Goodbye Prince Edward Island, Hello Nova Scotia June 14-15, 2017

Yesterday, we visited Charlottetown, the birthplace of the Confederation.  In 1864, there was a meeting here in PEI involving the Atlantic colonies.  Quebec and Ontario requested to attend as observers, and the meeting went so well, that they all decided to join together in a Confederation that a few years later became the Dominion of Canada.   Canada is currently celebrating its 150th birthday.

The Province House where the meeting was held is under renovation, but they reproduced the original meeting room in the Arts Centre building next door and showed a film documenting the meeting.  Interesting stuff - Britain was happy to see Canada govern itself, unlike what the USA went through almost 90 years earlier.

Charlottetown is a pretty city and we walked a small pedestrian outdoor mall visiting shops near the Arts Centre.

Some roads in Charlottetown have telephone poles in the roadway - had to watch our mirrors!

We continued on westward along the "Red Sands Coast" to the Confederation Bridge and returned the 8 miles to New Brunswick and then east into Nova Scotia.

We stopped at a Provincial Campground for the night, but Nova Scotia's Parks have no utilities.  No electric = no TV and limited use of radio or other items that use the batteries.  Had a delicious dinner of sausage and pepper sandwiches, played some cards and early to bed.

Nicely decorated town intersection

Woke to a cold morning, with some clouds.  We got on the road about 10 am and drove through some pretty little towns along the north shore of Nova Scotia.

Stopped at Jost Winery - their specialty is a white wine, but Jack and I both prefer reds, so we got a nice red table wine and a cab, along with some locally made gouda cheese flavored with sun-roasted tomatoes.

Jost Winery

Stopped at a campground with full hookups mid-afternoon so that we could get all our electronics charged and do some laundry before getting on the ferry tomorrow.  We expect internet service to be spotty in Newfoundland, so check the blog occasionally to see if we were able to update.

The Map below shows the clockwise route we took around Prince Edward Island.  My impressions of PEI include small farms of tilled red soil, Anne of Green Gables, wonderful small harbor towns, and gorgeous views of the sea.

Eastern PEI - June 11-12

Sunday:  From our campground at Red Point, we drove a few miles north to visit the singing sands at Basin Beach.  If I shuffled my feet hard in the sand, I could hear a bit of a sound like a tuning fork, but we were told that a hot sunny day produces the best sounds and today was partly cloudy and in the 60's.  Pretty beach, though with red sand and red sandstone cliffs.  There is a fishery museum here, too, but it was not yet open for the season.  This is primarily a summer beach area and the season does not really start until July.  Lucky for us, we can get fabulous campsites right on the water now, while in a few weeks, all the campsites are reserved in these waterfront campgrounds.

Forgot to show our birdhouse collection in the last post.  On our way East, we drove a side road that had colorful birdhouses on almost every telephone pole for a couple of miles. Jack insisted that we photograph every one....

Back to today, we stopped in a small coastal town called Georgetown to shop at a couple of local craft stores.  We toured the shops, and found a spot by the water we could park to have our lunch and a nap.  On our way in, we saw a sign in front of the old Georgetown Inn that they were having a special turkey dinner - one of Jack's favorite meals.  We decided to check out the Provincial Park campground a few miles away.  Brudenell is on a river and has two golf courses.  We figured we would stay there, return to Georgetown for a turkey dinner, so that is exactly what we did.  Got a gorgeous sight overlooking the broad river for two nights and got a tee time for 2:24 tomorrow.  The turkey dinner was great and apparently, the Inn has these specials on Sunday evenings and the place was filled with locals all calling out to each other.  Reminded me of our clubhouse at Legend Oaks.  The winds were wild today, gusting over 40 mph and the RV was really rocking and rolling and the river had whitecaps.

Monday: A nice, easy morning with coffee outside in the sunshine overlooking the now quiet river.  Did some cleaning and maintenance in the RV and then enjoyed our round of golf on the beautiful Dundarave course with temps around 70.  Beautiful, easy course - wide open fairways and only two holes with any major problems (sort of like #10 on our Legend Oaks course for our SC friends) and many, many red sand bunkers.  A number of holes overlook the river and we saw a fluffy red fox a couple of times, but he was too quick for us to get a photo.

Birches line this section of cartpath

Giant sandstone boulders as hole markers

They have a very upscale clubhouse and we enjoyed a nice dinner before heading back to our campsite about a half mile away.  Another enjoyable day here in Prince Edward Island.