MONDAY 18 July

My objectives for today were to:  1) Sightsee the eastern third of Prince Edward Island, including PEI-NP units and Charlottetown; 2) Top up the fuel in the truck, and; 3) finally make it into a Tim Horton’s and buy a donut.  I know, I know, they’re not vegan.  But, it’s Tim Horton’s, in Canada.  You just have to.

During our morning coffee Linda checked the weather forecast, which is part of her morning routine.  It indicated rain starting around 3 AM (tomorrow morning) with percentages in the high 90’s past the check-out time of 11 AM.  That added a 4^th objective, to do as much outside departure preparation as possible this evening, including packing the truck and positioning it in front of the hitch.  The forecast also showed rain throughout the day at our destination, about three hours away, so it looks like we will be hitching up and unhitching in the rain.  Oh well.  No complaints; we have had marvelously good weather up to this point in our journey.

Paul and Nancy had other things to do today, so we left at 9:30 AM and went exploring on our own.  We headed east on Hwy 6 almost immediately pulled into Avonlea Village just to see was it was about.  We decided we would stop there for a closer look on the way back to camp.  We continued on Hwy 6, and made our way to the Brakley Beach in the Dalvey-by-the-Sea section of Prince Edward Island National Park.

It was a short walk to the beach on a nice boardwalk, but we noticed quite a few people heading back towards the parking lot with identical badge holders and headphones plugged into devices around their necks.  I stopped a gentleman who looked like he might talk to me to see if they were part of a tour.  They were, but not just a tour, a Road Scholar tour.  In yet another episode of “it’s a small world after all,” it turned out they were from Birmingham, Michigan.  His wife joined him, and we had a nice chat, and learned to Road Scholar is the rebranded Elderhostel program.

We continued on Hwy 6 to its terminus at Hwy 2 and continued east.  Our next destination was the Greenwich section of PEI-NP.  To get there, we had to go around the tip of St. Peter’s Bay and through the town of St. Peters.  We spotted a sign for the Black & White Café and Bakery, saw it as we entered town, and pulled in to have lunch.

 

Their vegan offering was a Vegan Grilled Cheese sandwich.  That might sound ordinary, but it was not.  House-made Rye bread, Tomato Jam and a Pesto Fauxmage, with a consistency similar to hummus.  It was unusual, interesting, unexpected, and absolutely delicious.  The name of the café, btw, was inspired by BLACK & WHITE Choice Old Scotch Whiskey, a bottle of which was on display.  After lunch we continued on to the Greenwich section of  PEI-NP and when for a short (1.1 Km) hike.  By this time the temperature had already topped 80 degrees F, and we did have time for a longer walk.

We back-tracked to St. Peters and saw a road sign that informed us this was the place where immigrants from Scotland first settled on PEI.  That explained some of the other town names and street names we had been seeing in this part of the island.  We continued on Hwy 2 to its junction with the beginning of Hwy 4 and headed south towards Montague but turned west on Hwy 3 before getting there.  Hwy 3 ended at a junction with Hwy 1, the Trans-Canada Highway, which we followed west into Charlottetown.

Charlottetown is THE major city on PEI and I wanted to have quick look.  We managed, quite by accident, to find the old/historic part of town.  Most of the city, however, was pretty much like any other city its size (~36,000) with many of the same chains of stores we see in the USA.  The island itself has a population of ~165,000.  PEI is the smallest Canadian Province, in terms of both area and population but is, in fact, the most densely populated.  Driving around it feels very sparsely populated outside of Charlottetown.

We took Hwy 2 west out of Charlottetown to Hwy 13 north to Cavendish.  I topped up the fuel tank at the Petro Canada at the intersection of Hwy 13 and Hwy 6.  We stopped at Avonlea Village, walked around and took a few photos.  The “village” consists of a few old/authentic buildings and modern constructions done in the style of the late 19^th century.  The buildings are all retail outlets now for things like coffee, hamburgers, ice cream, and artisanal artifacts.  Of interest to us was one of the old buildings which had been the schoolhouse where Lucy Maud Montgomery taught in the 1890’s.  We didn’t buy anything and headed back to camp, which was literally walking distance from where we were parked.

We were back in camp around 3:45.  Linda gathered up a load of laundry and we took it to Paul and Nancy’s rig.  We will eventually have to use campground laundry facilities, which is fine, but we appreciate having access to their residential washer and dryer until then.  I returned to our trailer to work on photos.

It was warm again today, so dinner was a cold ramen noodle salad that Nancy prepared while we were out exploring, and the leftover potato salad.  Cold dishes are particularly satisfying on warm, summer days.

I did not want to take care of departure preparations in the dark tonight or the rain tomorrow, so I returned to our trailer to take care of as much of this as I could.  Linda returned with a basket of clean laundry.  She finished washing a few dishes and then walked to the office with Nancy to return the gate cards and get their $20 deposits back.  I added water to the fresh water tank so we don’t have to hook up in the rain at the next campground.  I then dumped the black and gray tanks and put the waste hose and fittings away.  I backed the F-150 up close to, and aligned with, the trailer hitch.  I disassembled the fresh water treatment system and Linda help put everything away.  There is still more to do to get ready to leave, both inside and outside, but this will greatly reduce the amount of outside time.

We returned to Nancy and Paul’s rig and enjoyed the campfire.  As the sun set, the temperature dropped.  Eventually the fire was no longer able to keep the chill away so we took our camp chairs and went home.  We put away the clean laundry, remade our beds, spent a little time with our electronic technology (reading and writing) before going to bed.

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SATURDAY 16 July addendum

Bonus content, courtesy of our son.  He took his daughters with him to check on our house and sent a photo of the progress on the barn/workshop project.  Posts and headers are up for the two side walls.

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY 17 July

We had four main objectives for today:  1) Check out a better route to get back to the Confederation Bridge when we leave on Tuesday morning;  2) Visit the Canadian Potato Museum & PEI Potato Country Kitchen in O’Leary, Prince Edward Island and have lunch there; 3) Mail several post cards, and; 4) Get out our WeberQ grill for the first time on this trip and grill some hamburgers.  As part of 4), Nancy made potato salad in the morning before we left, and Linda bought corn-on-the-cob at the store the other day.

O’Leary is on the far western end of Prince Edward Island, so we checked out our possible exit route first, which was slightly west and mostly south, and then back-tracked to the west.  The eastern and western thirds of PEI are almost islands unto themselves, and we wanted at least get a sense of them.

Our best route back to the bridge will be Hwy 6 W to New London — Hwy 8 S to Ross Corner — Hwy 1A through  Central Bedeque, Middleton, and Albany to Borden-Carleton and the entrance to the bridge.  These are major roads on PEI and generally in good condition without sharp turns.  There are a few round-abouts, and the turning radii tend to be small for long wheelbase vehicles, but they lack real curbs so you can drive over the edge.

We back-tracked up Hwy 1A to Route 2 near New Annan and headed west.  The western third of PEI is much flatter than the central section.  We have yet to visit the eastern third.

When we finally arrived at the Potato Museum, the parking lot was almost full.  We planned our arrival for lunchtime and were looking forward to eating at the PEI Potato Country Kitchen as the menu focused on potato dishes, including fresh cut French fries.  In anticipation of this, Linda and I skipped breakfast.  To our great disappointment, the restaurant was closed on Sundays and Mondays “due to a staffing shortage.”  We had also planned to tour the museum, so we paid the entrance fee and went in.

The museum was in two sections: 1) Informational exhibits with smaller artifacts, and 2) an adjoined building with larger farm and processing equipment.  The exhibits were well enough done, but the lighting was dim in some areas, making it hard to read.  The exhibits explained the history of potatoes as a food, their varieties, cultivation, harvesting, and processing, as well as the large number of diseases and pests that affect them and what the modern potato industry does to control them.  The equipment building had limited information displayed about each item.

We then spent some time researching whether there was any place else to eat, in town or on the way back to camp, and concluded that there was not.  Before leaving, Linda bought a bag of potato chips.  They were made in New Brunswick, and we didn’t know if the potatoes even came from PEI.  We all had a few as a snack to hold us until dinner, which we agreed we would prepare and eat earlier than usual.

We have a tree on the west side of our site at the KOA, which afforded better shade than Paul and Nancy had at their rig, so dinner this afternoon was at our place.  The weather was very nice and the menu included grilled items, so that meant cooking and eating outside.  And that in turn, meant we finally got to get the gas grill out of the truck and use it for the burgers and corn (finally justifying my insistence that we bring it along).  Everything was very yummy; a perfect summer picnic meal.  Paul and Nancy returned to their rig after dinner and we went down later for the campfire.

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SATURDAY 16 July

I was up early enough to put the finishing touches on the blog post for the last two days.  I used the new Wi-Fi access code I got yesterday, and it worked, so I was able to upload the blog without having to hotspot my Google Pixel 6 Pro smartphone.  The cellular signal here is strong, but I am limited to 500 MB per day, which I try to keep in reserve for use while driving, hiking, or critical/sensitive online activities.  I decided to just leave my computer on with the Wi-Fi connected and see how that played out.

We tried to Facetime with our son and two youngest grand-daughters at 9:30 AM.  The Wi-Fi here in the park is very good, but they must be speed limiting certain services, such as video streaming.  We got to see the grand-daughters for a few minutes but ended up just talking on the phone.  One of the things I was pleased to learn was that Madeline (9-1/2 years old) has started reading this blog, beginning with the first post for this trip.  In day camp last week, Sadie (3-1/2 years old) learned about why dinosaurs vanished due to an asteroid hitting the earth.  Once the call was wrapped up, our son was taking the girls with him to check on our house and take a few photos of the barn/workshop project, which he sent along later.

With a nice day on tap, weatherwise, Nancy and Paul picked us up at 9:45 AM to go explore some features of the island.  Our first stop was the Anne of Green Gables Heritage Center unit of Prince Edward Island National Park (Parks Canada).  We started in the Exhibit area and read most of the information placards about the life and literary work of Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of the novel Anne of Green Gables, about whom we previously knew very little.  We were really only familiar with the Anne of Green Gables story from the PBS series based on the novel and did not know that she wrote three more novels about Anne and the town of Avonlea.  We were impressed to find out that over her lifetime she wrote and had published 20 novels, 500 short stories and 500 poems, with hundreds of the short stories and poems being published prior to the Anne of Green Gables novel, which was her first.

We knew that the story was inspired by her experience growing up and living on Prince Edward Island.  The house that Anne goes to live in is based on an actual house that belonged to her aunt and uncle (a brother and sister) and where Montgomery spent a lot of time and walked in the surrounding woods.  The house and woods still exist, and are what of the Heritage Center unit protects and preserves.  The house is restored to be as similar as possible to what it was like in the late 19^th century when Montgomery was a young girl.  We also learned the Avonlea was inspired by the town of Cavendish, where the house/park is located, as it existed then.

The novel has been in continuous print since it was first published in 1908, and the Exhibits area displays copies in 40 different languages.  Based on the covers, it was interesting to see how Anne’s appearance was changed to match cultural norms for each language/country, and we wondered if the descriptions of Anne and Avonlea in each translation were also different?  And if so, how different the story must be?

 

We timed our arrival well as the place was not crowded.  We admired the gardens around the house and then walked through on the self-guided tour.  It was very much of the era.  Most rooms were small, heavily wallpapered, with dark furniture pieces.  All four of us hiked the 1.2 Km Haunted Woods trail.  Linda and I then hiked the 0.9 Km Lover’s Lane trail.  Both names are from the novels, but Montgomery spent time in these actual woods.

By the time we finished the second hike, a lot of additional visitors had arrived at the center, including the tour bus from our campground that was taking an Adventure Caravans group out for the day.  For some people, visiting the Heritage Center (and Montgomery’s house and burial place just down the road) are something akin to a pilgrimage, as the Anne stories have been enjoyed for six generations by people all over the world.

