PEIJul 22, 2006
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PEI Day 1
Our tour bus picked us up this morning under cloudy skies, but without the forecast rain. Our first stop was about a mile away at the National Park - Green Gables. PEI would probably be a remote sparsely populated farming island without the publicity it got from Lucy Maude Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables book. That book, and the 12 others she wrote with a settings in the Cavendish area, have made this a destination tourist location. The Canadian government has bought much of the area around Cavendish for the park and the remaining land has been filled with small, family oriented theme parks, restaurants, and trinket shops. The Green Gables house and the surrounding areas described in her book were donated for the park with provisions that they never be changed. To handle the large crowds who visit daily they have had to construct several buildings to provide support to those visitors.
Our second stop was at the beach just North of the Green Gables house. PEI is a "red dirt" island due to the iron in the soil. The seashore is mostly red clay banks, which are eroding into the Gulf of St. Lawrence at a rate of 2 feet per year. They don't even try to repair the road along the shoreline. It will fall into the water within a decade or so, so they just patch it. The one we traveled on was 9 years old, and was mostly patches. The lack of a rock base, and the severe winters result in frost heaves which destroy all the roads.
Our third stop was at Rustico harbor where we got a demonstration of "lobstering": the trap and how it is prepared, set, and retrieved. We then stopped at New Glascow for lunch. The Scotsman who runs the restaurant has a major jam/preserve operation which includes sales to some 400 outlets including Nordstroms in the US. He also has a booming ice cream store. His ice cream is REAL ice cream containing 35% butterfat. Smooth!!! And gooood. Our next stop was The Toy Store. They make wooden toys, and have a contract with Disney to furnish the toys for their Christmas displays.
I was ready for a nap on return, but it was Happy Hour time so we went but decided to eat in tonight instead of going out to one of the many excellent seafood restaurants nearby. Tomorrow is a free (no organized activities) day so we'll save our energy.
PEI Day 2
