Thursday, August 18, 2011

PEI - West Side

Here we are in Blacks Harbor, New Brunswick, and our last stop in Canada. Tomorrow we will be back in Maine and the good old USA.

We left the east side of PEI and drove through the Green Gables area on our way to the west side. This is the commercial area of PEI. I have never read the books but I wanted to stop, especially since our admission was covered on our discovery pass. It is a beautiful park with great RV day parking. We walked through the barn, house and then down lover’s lane (hand-in-hand). It was lightly raining. I bought the first edition of the book so I can kind of know what this popularity is all about.


We stayed at another Harvest Host – Montrose gardens – on the west side of the island near Alberton, PEI. This is a vegetable and dairy farm owned by Ivan and Theresa Hardy. They were wonderful hosts. We bought some veggies and blueberries from their very busy stand. We parked next to the barn and the first night we watched them milk their 35 cows. It brought back memories for both Dean and I since we were raised on farms in the Midwest.




Wednesday, we took a drive on the west coast and saw the North Cape (lighthouse and wind generator farm) and the West point (lighthouse turned into hotel and restaurant and a beautiful provincial park).


In O’Leary we toured the potato museum. I never knew so much about potatoes. In PEI there are over 85 different varieties grown. We stopped on the way back to the rig and bought some quahogs (like a clam) and had them for lunch. PEI is an island of farms and gardens. There are only around 150,000 people and most of the island is farm communities. The Hardy’s gave us some canned veggies along with the produce that we bought from the stand. Dean helped pick yellow beans with the pickers who get paid by the pound. He gave his pickings to the pickers and they in turn gave us a huge bag of clams. Fresh seafood and fresh veggies – what a treat! We were told not to expect too much from PEI but we thoroughly enjoyed our 6 days.


Today we took the Confederation bridge to New Brunswick. It is 8 miles and about 12 minutes and two lane. It cost us $57. It is a beautiful bridge.


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