From the Heritage Center we drove the short distance to the Cavendish Beach section of Prince Edward Island National Park.  We ambled out a boardwalk to a point where stairs went down to the beach and just observed the crowd, which was large, enjoying the sun, sand, and water of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  (PEI-NP is mostly along the north-central shore, with 68 Km of ocean front, much of it beach.)  On the way back out to Hwy 6, Nancy pulled into the entrance station for the Cavendish Campground and asked if we could drive through to check it out.  The Park Ranger said “sure” and handed her a campground map.  We were surprised, but pleased.  We didn’t overstay our welcome, but saw enough of it to know that it would be a lovely place to camp.

Our next destination was The Preserve Company.  As the name implies, they make preserves, jams, jellies and sell tea.  It turned out that they also have a restaurant.  We looked at the menu and decided we could get something to eat there, so Linda put her name on the waiting list.  The Adventure Caravans tour bus had gotten there ahead of us and taken up a significant portion of the restaurant, but they were just finishing up when we arrived.  That gave us 20 minutes to peruse the store and try the samples of their various products.  They were all good, some especially so, but we didn’t buy any.  We have a tendency to buy more jams and preserves than we can actually use in a reasonable amount of time.  They don’t go bad if left unopened, of course, but we only have so much room to store things in the Airstream.

The dinning area was nice, with lots of light and a nice enough view.  The food took a looong time to arrive, but that has been something of theme on this trip and it was good when it did.  Paul said the clam chowder soup was outstanding.  We were headed back to the car when I spotted a sign with an arrow pointing the way to the “Garden of Hope.”  There seemed to be nice flowers down the path so we had a look.  The path merely led us to a self-serve entrance station where donations were asked for.  An offering was made and we proceeded in.  The garden turned out to be extensive and impressive, and would have taken 2 to 3 hours to fully and carefully explore.  There is only so much you can research and discover about a place before going there, and the Garden of Hope underscored that we could easily spend weeks on PEI rather than the five nights we have booked.  But that’s been true of every place we have been on this trip.

Our next stop was the Island Honey Wine Company tasting room and farm.  Farm?  Yes.  IHWC is a meadery, and they grow some of the ingredients they use, including lavender.  They also have bees, but there is a major honey producer nearby, so their source of honey is very local.  They make five different meads, four which were included in a paid, but very reasonably priced, tasting.  In order of tasting, they were:  Wildflower, Haskap, Cyser-Apple, and Lavender, all 14% alcohol by volume except the Cyser-Apple, which was 13.5%.  All of these were described as being “table wine” style as opposed to a more traditional mead.  I found them to be delicate and subtle, but we liked them, and found the Lavender to be the most unique and interesting.  The fifth mead was their Nectar Sweet, the 2019 Platinum medal winner at the National Wine Awards of Canada in Prince Edward County – Ontario.  We bought a Lavender and a Nectar Sweet to take home.  I suspect we will be over the duty-free limit by the time we enter he U.S.A., so there will be some tax to pay at the border.

We were almost done with our explorations for the day, but had one last stop to make.  Paul wanted to see a lighthouse, and Linda located one in Rustico which was sort of on our way back to camp.  Rustico was an interesting (funky) and very busy little fishing town on a bay with major oyster farming operations.  The lighthouse wasn’t functional, but Paul got a picture of it anyway.  It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, but we were back at camp in surprisingly little time.  Having eaten a late lunch, we agreed to skip and communal dinner meal and just have snacks.

Back at camp, I copied and edited photos and then started working on this post.  At 7 PM we took our camp chairs down to Paul and Nancy’s rig and sat around the campfire until almost 10 PM when the dying embers of the fire no longer provided adequate warmth and we returned to our rig.

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THURSDAY 14 July

Today was a repositioning day, as we moved the travel trailer from Bouctouche Baie Chalets & Camping in Saint-Edouard-de-Kent, New Brunswick, to the Cavendish KOA Holiday in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island (PE).  We chose the faster highway route, with an estimated travel time of only 2 hours and 15 minutes.  Check-out time was 11 AM and check-in time was 2 PM.  The office said we could check out late as long as we were out by noon.  The KOA had a $20 early arrival fee.  We pulled out at 11:58 AM.

