Prince Edward Island, Canada - September 24th
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| 8-mile long Confederation Bridge connects Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick |
Waving goodby to Nova Scotia and heading toward Maine for autumn. Traveling on TC-104, we stop at the draw bridge at Port Hasting Nova Scotia to yield a large cargo ship passing underneath. Suddenly, there is a loud rapping on our car window. A bearded man stood next to our car said in serious tone "Seeing your car from California, had to stop and talk to you! What made you travel so far from home?" Fe smiles her prettiest and replied from passenger seat "It's not the destinations, it's the journey". The man cracks a broad smile full of understanding. All of us animatedly sharing many beautiful and exotic places we have been. "Don't skip PEI (Prince Edward Island), seafood even better and undulating hills of farmlands scenery different than that of Nova Scotia!" He said. While we were swapping stories, the huge cargo ship passed through the Strait of Canso and the bridge again extended to reconnect the TC-104.
Bid happy trail to both Gary and Connie, the charming Utah couple, and pointed our car toward PEI ferry.
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| Waiting to board the Caribou Ferry, which will take us to PEI |
Ride on the free ferry for an hour, we arrived on one of the largest Canadian island. It's roughly 2,190 square miles is also the smallest province of Canada, and the only province has no land boundary. The pounding wind and heavy rain ceased, and unveil a field of undulating red farmland stretches as far as the eyes can see. Beyond the lush green hills and thick tree lines, a short rainbow punctuated the darken sky seems to welcoming us to the island of Prince Edward.
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| The rain has cleared and revealing PEI rural nature |
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| Rolls of hay harvested from very fertile land |
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| Field of golden soyabean |
With the coming of 20mph wind and 45°F cold rain pounding the island, we took shelter in Campbell's Cove Campground for the night, and later extend for few more nights due to the storm. In the morning, we prepared our locally bought applewood bacon, sunny-sided our eggs and buttered our toast for breakfast out in the enclosed porch. Freshly brewed coffees warm our hands and stomach, while the freezing rain still pouring outside.
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| The cute sign near our campground |
After few days rest, we head to Basin Head Provincial Park in Souris. The beach is now peaceful, but was packed with people few months back. Some people will choose to relax on the singing sand and sunbathing, but most elect to jump from 15ft height bridge to the run, or river below. The added bonus is strong current will carry them straight out to the Strait, or back into the basin lagoon depending on the tide. Daredevil jumpers will then clamper up the ladders on both side of the boardwalks, and do it all over again. Of course the jumping is prohibited according to numerous signages, but shouldn't adults allow to take responsibility for their own action? So, the cool Basin Head Provincial Park office has chosen not to enforce the rule.
The eastern and middle regions of PEI have dark red cliffs beach with golden sand to boot. Toss in a few stowaway lobster traps and flock of sandpipers, the beach looks like a scene from Cast Away. And here we are in the Red Point Provincial Park which prescribes for that mind set.
On our way to North Rustico, Fe spots an old Scottish pioneer cemetery near St Margaret. From the tombstone inscriptions, some grave sites dated back to early eighteen-hundredth. The Scottish settlers called home in St Margaret since seventeen-hundredth. Their pioneering tales weaving out of hardships and overcoming adversities and became a thriving agriculture and fishing communities are nothing short of miracle. Together with other settlers such as the French and the Anglo-Saxon, PEI provides 25% of Canada potatoes from the red fertile land here.
From word of mouth, we visited Blue Mussels Cafe in North Rustico for tasty scallop bruschetta and local sweet fragrance blue mussels. Both appetizers were very good; the bruschetta was perfectly crunchy finger bread top with melted mozzarella cheese, chunky scallops, bacon bits, diced tomato, and garnish with chopped parsley. The blue mussels are to die for; soft, sweet, fragrance from thin slides of carrot and zucchini, perfectly seasoned, and the soup from the young mussels even more tasty.
Wet our appetite with blue mussels and scallop bruschetta in North Rustico, we drove to Glasgow Glen Farm about 4 miles for our entree. Looking at their stacks and stacks of firewood out in front, they sure look very serious about keeping the pizza oven burning hot. Went in and order the Hawaiian and absolutely in love with its thin crunchy crust, generous tomato sauce on the pizza, sweet and sour chunky pineapple, smoky Gouda, and the ham, oh yes the ham is the thick slides of (Black Forest?) ham were very tasty. Unfortunately, their customer service attitude was primitive, so we gave them a piece of our mind in Yelp.
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| That's a lot of woods for pizza ovens |
The idea of walking on Brackley Beach Park near Charlottetown is very appealing to us; fresh ocean air and easy walking beach has rejuvenating effect after a big lunch. The red sand on this beach is dense and smooth for miles and miles, which make casual strolling is absolute joy. The park even build boardwalks over the dunes to make dune climbing a breeze. We learned that the park got its name from island legislative council clerk who has drowned here long ago.
