Week 4: Prince Edward Island

I'm starting to get an inkling of what it was like for my ancestors as they tried to settle Nebraska, and I don't like it.

Lemme roll that back a bit.  I love watching storms roll in.  One of the few gripes I had about living in Madison was that we didn't get enough thunderstorms, and the ones we did get were hard to watch from our apartment with the trees blocking the view out the back porch.  If I wanted a good view of a storm coming in, I'd either hide under the awning to stay dry and cross my fingers that the storm was a big one so I could enjoy it overhead as I looked to the east [my only real viewpoint] or run out to the front and cross my fingers that the view was worth getting drenched.  

When I was 10, a tornado missed our farmhouse by a quarter mile.  Our old farmhouse, supported by railroad jacks, didn't seem a likely candidate for survival, so we outran it, also not a good option. When we got back, the farm still miraculously standing, we found out that our 80+ year old neighbor had stood on his front step the entire time, watching the tornado pass. Since that day, I've made storm chasing a bucket list item for myself.

When I was a kid, my family would tell me stories of great grandma having to find her way back to the farm by holding onto the barb wire fence when she was caught out in a dust storm during the dust bowl. Or the story of how the first family homesteaders arrived in Nebraska late in the year and didn't have time to build a home before winter arrived, instead having to dig a hole into the side of a hill and fortify it, making that their home for the first winter. [And I'm not even sure how true that one is at this point.]

So it strikes me as kind of odd that over the last few days, I found myself looking to the horizon not with eager anticipation, but with a bit of anxiety. On one hand, I realize that severe weather isn't really a thing in this part of Canada, but on the other, I'm sleeping in a tent. There was a storm forming in the afternoon and you could see the high streaks of clouds that rush out ahead of a strong storm as the heaps of warm air it sucks up crystallizes as it rapidly cools as it peaks between 30-45 thousand feet. I kept looking at it, hoping it would swing wide to the south and miss us. Thankfully, it did and all it did was increase the hues of the sunset.

This won't be the last time I find myself surprised at a change in view as we continue this trip, but this was one that surprised me. :)

Our arrival at Prince Edward Island national park [after a ride on a 14 km bridge, the world's longest over water that freezes] was cut short when we found out that it's still closed until next week. [This just begs the question of how the morons on Trip Adviser were leaving glowing reviews of staying at the park in May and how fantastic it was. Orfl orfl. ] We meandered our way to the provincial park of Cabot Beach after putting the phone to good early use and calling around to see if any of them were open.  It was nestled next to a 'town' of maybe 50 called Malpeque. The one we found was nearly empty and had sites right up on the ocean. We had our sunshade up to keep out of the rain, but as the wind came in, we quickly had to try and get it down as the wind was blowing it sideways and bending the metal arms holding it up. Wind right off of the ocean is not to be trifled with. That night, we relearned that lesson as we woke up to our tent collapsing in on us. While not the first time it has happened, it's worth reiterating that waking up to howling wind, with your shelter repeatedly falling in on you, is a bit nerve-wracking. I pulled the vehicle around in the rain and wind and placed it between the wind and the tent. This helped a bit, but couldn't account for the gusts that would pull the rain guard out, and then compress it back in, almost like an accordion, blasting fresh cold air into the tent and preventing us from retaining any heat inside the tent [and from sleeping].

The Harbor at Malpeque

A gray dawn came that morning, and we reluctantly pulled ourselves out of bed and quickly decided that we were not going to have a repeat of the last night [our tent surely would not last another night if we attempted it]. We struck camp and began moving ourselves behind the treeline to get out of the wind. The trees provided a stark testament to what the wind was capable of: their south-western sides with stubby 'branches' that were more nubs than anything; lacking leaves / needles and bare, while their other sides were full and long. This was particularly pronounced along the coast, where they seemed to form a nesting doll of trees, each one closer to the coast a bit smaller and able to fit inside the one immediately behind it and further inland.

This is how I woke up last Friday:  apparently my shoes are delicious to slugs!

Rainy days like that were meant to be spent indoors, so we did just that. We fled to the capital of PEI, Charlottetown, and plopped down in their visitor center with its free wifi for a couple of hours. Reheating and re-interneting. We walked around the downtown area, trying to only soak in the sites. One of those stops was at their quite beautiful cathedral:

We finally caved to homesickness and ran towards a little slice of Americana: a movie at the mall. Dinner was at a great local place called Papa Joe's [bacon wrapped meatloaf, completing the Americana trifecta]. The day ended on the coast at the campsite, watching the sunset.

We woke up Sunday to a blue sky and 70-degree weather and were giddy. Finally!

Warm weather means we can hang cloths!  

We practically skipped our way down to the national park we initially tried to camp at when we had arrived on PEI to go biking. The 9km trail was lots of fun: varied terrain [grass, gravel, sand [woof], dirt] and views [woods, fields, coastline, sand dunes] Warmed up and worn out from our first honest ride since Fort Wayne, we wandered down to the beach and happily spent the afternoon reading and soaking in the sun.

In case you forgot.


Cavendish Beach

Enjoying the beautiful sunset on the coast

A second day of great weather brought us to the north cape of PEI, enjoying a scenic drive along the coast and seeing the cluster of wind turbines [Vesta has a test site located here]. 

It's big, all right?

That evening, we went to the first show in the Festival of Small Halls. PEI takes two weeks every June to put on numerous shows for entertainers who've “made it”, and they return to perform in little community centers around the island, each holding at most 100 people. Bethany and I tracked down their little office headquarters to buy tickets, and ended up talking with both the coordinator of the event and one of the performers: about our trip, about the event, about PEI. We were excited to see the performance, and spent a couple of hours in heaven listening to a story-teller, a fiddler, and an accordionist [accordianer? Player of the accordion?] We even rolled with it as we received a shout-out from the event coordinator after we had shared a bit more about our trip with her; “We even have a young couple here from Wisconsin! In the United States! [laughter] Who quit their jobs to become hippies and travel across Canada this summer! [applause] And are now turning beet red for me saying this out loud.”

Nils, Cynthia, and Mike 

[In a lot of ways PEI feels like the rural Midwest. Only two towns on the island have populations in excess of 10,000. You can imagine how closely knit the people are on the island, which itself feels like a small community. During the show, we found out that bloodlines are extremely important here. Are you from the island, or are you “from away”? And, apparently only those that are born on PEI can truly claim they are from the island. I felt blessed to participate in such an intimate display of island culture.]

We struck camp this morning and made our way to the ferry, which as I'm writing this is about to dock in Nova Scotia, and the next stage of the trip is about to begin.

Red soil, green grass, bright blue sky.  Typical PEI. :)