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Published: August 2nd 2011
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It’s incredible the way time can get away from you. It feels like I just posted an entry yesterday but another week has passed. We enjoyed my Aunt’s family bbq, especially the boat ride around the point and Deer Island, no whales showed up this year, but it was a beautiful time on the water regardless. BJ and I enjoyed a few more days of relaxation and then finally packed up and headed on to P.E.I. on Tuesday.
It’s a fairly quick drive from Saint John to Charlottetown, but we took our time sightseeing along the way. One of the stops we had to make was Magnetic Hill just outside of Moncton. You enter the park, pay $5 and drive over to Magnetic Hill where you drive to the ‘bottom’ of the hill and turn around at the white sign. Once facing ‘up’ the hill you put your car in neutral and the magic starts! Your car starts slowly rolling ‘up’ magnetic hill where some strange magnetic force is working to pull you faster and faster ‘up’; our speed topped out somewhere over 30km/hr. It was a short ride, and truly wasn’t hair raising, but it is worth it.
We crossed over the confederation bridge, another ‘BIG’ Canadian thing, and an astounding feat of engineering. The views from the bridge are amazing, you can see the rise and curve of the bridge as you drive along it, and just at the end of the bridge are the red sands of P.E.I. Once we touched ground we headed on to our friend Tammy’s dad’s place. Charlie was an excellent host and gave us a wonderful place to stay and some great insights on things to see. First we popped into Hunter River café and bakery and enjoyed their amazing and well recommended cinnamon rolls. Do not, and I repeat do not miss out on a cinnamon roll from here. We spent the rest of the morning at the National Historic Site of Green Gables, the farm house that inspired L.M. Montgomery to give Green Gables its Anne. It was a beautiful walk through Lover’s Lane and the Haunted wood, and we even treated ourselves to Anne’s Raspberry cordial.
That night Charlie was good enough to get us in touch with Kim and she filled us up with things to see on the North West end of the Island. We
took off early and headed to Kensington where there is a great Haunted Mansion. The building has been completely gutted and transformed into 3 floors of terror and fright. There are lots of motion sensor activated frights and ghouls popping out at you, shaking floors, screams of anguish and things that go bump in the night. The coolest part of the Mansion is the vortex room. There is catwalk anchored on both ends of the room and around it spins a mirrored cylinder that reflects multicoloured lights all around you. When you take your first step on the platform you can tell the platform does not move, by the second and third steps, you are getting extremely dizzy, you start feeling the platform twist beneath you, your balance disappears and you can swear that the platform is twisting at a dangerous angle. I had to close my eyes and walk blind from the middle of the platform to the end; I was too dizzy and nearly getting sick. Once my eyes were closed, my balance came back and the spins went away. BJ was just as sickened as me, but had to walk the platform two more times, he just
couldn’t believe that the platform was not the part moving. Both times he crossed he got so off balance he walked into the railings hard.
That afternoon we stopped into the P.E.I. Potato Museum on route to meet up with Kim for a slice of Seaweed Pie. The museum boasts a 14-foot Potato statue out front and is full of info on the potato industry on the Island. We joined Kim at the Seaweed Pie Café in Mimnigish, where they use the gelatine extracted from P.E.I.’s Sea-moss to create a delicious custard topping for the pie. When Kim had mentioned the seaweed pie both BJ and I decided we could not leave without having that. We expected the pie to come out with either black or dark green kelp like filling, but we were pleasantly surprised and would have another piece again.
After the beach we headed on to see North Cape and its windmill farms, we were hoping that we might catch the horses and carts working the sea moss, but the tide was in so we snapped a few photo’s and headed on to the glass bottle house. The Glass house is located directly on the
coast line of P.E.I and is stunning in the late evening light. A local man built 3 structures all from found glass containers, just one of his buildings uses over 12 thousand bottles. When you are inside the buildings you are surrounded by the most enchanting light! The setting sun gleams in and green and brown and the occasional blue light refract and dance around you.
We left Charlie and Hunter River the next day and made our way to visit our fellow cross Canada road trip friends in Souris. We had met Ken, Danielle and their two daughters at the Laird Hot Springs and kept crossing paths on our way up and back from Inuvik. We all hit it off, escpcially since we were both travelling with Columbus Roof Top Tents, and they had invited to stop in and visit with them when we made it to P.E.I. They help run the first distillery opened on the island and the only distillery to make legal moonshine. We dropped in to their shop and tasted some Strait Lightning; it is a twice distilled moonshine coming in at 75% alcohol. One sip of that and it takes your breath away!
The next morning we woke early, packed up and said good-bye to P.E.I., we had an amazing time and cannot wait until we come back for a dedicated visit to the beaches and rolling hills.
Happy Travels!
Erin & BJ
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