Month: August 2023

Thursday, August 10, 2023

It was a gray morning but cleared up as the day went on and was a beautiful afternoon and evening.  Perfect temperatures of low 60s in the morning and middle 60s this afternoon.

We decided to visit a local diner for breakfast, Lady’s Slipper Café.  Very good “farmers breakfast” (huge) with good service as well.  Decided we wouldn’t need to eat again til supper – except of course for snacks.  We then headed toward the east end of the island.  Lots of farmland.  Huge fields of potatoes.  Potatoes are the primary cash crop on PEI and PEI is the largest potato-producing province in Canada.  Who knew?  Smallest province in Canada produces the most potatoes – produces 25% of the potatoes for the entire country.  We learn a lot when we travel.

Next stop was at Basin Head Beach.  It is a provincial park, with free admission – nice.  We had a great walk on the beach, about four miles. There were not many people there since it was such a gray morning but by the time we returned to the van the sun was out.  The beach is what they call “beautiful white singing sand beach.”  Those that grew up on the Gulf of Mexico would have to disagree, about the color but it was a nice beach.  Just wasn’t white. It appeared to us to have a lot of red in the sand.  The singing is the squeaking sound you hear sometimes when you walk in sand.   Regardless, we had a great time.

Next stop was the East Point lighthouse – Canada’s Confederation Light.  At the point, the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Northumberland Strait converge.  They are visible by the turbulent waters.

The final stop before returning to our Boondockers Welcome host was the Brudenell Provincial Park.  Another lovely park with many amenities.  We have NOMADS friends who live in PEI who are vacationing there currently.  We stopped by to say a quick hello and visit a little.  It was great to see them!  We love to get to meet up with friends when we travel.  We will see them again.

We then returned to our hosts home for our afternoon visit.  Before we returned to BB for the evening we were given yellow beans and carrots, fresh from their garden.  Guess what we will have for dinner tomorrow.  We are sure enjoying our time on PEI.  More exploring to come tomorrow – if the weather isn’t too bad.

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Again, we are so thankful that we took the ferry yesterday.  The wind blew all night. Even in the wind, we both slept well.  It was bad enough this morning that at times BB would feel like it was rocking.  Early this morning the rain began and continued most of the morning. The morning ferries were cancelled due to the winds. We decided to just ride out the storm there on the cliff.  It was never bad enough we were concerned for our safety but we didn’t want to be driving.  Therefore, we took advantage of our time to better prepare for our Bible study group tonight.  We so enjoy our group of RVers who meet together online each Wednesday night.  Special group of people whom we love.

After the weather improved, we decided it was time to get out a little and drove to Charlottetown to the Cows Creamery.  It’s also the factory and there was a little self-guided tour and you could watch a little of the work in the factory through some large windows.  Mainly you could try different flavors of ice cream and decide what flavor you wanted to buy.  We had blueberry ice cream with the little PEI wild blueberries and pralines and cream ice cream.  Both were excellent.  You could also purchase all sorts of Cows t-shirts and trinkets.

This afternoon we drove to the community of Murray Harbour.  We have been Boondockers Welcome hosts since 2012, almost since the service first started. The first couple we hosted lives here.  They have always been special to us because they were our first, and they are so sweet.  As of last spring they are no longer traveling out of the country but they are still hosting and are really happy to have RVers come for a visit and reminisce their RVing days.  If you are Harvest Host members, you might want to consider a night or two in their driveway. In spite of the storms, it was another good day.

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

We both slept well after not arriving to our overnight sight until almost 10:00 last night.  We (almost) NEVER arrive that late.  We (almost) NEVER even arrive after dark.  But last night was special.  Today we are still glad we did it.  Don’t recommend arriving after dark, but sometimes it happens.

This morning it was time to head south, off of Cape Breton Island.  We had planned today as a repositioning and preparation day but things changed a bit as we drove along.  There was a lot of construction delays as we drove from Cape Breton, to the Canso Causeway.  We crossed over the big green bridge back into Nova Scotia, and continued on to Caribou, NS which is where we had planned to ready ourselves for tomorrow’s ferry trip to PEI.  We went to a small Provencial Park, emptied our tanks and took on fresh water but then we Gumby-ied everything.  We decided to visit the ferry terminal to make sure we knew exactly what would happen tomorrow.  We had spoken with people with the ferry call center/reservations twice and were given totally different answers to our questions with different costs for the crossing.  Turns out all we had to do was pull up to the ferry booth and talk to a kind gentleman who said we could go on the next ferry that would depart in about 50 minutes and the cost would be $0.00.  That sounded like a much better plan than the $134.00 the man on the phone told us.  We were driving aboard the ferry about 15 minutes after we pulled up to the booth to ask our questions. It takes about 75 minutes to make the crossing.  It was a beautiful afternoon to be crossing to PEI. (Tomorrow is predicted to be windy, and rainy all day.)  The PEI/NS ferry is free going to PEI but you have to pay to return to Nova Scotia. (not $134 but about $100.00) We aren’t planning to return to NS on this trip.  We plan to drive from PEI, over the Confederation bridge to New Brunswick. It is a toll bridge so we will pay the $50.65 toll for BB to cross the bridge.  All is well and tonight for our first night on PEI we are parked right beside the Atlantic Ocean watch the waves hit the shore and a cruise ship go by.  There are supposed to be some seals here as well but we haven’t seen them yet.  It was a very good day!

Monday, August 7, 2023

Woke up to off and on rain this morning.  We are watching the weather a little more closely since a friend sent us information from Meteologix Canada indicating there is a possibility of a hurricane affecting the Canadian Maritimes around August 15.  This information was a surprise to us, but you know we will now watch things closely.  If need be, will cut our trip short or find a place to hunker down if needed.  It is still very early but we do appreciate the heads up.

This morning after another “see you down the road” to Lynn, Owen and Maggie we went on another hike we had skipped when here last, Egypt Falls.  It’s not a very long hike and is listed a moderate on All Trails but it’s a pretty tough hike.  It’s just pretty much all down hill from the start and therefore all uphill on the return.  There are several places where there are ropes to use to keep you from sliding down the hill or help you get back up.  We needed the ropes a few times.  It was also a little muddy and slippery today. However, the payoff was tremendous.  This is now our favorite water fall in Cape Breton, and probably of this trip.

After completing the hike we headed to a laundromat to dry our clothes that were drenched yesterday.  We hung them in the shower last night with a fan but…still wet this morning.  They were dry in 20 minutes at the laundry mat and then we went back into the National Park.  We went back to the Skyline Trail because another thing on our to-do list is to hike to the point at sunset.  We left the parking lot at about 7:00 to hike out to the point on the Skyline trail. Sunset was not until 8:26 but it’s about 1.7 miles out to the point and we didn’t know how crowded it would be.  There were people there waiting for sunset but not really as many as we expected.  It was windy and the closer to sunset it got, the colder it got.  Unfortunately, it also started misting rain.  Never really rained hard, but we were glad for our raincoats and they were quite damp by the time we got back to BB.  It was not a magnificent sunset but it was a good one.  We like our pictures and are glad we made the effort.  So now after a short drive, we are at another Ioverlander spot in Pleasant Bay.  There are several other vans here and we can listen to the surf beating against the shore all night.  It was another great day.