Near Brackley Beach, one can find Dunes Studio Gallery nearby which is free to everyone. The studio has edible garden in the back as well as one-of-a-kind chair sculptures placed throughout the garden. Slowly walking through the beautiful garden, we have the feeling that we're in the middle of The Persistence of Memory painting by Salvador Dali, but instead of melted clocks, they were melted chairs.
One of the item in our itinerary that we have postponed until now, was a visit to Bottle Houses in Wellington. There was an acadian (descendant of French Colonist) named Edouard Arsennault, a avid dreamer and recycler ahead of his time. He collected wine bottle, meticulously removed label on each, cleaned and save all bottles for something extraordinary. After years of collecting, Edouard builds his first six-gabled house in 1980 when he was 66 years old. His second creation in 1982 was The Tavern built with more than 8,000 bottles, then on to his last creation in 1983, The Chapel, built with more than 10,000 bottles that included the pews and altar. After 4 years, he completed 3 houses using over 25,000 bottles before his sudden death in 1983. Spending more than 45 minutes in this special place, one can feel a peaceful and content came over when the afternoon sun light streaming through multicolored bottles that surrounding us.
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| Six-gabled house |
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| The tavern |
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| Another view of six-gabled house |
One of our culinary destination on PEI was very special, and we think you would agreed. On early December 2011 morning, Summerside firefighters were called to Queen's Wharf to battle burning blaze on JMK Fish Mart. The fire totally and completely destroyed the beloved seafood shack, as well as another bait shop down Holman's Wharf. "The stock, everything. Everything is gone" Sandra the shack owner said. "A lot of memorabilia items that his (Bruce's) grandfather had given him from his days of fishing, a lot of things that we can't get back or rebuild. That's the saddest part" she added. Many local heartfelt supports came pouring in. Risen from the ashes in just 5 months, Sander and Bruce rebuilt the fish mart and officially open in May the following year. We were strolling around the restaurant and absorb their tales and moved by their determinations. We ordered 2 dozen oysters on half-shell and one boiled 1.75lbs lobster for supper. The bright green oysters have lemon-zest brightness, clean flavored, and very tasty. The house-secret boiled lobster serves with claws cracked, tail divided, head in sauce was scrumptious. The lobster meat was soft and sweet even inside the claws. Only in few minutes, the empty shell were all that remained. We didn't even have time to take picture! Oh well! Still hungry after the first course, so we ordered another 1.4lbs lobster for desert, and this time we took the picture.
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| This 1.4lbs lobster is actually our "desert", the 1.75lbs was our supper earlier |
By this time, we learn to be more selective on lobster beside the obvious lobster sizes. You see, after the novelty wears out, it comes down to the choice lobster; smaller lobster has more tender meat, hard shell envelopes more flavor than soft shell, female has tomalley and male don't, whole lobster is juicier than just the tail section, and the most obvious one is the house secret boiling sauce. Our choice was green female 1.5-pounder with hard shell and to be boiled in house secret sauce for 8 minutes!
On return trip to the states, we took the Confederation Bridge back to New Brunswick then heading to Maine. The impressive bridge doesn't disappoint us with it's 8-mile spans across the Northumberland Strait. We learned that the approach bridges (bridge section that connect to land mass) were precast in New Brunswick, main components of the bridge were produced at staging facility on Prince Edward Island, then all sections were assembled over ocean starting in 1993. It took 4 years and 2,079 workers to build the bridge and completed it on 1997.
We enjoyed the PEI trip tremendously, especially with cheap great seafood, one of a kind destinations, colorful histories, and ultra friendly people. Perhaps one day, we'll come back to PEI again to explore it in depth, but for now Maine is calling us.
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Nova Scotia, CanadaGPS Coordinates:
Campbell's Cove Campground - 46°28'32.7"N 62°08'15.1"WBasin Head Provincial Park - 46°22'46.3"N 62°06'32.6"W
Red Point Provincial Park - 46°22'05.7"N 62°07'58.5"W
St. Margaret of Scotland Pioneer Cemetery - 46°27'43.2"N 62°23'08.5"W
Blue Mussels Cafe - 46°27'23.4"N 63°17'38.1"W
Brackley Beach Park - 46°25'45.6"N 63°11'32.7"W
Dunes Studio Gallery - 46°24'44.1"N 63°11'52.3"W
Bottle Houses - 46°24'06.8"N 64°06'07.2"W
JMK Fish Mart - 46°23'26.2"N 63°47'35.8"W
Confederation Bridge - On PEI side 46°15'01.5"N 63°42'18.3"W, on New Brunswick side 46°09'42.3"N 63°48'54.5"W
References:
- Destination details were extracted from respective attraction, hand-out literature/brochure, or website, and Wikipedia- Coordinates are from Goggle map in Degrees, minutes, and seconds (DMS)
