May 22 – June 3, 2024.
See @trishellisusa and/or www.trishellisusa.com for my USA goals and travels. This blog is for my TCC count.
This is Travelers’ Century Club territory #4 for my over-age-50 travels. Canada is #3, but since I am going back and forth in and out of Canada over the next month, I’ll just sum up all the Canada days in future consolidated posts.
Yes, PEI is part of Canada. However, by TCC rules, it is its own territory since it is an island administered as a distinctive province with a population over 100,000.
My first couple days, May 22 and 23, were spent driving along the southwestern coast through Summerside and up to O’Leary, home of the Canadian Potato Museum. Turns out PEI grows a lot of potatoes due to its iron-rich (hence red) soil. Most of the area I drove through was farmland, and the red dirt contrasted beautifully with the yellow dandelions, green grass, and blue sky.
I of course visited the Canadian Potato Museum with its massive potato sculpture out front. The museum gives the history of the potato and its introduction to and flourishment within PEI. It was all much more interesting than I had anticipated.
I then tried some potato chocolate fudge, which tasted similar to regular fudge. Had poutine for lunch at the museum’s restaurant.
There are lighthouses everywhere on PEI. The tourism site states that PEI has the largest concentration of lighthouses in North America, and I believe it.
Photos include:
lighthouse right after you cross Confederation Bridge into PEI,
Confederation Bridge, 8 miles long and the longest bridge in Canada. Longest in the world that crosses icy waters,
Summerside Lighthouse,
West Point Lighthouse,
Scenes from Confederation Trail in O’Leary,
The Canadian Potato Museum
May 24, 2024.
Took a leisurely ride up North Cape Coastal Drive to North Cape. It was foggy by the lighthouse, but I enjoyed the Black Marsh Nature Trail nonetheless. Came back to O’Leary to have seaweed pie, which can only be found at the Potato Museum. Atlas Obscura did an episode on seaweed pie – I will post a link in the comments.
Wildlife sightings today included a gorgeous fox and a mom woodcock trying to cross the street with her little ones. The mom froze as my car approached, and she wouldn’t move. I finally got out of my car to try to hurry things along, and the mom and her littles scurried back to the brush from whence they had come. Hope they eventually crossed safely.
May 25-26, 2024. Of course had to visit the place where L.M. Montgomery lived and drew inspiration for her book Anne of Green Gables. The home she calls Green Gables was actually the home of her extended relatives. Montgomery herself was raised a short walk away, and the kitchen from her home still stands and has been preserved. Green Gables itself has Lover’s Lane, which Montgomery loved and wrote about in her novels, as well as “The Haunted Woods,” which is just a short latch of trees between her homestead and Green Gables.
Thought of my younger daughter a lot while I was here. I have fond memories of reading Anne of Green Gables to my girls as we rested while hiking Humphrey’s Peak in Arizona during our highpointing days. Sage especially liked the tale and read it to herself later on. She still has the book, which came in a set along with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (which she also enjoyed).
Green Gables is now furnished as though it housed its fictional characters.
May 27-28, 2024. PEI. Belfast tulips, Charlottetown, and PEI National Park.
Felt funky yesterday. Drove to see the annual tulip bloom in Belfast, then briefly checked out Charlottetown. Left Charlottetown in a snit after being asked “just a couple questions” from a screen after buying overpriced over-the-counter ice cream (no, I am not tipping for you to hand me ice cream, and I am sad to see USA overtipping culture has made its way to Canada). Drove back to Cavendish realizing I was in a bad mood and tried to figure out why.
Hungry? No. Angry? A little bit, and at someone I care about. That situation is nothing new though, and I’ve long since realized there is nothing I can do about it so, 99% of the time, I feel at peace and very happy with my life. Lonely? Maybe. I touched base with some people online and felt a teeny bit better. Tired? Yes, though I have been getting a lot of quality sleep lately.
In the past, I would have sought to drown the negative feeling with alcohol or food. I refused to do that yesterday. Instead, I allowed myself to feel irritable and down. Alcohol and/or overeating never made anything better in my life, it only made things ten times worse. So I reminded myself of everything for which I was grateful – which is a hell of a lot – and I simultaneously allowed myself to feel despondent. I gave myself permission to cry, though after a few minutes I realized I didn’t need or want to cry. I just wanted to kick random objects. Then I remembered I needed my feet for upcoming thru-hikes, so instead of kicking stuff I just sat around looking surly until I found something decent on Netflix. Went to bed early.
Woke up this morning feeling much better. Very glad I did not succumb to old temptations yesterday. Had a long and beautiful walk by the ocean this morning.
Nine months and eleven days sober today.
June 3, 2024. Two months since I sold everything and embarked on a life of full-time travel. Absolutely no regrets.
Spent last week in Cavendish enjoying leisurely strolls by the ocean. Moved on to Souris a couple days ago, stopping at various spots along the way to see more cliffs and lighthouses.
My last full day (June 2) on Prince Edward Island felt especially nice. I walked for miles along the beach in Souris, home of the “singing sands.” The sand here “sings” when you step on it due to its high silica content. I did not hear the song today above Mother Nature’s roar, though. The wind gusted loudly, the rain fell freely, and the waves crashed beside me, and all that made for an exhilarating trek during which I felt especially alive and awake. I returned to my AirBnB drenched and thankful for my merino wool hiking clothing which retains body heat even when wet.
Once dry and changed, I enjoyed the stellar CD collection of my hosts. Included were songs I had not heard in years like John Lennon’s “Watching the Wheels,” a tune I used to play to myself while my kids were little. There were also songs I used to love that others in my life had ridiculed. Songs from The Pointer Sisters, Elton John, Courtney Love, Prince. I listened to those tunes and wondered why I had ever allowed certain people into my life, people who insisted my tastes were inferior to theirs, that the music I liked wasn’t as good as the music they liked, that my goals were silly, that my dreams didn’t matter. I played the songs and danced knowing there had never been anything wrong with my goals or my dreams or my tastes…except for my taste in some of the company I used to keep. I danced and felt free. I AM free. And I am grateful. And my dreams are alive and well, and I now pursue them unapologetically.
If my hosts have a nanny cam in their living area, then they got a nice show. I hope they enjoyed my dancing.
PEI was lovely, and I am grateful for all the lighthouses, the potatoes, the red soil, the foxes (I saw so many!), the kind people, the greenery, all of it.
Time to move on.
Final few words about Prince Edward Island. Potatoes. Really good potato chips. Red dirt and sand and cliffs. Lighthouses. More lighthouses. Even more lighthouses. Tim Horton’s pastries and inexpensive yet very good coffee. Amish and Mennonite communities (far more than I expected). Nice people. Foxes (tons of them). Green grass. And, of course, ocean everywhere.