The route was Hwy 11 to Hwy 15 to Hwy 16.  Although mostly two lanes, they were limited access and generally good roads.  Much of it was 100 Km/h, with some slowdowns to as low as 60 Km/h in a couple of construction zones.  There were also a couple of places with only one lane open and flaggers or stoplights to control traffic flow.  We crossed the Confederation Bridge and then followed what seemed like a circuitous route of back roads.  We didn’t mind as the roads were OK, and we enjoyed the rural/agricultural scenery, which was beautiful.  It was obvious that PEI is a developed island, quite different from where we have been most recently, and that Cavendish is something of a tourist town.  We finally arrived at our new campground at 2:30 PM.  (We checked a map later, and our route was actually fairly direct.)

Arrival at the Cavendish KOA Holiday was interesting.  The entrance area had a building that we took to be the office, but just a parking lot in front that was too small for RVs.  I spotted the entrance gates by a building labeled “Security,” but did see an obvious staging area for arriving RVs, so I pulled up to the gate on the right, figuring it would open.  It didn’t.  The security building was closed but had a sign saying to register at the office, so Linda hopped out and went over there.  (We found out later that there was space for two arriving RVs marked on the ground, essentially in the road, but I didn’t see them.)

It took Linda about 15 minutes to get us registered, during which time I had no intention of backing up from this location.  (She had to fill out a form for the cat and under “type” she listed “black.”)  It became moot as three more RVs arrived and lined up behind me.  Vehicles with passes were able to get in using the left gate, so no harm no foul.  Getting to/into our site was easy (W3W=unequal.pitch.cobs).  Our full-hookup (3-way), 50A, pull-thru site was only slightly off-level both side-to-side and front-to-back, and we were able to level and disconnect the trailer fairly quickly thanks to our LevelMatePro+.  This device/app has proven to be an excellent purchase.  We were not parked next to Paul and Nancy, who had left and arrived much earlier, but were close enough to walk easily between the rigs.  This park was a little tighter than the last two on side-to-side spacing, but it was OK for our needs.

As with KOA campgrounds in general, and especially Holiday campgrounds in tourist areas, this is a family-oriented, well-equipped facility and operation, with scheduled activities for children.  And that was also fine with us.  We were family campers when our children were young, and we remember how much we enjoyed it, so it was nice to see other families doing the same.  A real bonus to this KOA was the free, unlimited, fast Wi-Fi, which was a bit of surprise given the number of rigs/people that were here.

Dinner was leftover macaroni salad and bulgur salad at Paul and Nancy’s rig.  We started a campfire first (around 5 PM) as it was a bit chilly, and brought our plates out to eat by the fire.  We had a small glass of Bodacious Smooth Red with the meal and a very small glass of Inniskillin Ice Wine for afterwards.  We eventually went inside and tried to watch Episode 1, Part 3 of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but it was buffering constantly.  We went back to our rig, used our iPads for a while, and went to bed early, surprisingly tired for not having had a very hard day.

 

FRIDAY 15 July

We will be on PEI for five nights, so we were not feeling pressured to get out and be tourists today.  Besides which, we had heavy ran overnight with more forecast for the day and, at best, it was overcast, chilly, and a bit damp.  We also had chores and errands to take care of.

Linda and Nancy had both been cleaning out things they didn’t need and wanted to donate to the Humane Society.  They also needed to make a grocery store run and Charlottetown, about an hour away, was where they needed to go to do all of these things.  PEI is an island, but it’s a big one.

Paul had been in touch with his American Coach (Rev Group) “concierge service” regarding the bedroom slide-out motor brake, but still did not have a definitive answer about the “lever” that manually engages and disengages it.  (This brake is supposed to lock the slide-out both in and out, but had somehow moved to the manual disengaged position, allowing the slide-out to creep out about 1/2” while driving.)  I found some possibly useful additional information online suggesting that this brake is actually a clutch pack consisting of a plastic disc with metal discs on either side clamped tight with a spring.  When the switch is pressed to move the slide in or out, the clutch is released electromechanically.  The lever we were trying to find and move disengages the clutch altogether.  This insight, however, did not help me figure out what to move and how to move it.

