Misc Liisa
Random musingsArchive for farm
Day 17- Another Ferry, More Angst and What to Do
We were up early the next morning and ready to get our $1/3 minute showers, which pretty much sucked in the weird 50’s style bathhouses with the strange art on the walls framed with branches and the stalls that had doors that only went down to your knees. I am fairly certain that at this rate I will never get my legs shaved properly again. After our quick showers, we went back and made some omelettes. Camp omelettes always taste pretty great and these made up for a lot of misery since we also had some cinnamon roles left.
Of course cooking a multistage breakfast cost us time getting the food cooked and the dishes washed before we could pack up and get out of camp and threw us off schedule. It irks Tom to no end that between showers and breakfast and cleanup and packup it takes about 2 hours to pull things together to get going in the morning. That is unless we compromise breakfast or don’t really clean, both of which you pay for later.
We got out of the campground about 15 minutes later than we planned, but still with plenty of time to get to the ferry and get in line. We ran into yet more construction, but made it there without any problems and were placed near the front of the camper line to get on board. Tom was really befuddled about why they only charge for the ferry going the other way. You pay for “round-trip” if you go from PEI to Nova Scotia, but you pay nothing going from Nova Scotia to PEI. It had cost us $250 for the passage on the ferry to Nova Scotia from New Brunswick, so I was grateful for getting a break on this leg of the journey.
While I ran over to use the bathroom, a guy from PEI came over to ask Tom about the Silver Shadow. By this point, Tom is thinking he should be charging $5 for tours. The guy turned out to own a B&B on PEI and told us that he loved the island because of all the farms. He said he’d been to Cape Breton for a wedding and wasn’t sure how people could live there since there was nowhere to have a farm.
This started a series of negative conversations. First, Tom is certain that we won’t get on the ferry. Even though we’re in line and it looks like it’s not that crowded. Then, he starts in with the “What will we do on PEI? Why are we going there?” It had become pretty clear that he didn’t want to go to the island, but the sites were booked and I think you can always find something interesting to see and do and everyone I’d mentioned PEI to said “oh, you’ll love it there!”
We ended up on the ferry with no issues and got Tenzin settled in the car and us settled in the lounge. Tom saw another porpoise out the window. This ferry prides itself on having a Cows ice cream store. It’s supposed to be some fantastic ice cream and there was a line out the door the entire time of the crossing. We headed to the cafeteria to grab some lunch and found people ordering poutine- which is french fried, coated in gravy with cheese melted on top and looked to me like a cholesterol nightmare. We ended up ordering some pizza and beef stew and a green slushie- weird combo, but it was pretty good.
When we got to PEI, we started driving toward the campground. The guy was right, it was dotted with farms. Tom thought it looked a lot like the midwest US, but I didn’t think so. The midwest has mostly sold out to factory farming and these were still small family farms. This one cows and that one potatoes and the next one with corn. Some had pretty victorian farmhouses and others very standard ranch houses. We were both disappointed that the architecture in Canada wasn’t any more unique.
We found that PEI grows new potatoes in the red clay-filled soil there that they are very proud of. Nearly every farm had a little stand out at the road where you could get a bag of potatoes and leave some money. They grown nearly 1/3 of all the potatoes for Canada on this little island and they serve potatoes with nearly everything. For a foodie, it was an interesting place because they were so agriculturally self-sustaining.
We got to Twin Shores Campground and found that it was the biggest campground we’d ever been in with more than 650 sites on both sides of a road and from one bay to another. I had asked for a spot in the trees and their sites were literally surrounded by evergreens with very tight and angled entrances. Our first attempt at parking the camper wasn’t successful and Tom was nervous about the fact that people were watching from campers on either side of us. He insisted I drive back around and I had that one fleeting moment of being so annoyed with his snippishness that I considered leaving and leaving him behind. But instead I went back and we tried again and again and eventually got the camper to a good enough spot that we could move it by hand.
Tom went for a run to try to reduce his tension and I set up camp and walked the dog while he was away. When he got back, we went for a walk on the beach of red sand. It was pretty, but Tenzin snuffled a bit in the sand and ended up with sand in his bad eye. We got back to camp and cleaned it out. Tom grabbed a 25 cent/5 minute shower and put on his Oscar the Grouch shirt as a warning that he still wasn’t feeling too good about being at PEI. I told him maybe he needed to wear it for a few days.
We got a fire going with some difficulty (more damp wood) and made fire pie pizzas and strawberry rhubarb pies for dinner. The people on either side of us had kids and popup trailers and with the amount of music and noise, we were starting to really understand why we’d never had children. I can’t imagine why nature would make the voices of little children so shrill and squeaky. A camper about 3 sites down from us had some serious country music blaring and I’m not sure what exactly an Ontario based camper has in common with the beer/tight jeans/out of work lyrics he was listening to besides his truck, but he definitely felt the need to share his musical interest.
We were pretty happy to get to bed once things quieted down and wondered at the noises outside the camper that night. I thought maybe some of the cheeky red squirrels were into something and drifted off to sleep hoping the next day would be more pleasant.
Pics from today are here- http://bit.ly/bEaiZg
Misc Liisa 