Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Newfoundland to PEI and Caravan End in New Brunswick
NOTE: This entry was written on Tuesday, August 15. Lack of Internet access has delayed posting.
We left St. John’s Newfoundland on Wednesday, August 2nd, and headed to Grand Falls-Windsor for two nights. The highlight of Thursday’s bus tour was the Mussel Bound Tour, where we saw the process of cultivating and harvesting mussels at a farm in Fortune Harbor. They are growing about 30 tons of mussels, or for our Texas friends, about 75 million head.
Friday and Saturday were traveling days, including the 5-1/2 hour ferry to return from Newfoundland to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. In Nova Scotia, we had two free days on Sunday and Monday. On the first day, Carol and I drove around a pretty peninsula, and stopped to tour a reconstruction of the early Scottish settlements on the island. We had dinner that evening in a local fire hall, served by the Ladies’ Auxiliary from a local church. The second day we drove to nearby Baddeck to tour the Alexander Graham Bell Museum. In addition to inventing the telephone, Bell worked with the deaf, worked on early airplanes, and designed hydrofoil boats. Monday evening was a soup and cornbread dinner in the RV rec hall, followed by line dancing instruction and an ice cream social.
We departed Cape Breton early Tuesday morning for the ferry terminal to take a 1-1/2 hour ferry ride to Prince Edward Island. This is a smaller ferry, and it took 5 trips to get our entire group across – priority is given to truckers and automobiles. We spent six nights at our campground outside Charlottetown, the capital of PEI. On Tuesday, we took a bus tour of Charlottetown, which included Province House, the home of the PEI Legislature and the location of the 1864 meeting from representatives of different Canadian colonies which ultimately led to the formation of Canada as an independent nation in 1867. Since Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday were free days, Carol and I took our car on a day-and-a-half tour around the west end of the island, spending the night in a motel near North Cape. North Cape is the home of a windmill generation site with 36 windmills connected to the electric grid. On this driving trip we saw a couple of museums, including the Potato Museum (PEI has over 96,000 acres planted in potatoes). PEI is a great change from Newfoundland. Newfoundland is rocks. PEI is fertile farmland, lush greenery, and manicured lawns.
Friday was a bus tour of the center section of the island, including a stop at the College of Piping for a short demonstration of piping, drumming, and Scottish dancing. On Saturday, we left the campground on a double decker bus about 4:00 p.m. for an early lobster dinner followed by Anne the Musical, a show based on the Anne of Green Gables stories.
Sunday was another free day – we basically sat around the RV and caught up on reading and writing. That evening we had hearty hors d'oeuvres in the campground rec hall and honored our tour hosts and tail-enders.
Monday we drove across the 8 mile long Confederation Bridge that joins PEI and New Brunswick to our campground in Fredericton. The campground has WiFi access, which is a real treat. A hamburger BBQ dinner in the campground pavilion was followed by a round of miniature golf.
Today (Tuesday) was a visit to King’s Landing, a restoration of Loyalist buildings in New Brunswick with folks in period costume from 1783 to 1900. I thought the highlight of the village was a water-powered sawmill. This evening we are having a farewell dinner downtown and we’ll have a continental breakfast in the morning before going our separate ways.
Carol and I are headed for four days near Bar Harbor, Maine – our plans after that are indefinite. While there, we will have dinner with Doug Lackey, who retired from BellSouth in May, and who owns a summer home in the area.
I will try to upload some photos in a separate post.
We left St. John’s Newfoundland on Wednesday, August 2nd, and headed to Grand Falls-Windsor for two nights. The highlight of Thursday’s bus tour was the Mussel Bound Tour, where we saw the process of cultivating and harvesting mussels at a farm in Fortune Harbor. They are growing about 30 tons of mussels, or for our Texas friends, about 75 million head.
Friday and Saturday were traveling days, including the 5-1/2 hour ferry to return from Newfoundland to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. In Nova Scotia, we had two free days on Sunday and Monday. On the first day, Carol and I drove around a pretty peninsula, and stopped to tour a reconstruction of the early Scottish settlements on the island. We had dinner that evening in a local fire hall, served by the Ladies’ Auxiliary from a local church. The second day we drove to nearby Baddeck to tour the Alexander Graham Bell Museum. In addition to inventing the telephone, Bell worked with the deaf, worked on early airplanes, and designed hydrofoil boats. Monday evening was a soup and cornbread dinner in the RV rec hall, followed by line dancing instruction and an ice cream social.
We departed Cape Breton early Tuesday morning for the ferry terminal to take a 1-1/2 hour ferry ride to Prince Edward Island. This is a smaller ferry, and it took 5 trips to get our entire group across – priority is given to truckers and automobiles. We spent six nights at our campground outside Charlottetown, the capital of PEI. On Tuesday, we took a bus tour of Charlottetown, which included Province House, the home of the PEI Legislature and the location of the 1864 meeting from representatives of different Canadian colonies which ultimately led to the formation of Canada as an independent nation in 1867. Since Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday were free days, Carol and I took our car on a day-and-a-half tour around the west end of the island, spending the night in a motel near North Cape. North Cape is the home of a windmill generation site with 36 windmills connected to the electric grid. On this driving trip we saw a couple of museums, including the Potato Museum (PEI has over 96,000 acres planted in potatoes). PEI is a great change from Newfoundland. Newfoundland is rocks. PEI is fertile farmland, lush greenery, and manicured lawns.
Friday was a bus tour of the center section of the island, including a stop at the College of Piping for a short demonstration of piping, drumming, and Scottish dancing. On Saturday, we left the campground on a double decker bus about 4:00 p.m. for an early lobster dinner followed by Anne the Musical, a show based on the Anne of Green Gables stories.
Sunday was another free day – we basically sat around the RV and caught up on reading and writing. That evening we had hearty hors d'oeuvres in the campground rec hall and honored our tour hosts and tail-enders.
Monday we drove across the 8 mile long Confederation Bridge that joins PEI and New Brunswick to our campground in Fredericton. The campground has WiFi access, which is a real treat. A hamburger BBQ dinner in the campground pavilion was followed by a round of miniature golf.
Today (Tuesday) was a visit to King’s Landing, a restoration of Loyalist buildings in New Brunswick with folks in period costume from 1783 to 1900. I thought the highlight of the village was a water-powered sawmill. This evening we are having a farewell dinner downtown and we’ll have a continental breakfast in the morning before going our separate ways.
Carol and I are headed for four days near Bar Harbor, Maine – our plans after that are indefinite. While there, we will have dinner with Doug Lackey, who retired from BellSouth in May, and who owns a summer home in the area.
I will try to upload some photos in a separate post.
