Saturday, July 31, 2010

Western PEI

Okay... this was a long day...

Our only concrete plan, as far as I was aware, was to visit the Potato Museum, including the full-blown regional tour. We had called the night before (long story) to schedule the tour. The museum is in O'Leary, which is on the western edge of the island (about a 1:45 drive), and our tour was "around noon", so we left just before 10 AM.

As advertised, the farm tour includes: museum admission, potato-fudge tasting, visit to a potato farm, visit to a lighthouse, potato-themed lunch, etc.

The guy who normally does the tours was out of town (went to Halifax), and had someone else (Eric) fill in for him. Also, the restaurant at the museum isn't open on Saturdays, so the lunch was out. We all piled into a minivan with him, and drove off into the potato fields.



Eric was probably in his late sixties, but is still an active farmer. He drove us around the small (population: 800) town of O'Leary, pointing out some different farms and crops. He was born and raised in the area, and knew a lot about everyone. One of the first places he took us was a lobster-boat harbor (lobster season starts next week), where we got out and walked around for a bit.



Next, we took a brief drive through a "beef operation", but didn't get out due to... road conditions. April decided she didn't want to eat beef anymore.



As it was approaching 1 o'clock, Eric offered to stop at a local food establishment so we could get some lunch. The food was pretty decent, and reasonably-priced. We had burgers (except April), and Eric had ice cream.



After lunch, we went to a potato farm that's run by a buddy of Eric's. The guy is technically retired (his son runs the farm?), but he still operates the machine shop and other miscellaneous activities. We got an extensive tour of the farm, including the tractors and other farm equipment, potato storage/transportation and associated equipment, saw mill, shingle mill, machine shop, vegetable garden, etc.





Listening to these two natives speak to each other reminded me of being in Ireland: their conversation resembled English, but it was incredibly difficult to follow.

We said our goodbyes and thank yous to the retired potato farmer and headed down the road to the West Point Lighthouse, the tallest in all of PEI.



It's currently also an inn or B&B of some sort, and we went up to the top of it for a look around. The top level offered a nice view, including some of the 50-odd windmills scattered along the coast to the north.



The end of the tour brought us back to the potato museum, so we took the self-guided tour and learned more about potatoes than we ever thought was possible. At the end, we got a few plates of "potato fudge" (yes, it really exists...), which tastes better than it sounds.




By this time, it was nearly 5 o'clock, so we decided to head in the direction of Charlottetown. Not too far from the potato museum, we stopped at the Bottle Houses. This was a neat (and odd) attraction, essentially built buy an old guy in the early 80s as a way to recycle glass bottles (that would have ended up in a landfill, otherwise).




While traveling along the coastal road, toward Summerside, we spontaneously followed a sign to a random park/beach next to a campground. The dirt road that lead to the park ended suddenly at a short clay cliff. and we walked around a bit in the red mud/sand.




There was a vague plan to go to a grocery store and make dinner tonight (since we have a real kitchen), but we were running short on times, so we stopped at 2 Brothers restaurant for a quick dinner.

As we finally got back to Charlottetown, we stopped at a local grocery store chain and bought some food for dinner tomorrow and maybe the next day.

Tomorrow, there are tentative plans to do some ocean kayaking and take a seal-watching tour.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Canada again, eh?

So, Sabrina didn't quite consider the trip to Prague to be a "vacation", what with the working and all. She wanted to take a "real vacation", so we decided to go back to Nova Scotia.

Oh, and I'm not sure exactly how this decision was reached, but our friends Matt and April are coming, too.

Sabrina was already up in Boston, having gone up on Monday morning for a conference. Matt, April, and I drove up to Boston on Wednesday (about 6 hours), and we all stayed at my parents' house that night.



On Thursday, we drove to Canada (another ~7 hours) and stopped in Fredericton for the night. We went "downtown" and had a fantastic dinner at BrewBakers. After dinner, we had time for a quick trip to the hotel's hot tub and pool before bed.



Thursday, we sampled the local equivalent of Dunkin' Donuts (Tim Hortons) for breakfast. Aside from some of the weird people in there, it was pretty good.

We had about 4 more hours to go until reaching Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, so we headed out right after breakfast. About halfway, we stopped in Moncton for a bit. We had impeccable timing, and were walking by the river right at high tide, when the tidal waters come back up and cause the river to flow backwards for a few hours. I got a decent video of this happening, which I will post somewhere later posted on YouTube.




We grabbed lunch at the Pump House Brewery, which we had been to last time we were up this way a few years ago. I (again) had the beer sampler of 9 different beers that they brew.



Leaving Moncton, we drove a few more hours to Charlottetown, including a stop for gas (last before PEI) and a trip over the largest bridge-over-water-that-freezes (8 miles).




It was 5:30 by the time we finally found our destination: a swanky, furnished condo right on the water in Charlottetown. The guy who owns the place met us there and offered a lengthy explanation of his situation. This place is his winter home, because his summer home, about an hour east (115 acres?), gets 20 feet of snow in the winter. He's originally from Boston, and also has a house on Cape Cod, but doesn't like it down there anymore because it's too crowded in the summer.

The condo is absolutely gorgeous, and is in a great location.



After getting settled in, we walked over to Peake's Quay for some dinner. April got a lobster, and made a huge mess.



After dinner, we got ice cream at the "best ice cream in Canada", Cow's and walked around town for a bit. We stumbled upon a "history of PEI" uh... light show?... projected on the front of the government building.



We spent the rest of the night planning the remainder of our time on PEI. (Mostly April and Sabrina, really.)

The pics are up. If you're wondering why they're all out of order... you can ask April why she didn't set the time or date on her camera. I re-ordered them to match reality, I think.