The Right Coast and Homeward Bound

2011/09/13

Today I woke up to find Halifax shrouded in fog:

d20110913_0006

My plan was to catch the 1pm ferry to Prince Edward Island, so I hit the road as soon as I could. Modulo a delay searching for a gas station, and picking up something to eat later on.  I ended up being lucky; I arrived at the ferry terminal just as the boat was docking, but still managed to get aboard.

The ferries here are smaller than the ones in BC, but still have a pretty decent vehicle capacity.

I saw my first wild whale.  It was most of a mile away – this is an unscaled crop from a telephoto shot.  I leave identifying the species to you.

d20110913_0076

On arrival on the island, I had my lunch then drove through Charlottetown to Brackley Beach, which serves as the east coast analogue of Long Beach for this journey.

d20110913_0119d20110913_0124

It is a pretty nice beach, with large sand dunes, soft sand and a good breeze.  I took my shoes off and walked on the sand, and dipped my toes in the Atlantic.

d20110913_0130

And with that (cue music) the eastbound leg of my journey comes to an end.

mission_1_complete

As for my timelapse movie project, so far I’ve recorded 180,000 frames and the camera is still holding out.

Westbound

Time to turn around and head home.

mission_2_start

I’m actually excited to be heading back.  It’s a very similar feeling to when I started my trip, only instead of the flavor of visiting old haunts with an aftertaste of new discovery, this time it’s the other order with a final sweetness of homecoming.  I’ll be going faster on the return trip, but I do have a couple of short layovers planned.  Ottawa is the first.

Anyway, after leaving the beach, I took a short detour up the coast to Cavendish, home of Lucy Maud Montgomery of “Anne of Green Gables” fame.  I’ve never read the books and I barely remember the TV series, but my mother is a fan so I thought I’d get her a souvenir.  I got there just as they were closing, so I got in for free and got a bunch of photos of the place.

d20110913_0147

I thought this Green Gables house was a recreation of a fictional house from the book series, but talking to the tour guide, this turns out not to be the case.  This is the real house that inspired the books; LMM lived a short ways from here but hung out in this house a lot.  They’ve redecorated the interior slightly to make it match some details from the books, but otherwise it’s original.

Then drove back to Moncton for the night, passing over the Confederation Bridge on the way.  It’s pretty nice.  Only two lanes, but it is eight miles long.  It’s like driving over the ocean, because that’s what it is.

d20110913_0190d20110913_0193d20110913_0200

We really should get one of these for Vancouver Island.  Problem with this one is the $45 toll, which is subsidizing the ferry service down the coast – my boat ride was free; they get you on the way back, whichever way you go.

Today was a bit of a long day, but amazingly everything went according to my ridiculously ambitious plan.

[gmap file=”__UPLOAD__/2011/09/20110913.kml” center=”files” zoom=”auto” visible=”true” type=”satellite”]

Comments are closed.