Canadian Maritime’s Provinces: Prince Edward Island (Aug 27 – 31)

August 27 -31: Prince Edward Island, commonly known as PEI, has a completely different feel to it than New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The entire island is agricultural and is edged by beautiful red sandy beaches. We didn’t hike here, but took advantage of the many kilometers of bike trails and road the northern beach area of PEI National Park in Cavendish (where we camped) and Brackley Beach.

The standard red chairs found in all of the Canadian NPs

PEI red beach

Driving across PEI

More lighthouses!

Bikes near the red chairs

Tom enjoying the view during our bike ride

Cavendish Beach right next to our camp ground

Dinner view

Part of our bike ride

Cavendish Beach

While it’s geographical beauty is of note, Charlottetown, PEI is also known as being the meeting place for the founding fathers of the Canadian Federation, basically the equivalent of Philadelphia with the US founding fathers meeting to create the United States. Many key areas have the name “Confederation” to commemorate this fact. The Confederation Harbor in Charlottetown is building two more dock slips for cruise ships. Apparently, the months of September and October have multiple cruise ships in almost every day.

Oh, we can’t forget the fact PEI is also known as the home of “Anne of Green Gables” written my Lucy M. Montgomery. I read the entire series of books on our way to PEI and found them delightful! Also, PEI boasts an amazing variety of seafood of which we sampled raw oysters for the first time!

Anne of Green Gables House

Confederation Harbor

Our first oyster!

Victoria Row

St. Dunstans Basilca Catherdral

Boardwalk around Charlottetown Harbor

There are two ways on and off PEI, the ferry from Nova Scotia or the 8-mile Confederation bridge to New Brunswick. Of course we had to try both! The ferry turned to be a different adventure in that one of the two engines failed on our 75-minute trip across, but it required two engines to dock at the PEI ferry station. We spent an additional 3 hours circling to and from PEI and Nova Scotia as they fixed the engine and then the fuel pump landing in PEI at 11:00 PM in the heavy rain. Our first night was spent dry camping at the Welcome Center, which was another first for us. At least we are getting used to dry camping for the night in random spots!

Crossing Confederation Bridge was simple and beautiful. It’s claim to fame is that it is the longest bridge that covers a waterway the completely ices over in the winter.