Friday October 13th
The weather forecast for the next few days didn't look too promising, but there was some blue sky in the morning. I came down to the kitchen, which was where the stove was, and people tended to sit. There was a pretty scene outside the window, with some sun on trees in the background that were starting to get autumn colour, and red bushes and lawn in the foreground.
For breakfast while I was there, I got cereal, then made toast over the stove, which was delicious. There was a metal tool that you could use to hook onto a round cover on part of the stove top, about the size of a small electric element, then a rack where you put the bread in, and laid it over the opening, while the flames toasted it on one side then the other when you turned it over. It toasted faster depending on how stoked up the stove was. It turned out that they were tea drinkers, and Mickey had a teapot of boiling water on the stove all the time. He would put a tea bag in when I came down, and it brewed nicely. They had Orange Pekoe tea, which had a good taste to it.
Crystal had her own house in Murray River not far away, and drove over around 10, and we set off sightseeing. We planned to see some of the nearby coastline that day. There is a coastal drive along the coast in the area. She drove us in her car, and it was a nice change to be driven after driving so many miles. We started at Point Prim, to the west of Caledonia, on a bit of a peninsula. This was one of many lighthouses we would see in the next few days, like the others, wooden, painted white, with red trim around the light itself.
There was pine forest along the shoreline, pretty much right up to the water, but a lot of trees had been blown down by the hurricane that they’d had the previous year. Crystal pointed out a lot of areas where there was damage throughout our travels on the island, it was sad to see so many areas with trees dead or knocked down.
You could go up the lighthouse, so we paid to go in, and look inside. There were about three small rooms one on top of the other inside, a bedroom, I think a kitchen, and what was perhaps a kind of lounge room, then the room with the light itself. Going up, there were photos of lighthouse keepers and their families from long ago, and quite a good view at the top, across the strait to Nova Scotia, which was often visible along the coast.
It had become fairly cloudy, though sometimes there was dramatic weather, with dark clouds and bits of sunshine, and spots of rain now and then. Coming back along the peninsula, there were some pretty views across reaped fields to the sea, with dark clouds. Both Crystal and I are keen photographers, so we would stop from time to time and take shots of scenic spots. That worked out well, because neither of us minded stopping and spending time snapping scenes!
PEI was not a place for driving fast. A lot of the roads were 80km/h, and I from what I could saw, not even the major highways were more than 90. Of course a lot of people went a good deal faster than that. Out next destination was Wood Island, where the ferry left to go to Nova Scotia. On the way we stopped to take photos of some colourful trees. Autumn was definitely coming to the island, though not fully there yet. We found another tree pulled up by the roots from the hurricane.
Wood Island had another similar looking lighthouse, which was quite short, and looked a bit more like a house than a lighthouse, with a door at the bottom with red trim, and only a second storey window before the light itself. I’m not sure if it was in use. There was also a fairly dilapidated looking building in the same colours nearby. Perhaps that had been the lighthouse keeper’s house. It was very much in need of painting.
There was a bit of a picnic area there, and very red cliffs which I guess were clay, around a couple of metres high, down to the sea. We drove over towards the ferry terminal, and found a beautiful marshy area with yellow grasses and some red bushes. Some rain was coming, and we hot footed it back to the car until it went over. There was a beach not far away, at Northumberland Provincial Park, and we walked along that for nearly an hour.
The sand was fairly red, and there were red clayish looking rocky cliffs at one end. The sun peeped out now and then, which made for some dramatic shots with the reddish sand and quite dark clouds in the background, over Nova Scotia. Crystal liked to collect coloured glass pieces on the beaches that had been smoothed out by the waves and sand, so we kept an eye out for them we walked.
We didn’t get very far along from there, towards Little Sands, when we found a pretty spot looking over what was either a lake or an inlet. It looked like a lake, with a narrow stretch of beach dividing it from the sea. I walked a little way down an embankment with a lot of undergrowth to get closer, and found an old jetty.
From there we made our way a little further east to Cape Bear lighthouse, another pretty spot with with more small red cliffs, a reddish beach at the bottom, and forest here and there. There was a little replica lighthouse near the main lighthouse.
The weather was getting a bit more rainy as we drove to the small town of Murray Harbour, and admired the picturesque inlet with small fishing boats, and some wooden buildings, a common scene around the island. There were what looked like large barrels floating on wooden rafts, which apparently people could hire out and sleep there, floating on the water. I’m not sure if they were tall enough to stand up in. There was a big window at one end of the barrel. It would have been an interesting experience.
On we went to the slightly bigger town of Murray River where Crystal lived, stopping on the way to admire some more autumn colour. We spent a little while looking at the harbour, and a river or inlet going off into the distance. While it rained, she showed me around her house, which was two-storey and quite capacious. There were a couple of large storage areas coming off rooms on the upper storey. She was still in the process of unpacking and settling in.
Across the road was a restaurant, the Millstone Grill, and we had a late lunch around 3.30 or so. We seemed to be the only customers at that time. From there we drove further north about 10-15km, past a swampy area with more beautiful colours, to Montague, which was one of the main towns on the island.
It was about 6pm by this time, and we stopped at the harbour there, to see if there would be any sunset colour reflected on the water. It was pretty cloudy but we got a little bit. Crystal showed me the hardware store there where she worked. It was getting dark by then, and we headed back to Caledonia. I enjoyed seeing signs pointing to different towns or areas that Mum used to talk about when she spoke of her childhood, like Heatherdale, Brooklyn and Glen William.
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