States & Provinces visited on this segment: Prince Edward Island
Dates: Monday, July 23
Miles driven: 228 (6181 total to date)
Summary: We took a day trip to Prince Edward Island from our base in Sackville, NB. To get to Prince Edward Island we took the Confederation Bridge, which is billed as “the longest bridge over ice covered waters in the world”. It is ~8 miles long and links PEI with New Brunswick. We headed over to the north side of the Island to Cavendish, and toured the Green Gables House, made famous by Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gable” books. The house and grounds are preserved as part of Prince Edward Island National Park. We went through the original house, and there is also a recreation of the barn that originally was next to the house. The house was interesting but the recreated farm buildings were very sterile, and didn’t really fit in. The barn was spotless inside and had modern locks, lights, etc. and even a plastic cow in it which made it very cheesy. There are also a couple of trails mentioned in the books which we went on, the haunted woods trail and lovers lane. However, the trails were a disappointment. Unfortunately they have preserved only a very minimal area around the house and the trails. As its name implies, the haunted woods trail goes through the “haunted woods”. However, in places the haunted woods is only ~20’ wide (1-2 trees), and there is a fairway for a golf course on either side of the trail and the golf cart path crosses the trail. Kind of hard to imagine the “woods” being haunted when there aren’t many trees and you can see the golf course on both sides of the trail. If you got scared in the haunted woods today you could just hop on a passing golf cart and get away quickly! “Lover’s Lane” trail is not quite as bad, but you can still see the golf course on one side and a service road for the golf course crosses the trail. The flowers in the garden behind the house were beautiful, but off in the background the golf course detracted from the overall setting.
After leaving Green Gables we headed west along the north coast and went to three different light houses. We enjoyed the scenery of the countryside and the small fishing towns along the water. We then headed SE to the capital, Charlottetown. We had dinner in Charlottetown and walked around the waterfront, admiring the flowers in the park and the boats in the harbor. It is a very nice quiet town, with a population of only ~30,000 people. We observed a beautiful sunset from Charlottetown before heading back to our campsite in New Brunswick.
Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/bryan.vacation/Part11PrinceEdwardIsland
Other notes: We finally found some place that had recycling!!! Back home we recycle as much as we reasonably can, and almost always have significantly more recycling than garbage. We definitely take advantage of the curb side recycling program. When we travel we try and keep our same recycling habits. Based on our experiences back home we thought that we would not have any problem at least periodically finding places to recycle along the way. However, with the exception of some places that had recycling for aluminum cans and a handful of places that took plastic pop bottles, we found zero recycling at campgrounds, parks, rest areas, etc. So, we kept collecting more and more recycling. After ~5 weeks on the road we had several grocery bags full of paper & cardboard, along with several more full of plastic bottles, yogurt containers, & milk jugs along with glass jars and tin cans. When we pulled into the parking lot of the Green Gables House we found they had large recycling containers at multiple places in the parking lot that would take all of the types of recycling that we had. Fortunately I had most of the recycling in the box in the back of the truck so we took a few trips over to the recycling bins and properly disposed of everything we had with us. I still find it surprising that no other government or private ran park, campground, or tourist site we have been to had any real recycling station. I guess we are spoiled at home. The state parks in Oregon have recycling centers where you can recycle everything mentioned above plus even other harder to recycle items like batteries. Fortunately we have enough space in the trailer that if we have to carry the last 6 weeks worth of recycling home with us we should be able to do so.
Next up: Nova Scotia
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