Paul already had the access panel off when I got to the coach so I had a second go at finding and moving the lever and was finally able to do so.  For context this lever is covered by a rubber dust boot, so we could not actually see it and everything we were doing was by feel.  We were also working with incomplete and inaccurate information based on a prior model of this mechanism.

What I finally figured out, and would like to have known up front, was that the lever was a “scissor” design.  It had two vertically oriented “blades” sticking out horizontally, in the closed position, i.e., one aligned with the other.  The “front” blade was free to move up about 22.5 degrees relative to the rear blade, which was stationary.  In the aligned position the motor brake was disengaged.  With the front lever up, the brake was engaged.  This design, or at least the way the brake was installed, appeared to open the possibility of the moveable lever dropping down into the disengaged position on a bumpy road.  And we had spent the last few weeks on some really bumpy roads.  The technician eventually called Paul back and confirmed that we had done it right and that “no,” the lever should not move on its own under bumpy road conditions; hypothetically, as that is unproven.

When I returned to our rig, I got my computer connected to the park Wi-Fi and then worked on this blog post.  At some point the Wi-Fi connection dropped and when I tried to reconnect, it said my code was “invalid or expired.”  Nuts.  Linda and Nancy returned from their run to Charlottetown around 12:45 PM where they found a Sobeys supermarket for the grocery shopping.   They also stopped at the Price Mart and at the Humane Society.  We had sandwiches for a light lunch and then Linda reorganized some of the food storage to make room for what she had just bought.  Juniper lost here lunch, so Linda ended up taking a throw rug down to Paul and Nancy’s rig to wash.

By mid-afternoon the rain threat had vanished and the sun was peeking through the clouds, so we decided to venture out for a bit, just the two of us, and headed to the Anne of Green Gables Heritage Center, just around the corner from our campground.  The Center is part of the Prince Edward Island National Park (Parks Canada), so we figured they would have park guides and trail maps, and they did!  We did not spend much time there as we planned to return tomorrow with Nancy and Paul.  We drove out to the Cavendish Beach area, again PEI-NP, just to see how to get there and then drove west for bit on Hwy 6 through Stanley Bridge before turning around and returning to camp.

While meal preparations were underway,  I hooked up our waste tank discharge hose to complete our 3-way services connections.  I then got out the mini grease gun and added some grease to the two pivots for the weight distribution (WD) bars of the Propride 3P hitch, which was a bit “creaky” on the drive yesterday.  I also used a spray lubricant on the yoke and the two WD jack swivel linkages.  Nothing else looked out of order on the hitch.

As long as I was working in this area, the motor cover on the tongue jack has a small bubble level on top secured with three small screws.  The bubble is not centered when the trailer is level, which I find annoying.  I thought the screws might allow it to be adjusted, but I needed a special screwdriver and did not want to dig one out of my toolbox.  Instead, I tried to adjust the entire cover, which is held with four screws, two on each side.  That sort of almost kind of worked.  Not that it matters, as the LevelMatePro+ works really well, but this would be convenient to get “close” to level without the use of additional technology.

Dinner tonight was vegan lasagna, prepared by co-chefs Linda and Nancy, and it was amazing.  We finished off an open bottle of un-oaked Chardonnay, which paired nicely.  We built a campfire before eating but did not light it until we were done.  The fire proved to be fussy, requiring constant fanning to get enough oxygen to make flames instead of smoke.  The fire pits here are just that, small (24”) metal rings completely buried in the ground, with no way to adequately draft.

While enjoying the fire several of us heard an occasional deep rumbling.  I eventually noticed some rather dramatic clouds to the northwest and Linda confirmed on radar that a thunderstorm cell was moving towards us from the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  I walked to the end of the campground to get clear of the trees and used her Pixel 6 phone to take a few photos.  When the first raindrops appeared, we took our camp chairs and headed back to our trailer.  Not long after the rain started for real, and eventually got very heavy for a while, with thunder and lightning.

Here are four of the photos of the storm clouds:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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