving to Prince Edward Island (06-25-13)

Moving from St. John to PEI  wasn’t going to be an all day affair, so we stopped in Moncton along the way.  Moncton is one of the best places to witness the tidal bore. The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world, and in certain areas (rivers), when the tide comes in, it arrives in the form of a wave, called a bore.   

So many people come to see this phenomenon that they built a viewing park and someone came to give a little explanation as to what the bore is.  We missed by one day the tallest bore of the year, but it was still cool.  When the moon and sun line up perfectly, the pull makes a higher tide and a taller bore.  The tide in nearby Hopewell Rocks was 44.3 feet.

This is the bore as it passed us:

It was actually really awesome to see. Once the bore arrives, the river rises about 26 feet in an hour. That was cool to watch too. For a while. Then we left. I took two videos of the bore as well, but the campground Wi-Fi blocks certain websites at peak use times and YouTube is one of them. If I stay up late enough to try again later, you’ll see the two videos here:

                                          

Once we left Moncton, it was a short trip to the bridge over to PEI.  Paul and I both smiled at this sign that we saw along the way.  They sure do grow their moose big up here!

Once we were over the bridge, it quickly became clear how beautiful the island is. 

In many ways it feels like going back in time a bit.  Much of the land is farmland, and Lupin grows wild along all the roads, and picturesque harbors seem to be around every corner.

We took the day and drove around parts of the island, because frankly, it was cold, windy, and spitting rain every once in a while, so we didn’t feel like doing anything else.

We did brave the coast to go check out PEI National Park, and bought an annual pass so we can spend as much time as we want in the Canadian National Parks. The red sandstone here makes for a dramatic look along the coast.

We had to make it back early enough to have dinner and head out to a show.  The town we are staying in, Summerside, is home to the College of Piping and Celtic Performing Arts.

They put on a show all summer long, called Highland Storm, which technically opens for the season tomorrow night.  Lucky for us, we found out they do a dress rehearsal the night before they open, and we were able to get tickets to that.

We both thoroughly enjoyed the show, which was a combination of bagpipes, drums, dancing, and singing, with a little comedy thrown in too. Very entertaining, and some of the performers were quite talented. Many of them compete on a national or international level.




Tomorrow we head to a provincial park for about 5 days and I know it has no Wi-Fi, so I wanted to get this posted before we leave. That was more frustrating than usual, since the campground system wouldn't let me even upload my blog using my usual software, Live Writer, so I had to do it the old fashioned way.