On to Prince Edward Island

August 13, 2007
Cavendish, Prince Edward Island

Saturday was our travel day and we did a great job of getting everything ready for departure on Friday afternoon. All we needed to do on Saturday was pull in the power cord and slides, walk the pups, and hook up the car. We were on the road right on schedule at 8 AM. I’d done some research on the ferry schedule and knew that there were 11:15 and 1:00 departures. We decided to leave a little earlier than our original 8:30 target to allow for any road construction delays (they work weekends during “road construction season”), since I was aiming to arrive around 11:30, to be early in the queue for the 1:00. As it turns out, we made better time than expected and arrived before the 11:15 boat had loaded. It didn’t matter, though, since we ended up being held back as the boat was full. So, we were exactly where we expected to be: first in queue for the 1:00.

This gave us a time window for lunch (pork tenderloin sandwich on homemade bread – yum) and some time to relax. I tried to get an Internet signal, and the system found the right bird but couldn’t keep the signal locked. I gave the pups a good walk so they’d be ready for the sail. Several horse trailers queued up behind us, and Maya Lynn didn’t like the horses looking out their stalls at all! She was barking and carrying on, so we had to move along pretty quickly. Cesar Millan wouldn’t approve.

There’s a distinct pecking order for loading and unloading, with walkers and bikers (motorized and not) first, followed by people with confirmed paid reservations. If you’re going both ways on the ferry, you can pay online (it would have been C$95 for us, I think) and get confirmed status. Otherwise, you just queue up and it’s first-come, first-served (like us). Next come all the folks who were previously denied boarding (like us) and then they balance the load with cars and larger vehicles. In addition to us, there were two semis with 40’ trailers, several travel trailers and fifth wheels, and about 5 trucks with livestock trailers. They got us in and then filled in the remainder with the in-queue cars. Here are a couple of shots from the ferry crossing:

http://picasaweb.google.com/GeorgeandGeri/WeReSailing

The sailing across the Northumberland Strait took almost 1½ hours to go 14 miles; no speed records set here! In general, ferry rules suggest that people can’t stay in their vehicles and pets aren’t allowed on the main deck, so we left the pups for a while. There wasn’t much happening up on the passenger deck, with long lines at the concessions and people stacked 3-deep at the few slot machines tucked into the corners. We stood at the rail and saw a few porpoises playing off in the distance. Once the other ferry passed us heading back to Nova Scotia, we decided to go check on the pups. Once there, we decided to stay there for the rest of the trip. It was a little noisier on the main deck and we were surrounded by slightly aromatic horse trailers, but not too bad. I might have closed my eyes for a few minutes, but we were all ready when we left.

Remember everything positive I said about the road quality? Well, I stand corrected. New Brunswick and lower Nova Scotia: top notch. Cape Breton Island: slipping but several construction zones. PEI: “don’t worry, just throw the patch out there; people don’t drive too fast here anyway”. We went over some rough stretches that rivaled anything we’ve seen in the States. We just slowed down and let people pass us if they wanted to. Fortunately, it wasn’t too far from the ferry landing at Woods Island to our park in Cavendish.

We found our spot with no problems, and it’s a pretty large site, about 90’ long and a good 30’ wide. The park has over 200 sites, and we were fortunate enough to get one of the 10 or so 50 amp spots. I think we were fortunate anyway, as we had dirty power all afternoon and most of the rest of the weekend. Fortunately the inverter kept everything running OK, and it became more stable as the weekend crowd thinned out.

We hadn’t planned ahead for dinner, so we went to a local restaurant, Rachel’s. It was a nice place, although suffering from a shortage of help. We had to wait for a table even though there were quite a few empty and the service was friendly but on the slow side. They comped us the appetizer due to the delay, so I can’t say too much. The menu was all over the lot (wings and pizza, steaks, quesadillas, chicken parm, seafood) so it was hard to choose. My pepper steak was fine, but Geri’s chicken parm suffered from a bit of “I can make this better at home” syndrome. We had a basic Ruffino Chianti; nothing special but the best choice from the limited selection.

Yesterday and today were “down days”. We’ve been pushing the touristy stuff pretty hard over the last few weeks, so we needed a bit of a break. Yesterday was nice, so we deployed the lights and chairs outside, and did a little grocery shopping in the afternoon. It’s tough to balance the desire to be spontaneous with a need to make sure we don’t have stuff on board at the end of the week that shouldn’t cross the border. I think we’ll be OK.

For dinner, we picked up a pre-roasted chicken from Sobeys, and Geri made smashed red potatoes. We had a nice Spanish Tempranillo that I’d picked up in Halifax, which means we’ll never find that wine again. That’s too bad, since it was pretty good!

After dinner and before dark, we sat out with Brad and Jan, who we’d met earlier in our trip, at Harding’s Point in New Brunswick. We saw them again in Halifax, and they arrived here for a two-week stay mid-afternoon. We actually passed them on the road as we were headed to the store.

We had the TV on for background noise as well. Even though the Internet signal still won’t stay locked, the dish is pointed correctly for our DirecTV signal so we can at least get that. Over-the-air TV is limited to CBC; we can’t get CTV, which came in pretty well near Sydney. As the evening wore on, I called it a night, but Geri stayed up to see who won on Iron Chef America.

Today dawned cloudy and by mid-morning the clouds had thickened and the thunder was beginning to rumble. We had a few showers but nothing severe, and it’s been mainly dry but cool with a few sprinkles through the afternoon. I put a rack of ribs on the grill mid-afternoon, so we’ll be enjoying them later on. Geri’s making a nice salad; we’re trying to have our salad a little earlier to avoid the “we’re so hungry we’ll just dive in and skip the salad” thing that happens sometimes.