The crows are calling incessantly! Someone has finished their breakfast, and the crows think it the remains are for them. This is the morning routine at the Cavendish branch of Canada's national Park on Prince Edward Island.
Our first day here was spent just resting, sleeping, reading, napping and all of the things in between. Maggie and I did a long walk on the beach, our only fully sunny day, and covered a couple of miles, finally reaching the bloated carcass of a very large dead seal. It was pretty smelly downwind and the amusing thing was to see how Maggie wanted to immediately roll the smell off of herself on the sandy beach. A picture of the seal will be included if it came out.
Movie of the photos for this entry:
http://youtu.be/Y5eWNui3O7A
That evening I drove a couple of miles down the road to the port of New London and bought fresh Atlantic salmon from the fisherman there, and then stopped at a small farmhouse selling fresh organic vegetables and bought both arugula and mixed greens and some truly “new” potatoes which had just been dug that morning and required quite a bit of scrubbing to get the sandy soil off. Betsy lounged, Maggie napped and I enjoyed cooking a delicious salmon steak on the barbecue–even my toughest critics admitted it was absolutely delicious.
While cooking that I also popped a freshly made loaf of apple, raisin, bran bread into the over for baking – for breakfast. It worked! Over dinner we watched a DVD of old Bob Newhart TV films about the Inn in Vermont – he is still funny.
We set off the next morning (Thursday) to do some sightseeing and as it was Betsy's choice–we stopped at each art gallery along the way, at the various small villages, and the shops. She gave the local artisans only a C grade saying she was a bit disappointed in both quality and execution. The shops were more interesting with lots of unusual things, like Prince Edward Island sweaters, the Prince Edward Island Preserves factory which sold lemon and ginger marmalade with amaretto, and so on.
We wandered West and South as far as Summerside the second largest town on the island, and in the province, about the size of Vienna–we checked out the waterfront, the restaurants and since it was then starting to rain headed for Charlottetown, the capital. It is a big city, about twice the size of Vienna at 40,000 people. It has some pleasant tree-lined streets, the University of New Brunswick, some large strip malls, and a pleasant old town with some old brick buildings. There was a nice waterfront with some commercial tourist development, a small fishing port and a place for larger vessel. Near the waterfront there was a kind of historic district and as it was threatening to rain we stopped to have dinner in one of the recommended pub restaurants. Liz and I both ordered lobster linguine which was delicious.
It was raining cats and Maggies when we came out so it was a very wet drive back over the rolling green hills. At times we thought we were lost in Ireland. For some reason there is a local radio station in French that plays extremely good jazz choices so I enjoyed listening to that on the drive back. We got back to the campground to find we had left the towels out to dry, and the heavens had opened in the meantime so they were truly wet now. We felt sorry for those of you living South of the border in your near hundred degree heat as here it was a pleasant 72°, again.
We had a good night sleep with rain falling steadily overnight, and awoke to find a nearly dry morning, with lots of puddles on the ground. A quiet breakfast, before the crows descended, led to a long walk on the beach for all three of us and the waves were in marked contrast to the gentle ripples of the day before. The rainstorm overnight had whipped up some weather out to sea (Gulf of St. Lawrence) that was making it seem more like we were on the ocean by both sound and sight.
We had to move campsite to the one next door because our reservation in number 64 was only for three nights whereas we had number 65 for two more nights. It took us about 45 min. and wasn't too bad. Then we headed off for some more sightseeing and stumbled upon a very unusual place called strangely, the Dunes. It was run by very gay Potter and his partner and they had assembled several modern wood sided buildings of striking architecture full of unusual things, mainly from Asia. There was a huge garden full of statuary from all across Southeast Asia, lots of imported furniture, striking artwork, loads of pottery, a restaurant which was so busy we couldn't get into it without an hour's wait and the gardens surrounding it were full of gorgeous flowers. Photos will appear. We trundle back down the road a mile or so to a family restaurant and Liz had her fish and chips for the first time.
We then headed over to the other part of Cavendish national Park–to the east - called Stanley, which is a long barrier dunes Island and there is also an old estate called Dalvay, which was the home of one of Canada's early oil barons at the turn of the 19th century. It is now a hotel operated by the national Parks of Canada and it was there that Prince William and Duchess Kate stayed a couple of weeks ago. See the photos. You can apparently stay there and the food is reputed to be very good. They still serve "high tea" at 4 PM every afternoon.
The road took us to nearby St. Ann's village, where our intended destination was St. Ann's Catholic Church–noted in this part of the island for hosting its daily church lobster supper. It was truly in a church baseme. There was live music, and you had the choice of fish, scallops, lobster, or steak and chicken. It was preceded by a bowl of chowder, a bucket of muscles, a Caesar salad, the main course, and then your choice of pies–lemon meringue, apple, blueberry, or rhubarb crisp or chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream. It is served daily except for Sundays. A good money raiser for the church as it was packed with tourists from all over Canada and a few US licensed cars.
The Canadians are good travelers–we find ourselves surrounded by campers who are from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Québec and other provinces. There are few Americans, at least in the campgrounds. Even in the tourism sites we see few US plates. Everyone is remarking on the heat in the states while we enjoy 72 to 75° temperatures here. When we got back last night after the church basement supper it was actually rather chilly as it was still drizzling. We got to try out the furnace to take the chill off the inside of the camper–it worked very well and within 2 min. we were toasty warm and the sense of dampness had left. Probably the furnace will get much more of a workout when we get to Newfoundland.
The sun has broken through now this morning, it is perfect weather and we may spend some time on the beach, then head for the tourism center to load this blog and upload some pictures–I think I have figured out how to do it–and then do some more sightseeing. Hope you are all avoiding the GREAT HEATof 2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment