Goodbye to PEI and on to Nova Scotia

Day 4 – We started our day driving to Summerside, Denis wanted to see if we had missed anything. Leaving there we took the south coast east towards Charlottetown, I think I found my favourite PEI place – Victoria-by-the-sea. We stopped at the Port-la-Joye/Fort Amherst historical site, nothing remains of either the French or British forts. We carried on into Charlottetown for lunch at Gahan’s Brew Pub, walked around the waterfront and some of the older area. By then it was time to head to the Guild for Anne & Gilbert, it was very well done and we enjoyed it. Since Stanley Bridge was not far out of our way we detoured there for a ceilidh. It was a bit different than I expected, no dancing, but really good just the same. Denis won $95 on a 50/50 draw at the ceilidh, so now we can pay our toll to get off the island.



Denis & Sir John A having a chat




So many beers, so little time

One last stop at a PEI fish market, we were going to buy oysters but wouldn’t you know it, they were out. We settled for lobster, mussels and smoked salmon. Oh well I think we might find a bit of seafood in Nova Scotia. I was sad to say good bye to PEI. In retrospect we likely shouldn’t have stayed in Cavendish, but it is kind of central. It’s by far the most touristy part of the island and we would have been good with just a visit. There are only about 141,000 people on the island but I’m sure the population is 3 times that in the summer.

We had only a short trip through Cape Tormentine (New Brunswick) and then we were into Nova Scotia. We stopped at a farmer’s market near Tidnish, it was about 5 to 12 and they were just closing down, but we got some new potatoes, beets and strawberries. We stumbled across a micobrewery in Tatamagouche so a mandatory stop was made. We also visited ‘Creamery Square’ historical site which has the only prairie style grain elevator in the Maritimes. We checked out the Train Station Inn, their slogan is eat, sleep, shop. The station has a gift shop and tearoom on the main floor and rooms upstairs but you can also get a room in one of the cabooses or a converted box car. There’s also a dining car and a club car. We continued on to Pictou and checked out the Hector, a replica of a ship that brought immigrants from Scotland in the 1700s. Very Scottish architecture and they have banners with all the clan tartans on the streetlight poles. The other thing we noticed, they have a very smelly pulp mill across the bay, makes you appreciate DMI, even during the worst upset we never smelled that bad. We had thought we might camp there but decided we’d move along and find some fresher air. Didn’t call Paddy & Dawn, since my computer upgrade I don’t have their contact info, we could have harassed Paddy about the smell. We headed towards New Glasgow, finally bought a lobster pot! We camped for the night at Quarry Island, we had very sociable visitors, Leonard & Elizabeth, they have a cabin on the next island. We enjoyed the new (almost PEI) potatoes and another lobster, we’re going to have a hard time adjusting at home where 1 small lobster costs more than 2 big ones here. Although Denis did say the rotisserie chickens were smelling pretty good in the grocery store the other day.

We got an early start and took the highway (as opposed to the coastal roads we usually take) to the Canso Causeway and on to Cape Breton. We made a brief stop in Port Hawksbury before heading to Louisdale and once there we had no trouble finding Cohen! He was splitting wood with Quinten but we took him away from his work to give us a tour of the area. We had lunch at the ‘Spud Wagon’ on Isle Madame and then went back to have coffee with Viola (Cohen’s grandmother). Mich and Connor stopped in for a few minutes and dropped off a photo album so we had a laugh or two at the old pictures…. Cohen was surprised by the one of Aunty Kelly with a black eye. Then we headed to another site and crashed a family supper, we contributed our bag of mussels. Most of the family is gathered here to celebrate a wedding this weekend, poor Denis was very confused as to who’s who. We had a good visit with Cohen, he’s getting very tall and still very sweet. Sorry Cohen but grandmas get to say things like that.

Wow only one province to go!