Day 24 – Thursday, June 5, 2014

Petit-Rocher-Nord, New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island – 311 Miles

Note: I'm posting this and tomorrow's blog posts from the ferry terminal on Saturday, June 7, while we wait for the ferry back to the mainland.  I haven't downloaded photos from the past couple of days from my camera to the computer, so I'm not including photos with these two days' posts.  I'll try to add them later.

It was a long day, but the total mileage for the day includes probably 50 miles of driving around PEI, so the total distance between major points is a bit less.  We did leave earlier than normal this morning, as we were awakened by the sound of several lobster boats checking their traps about a half mile offshore from our campsite.  There was a slight inshore breeze which helped to carry the sound.  Actually, we were glad they woke us up because we were treated to a nice sunrise over the bay.

Sunrise from the motorhome door, Petit-Roche-Nord, New Brunswick

It started raining just as we were leaving the RV park, and it continued to rain off and on as we continued southeast, although the rain was very light.  We stopped for a cup of coffee at a Tim Horton’s Coffee shop in Newcastle, and everyone there was talking about the news of the shooting of the five RCMP officers yesterday evening in Moncton, a town a bit farther south in New Brunswick.  Three Mounties were killed and two were wounded.  The gunman, identified as a 24-year old male with a hatred of police, has still not been apprehended.  We listened to the news on the local radio stations off and on throughout the day as we traveled, and I guess I’ll check once more before going to bed tonight to see what the latest news is.

We reached the Confederation Bridge, an eight-mile long structure that links Prince Edward Island with the mainland, around 1:00pm.  This bridge, plus a ferry a few miles east of the bridge, are the only ways to reach this island province other than by air.  Both the bridge and the ferry require a toll, but you don’t pay the toll until you leave the island – a clever way of getting the uninformed to come right on over, but then getting a hand in their pockets unless they’re prepared to spend the rest of their lives on the island.

My first impression of PEI was positive – a landscape of low rolling hills filled with tidy farms like something out of a Currier and Ives print.  The bridge joins the island roughly in the middle of the south side.  We turned west, planning to follow the coastal road west, then north up to the North Cape at the tip of the island.  We envisioned a slow winding road up through a series of quaint villages like we passed through coming down the St Lawrence River.  But where the map indicated what we thought were villages, turned out to be just a couple of farm houses and maybe a gas station or small store at a road intersection.  Otherwise it was just farms and scrub going down to the shore from the road, and the shore itself was seldom visible.  After few miles of that, we turned inland to catch the highway that runs up the middle of the island, but there was really nothing to see there either.  By this time we, or at least I, was getting tired of driving and starting to feel a bit cranky, so we decided to turn around and head directly to the spot we had chosen to spend the night, a provincial park on the north shore near the center of the island.  We stopped in the town of Kensington and picked up some fish and chips to take to the campsite for tonight’s dinner. 

The countryside opened up as we proceeded north from Kensington to Cabot Bay Provincial Park – more of the rolling farmland we had seen earlier today – so we feel hopeful that tomorrow’s tour of the eastern two-thirds of the island will be more enjoyable and scenic.

Our campsite for tonight is in a big grassy field on a bluff overlooking the Gulf of St Lawrence.  There is only one other camper in our immediate area, a couple from Ontario who are in a tent a couple of hundred feet away.  There is one other motorhome and a small travel trailer in the park, and they are up the way in the area that has power and water hook-ups.  We elected to pick a spot down here because of the view, even though we’re dry camping in what is basically a tenting area.

View from our campsite, Cabot Beach Provincial Park, PEI