Catching Up

The weather gurus are bound to be right if they forecast the same thing each day......after 4 days of predicting rain, we finally got it. But our timing wasn't bad - we woke up to an overcast day with lots of wind, and packed away the tent and its contents, and had breakfast on the picnic table at the campsite. Just as we finished the dishes, the rain started.....so we just piled into the car, and drove away - ready to take care of a lot of backed up business. First on the agenda was to take care of the windshield liner. The Hyundai dealer advised us they couldn't do it until next week, so we bit the bullet and headed across the street to the Apple Auto Glass dealer. They took a quick look, had the whole thing apart and back together again in 30 minutes - and told us to enjoy our drive - No Charge! Yagottaloveit!!! So with that no longer hanging over our heads, next was to restock our shrunken food larder. We found a WalMart, and and Atlantic Superstore, which, combined, helped a lot in this regard. Then on to a First Choice Haircutters for Linda's haircut of the year. I tried to grab some wifi signals while waiting for her, but all was encrypted. Then it seemed a good time to let my aunt know we are in the vicinity, and arrange a visit. My Aunt Arlene, and her son Doug live in Belfast, about 30 km east of Charlottetown. She invited us over right away, but we don't want to just show up and impose on friends and relatives, so we organized a visit for two days hence, on July 1st. In the meantime, we decided to head to Summerside and reorganize ourselves. With the rain still coming on and off (mostly on), we decided to treat ourselves to a real roof, and found a motel in Summerside. This allowed us to get all of our laundry done completely, reorganize our bags, and for me to catch up on the blog and emails. Linda was amazed that I didn't even turn on the television until after supper. I managed to get reservations on the Newfoundland ferry, and check on the possibility of going to St. Pierre/Miquelon. The ferry round-trip will cost us $509.00 round-trip, which will really bite into this budget. We will be crossing to Argentia on July 13-14, a 15.5 hour ferry ride. Coming back from Port aux Basques on August 1 is a shorter, and cheaper trip - 6 hours only. But it would mean not really being able to cover much of Newfoundland - which is one of our goals. So we will bite the bullet, and economize. Here in P.E.I., lobster is as cheap as it gets, at $4.00/pound (almost the same price as chicken), but with this kind of budget, we may still not be able to enjoy a lot of it. With some of the internet planning and writing out of the way, we took a walk between rainshowers, into town. We walked along a scenic boardwalk, watching the windsurfers in the harbour flying along with the 20 knot winds. The town itself is not very large, and our browsing took us into a local liquor store, where I was amazed to find the price of Scotch considerably less than the BC prices, and in fact, less than most other places I'd seen. I was tempted.....but I knew that tomorrow was a Day of Reckoning.....and we were getting dangerously close to going over budget for a second week in a row.
The following morning, the rain has eased to a drizzle. We packed up the car, and headed west and north, to the far west end of the Island, North Cape. Enroute, we passed a museum devoted to the potato, which is one of P.E.I.'s raison d'etre. We had to take a photo for the blog of the giant potato. There is no claim of it being the world's largest, but - it might be! I doubt that it has much competition.





Here it is - the Giant PEI Potato!












When we reached North Cape we toured the interpretive center for the wind generation farm. Then on along the shoreline, in and out of showers and fog, until we got about mid-north-island in the vicinity of Cavendish.
A fox tried to commit suicide when it ran in front of our car, but we tharted its attempts with a touch of brakes. Cavendish is a bit touristy, pushing Anne of Green Gables....so we decided to stop a bit further on, in a campground in Cymbria, near Rustico, on the north shore still. We got our tent up and set out in fair weather, and took a walk in lovely scenery beside the river,but soon it started raining, and we spent an early eavening and night in the tent. It was time to add up the finances:
Gas - $ 205.53 Food - $177.65 Accommodation - $226.69 Other - $ 90.14 Total for the past week is $700.01 - over budget by 1 cent!!! Very frustrating - but close, at least. Total distance travelled last week was 2117.4 Km., the farthest distance in any of our weekly totals. The toll to get off the island, and the ferries to Nfld. are certain to prove trying to this budget.

Canada Day/July 2

The rain gave our tarp a good work out last night. I think we need a slightly larger one but at least our bedding stayed mostly dry. We called Aunt Arlene in the morning and rolled into her driveway about 10:30.
Had coffee and muffins then she gave us a tour of a local church. Talk about coincidence! I must tell you that we first became aware of this church online when some kind soul had transcribed the records of a travelling minister, Rev. McLennan, who had gone through the rural areas of many of the maritime provinces back in the early 1800's baptising those who wished it along the way and documenting each baptism.
We had found several of the children of John Finlayson and Christina Cameron in those online transcriptions as well as John McKay, son of Duncan McKay and Janet McDonald. Well it turns out Aunt Arlene lives less than a kilometer from this church and knows the paster there. He happened to be there when she took us over and very kindly opened the safe and brought out the ORIGINAL records for us to photograph!
It was amazing to see in his own handwriting the records of the baptism of my g g grandparents back in 1824! It made for one of those SPECIAL moments that one gets in this hobby. Interestingly, the pastor who replaced Rev. McLennan was cousin Doug's gt-grandfather (on his dad's side).





The original baptism/birth records for both my gt-gt grandmother, and grandfather .....they hadn't met yet!











Doug still uses the 200 yr-old chanter left to his grandfather, and father, and eventually him, from this man.









Cousin Doug on his 200+ year-old chanter










We then went on to another cemetery and got photos of some of Aunt Arlene's other family members. We toured the southeast corner of the Island, visiting Point Pim, with the oldest lighthouse on PEI (and also a unique structure, being the only Canadian circular-brick lighthouse.

Arlene - Supreme PEI Guide
Pt. Prim Lighthouse


















Back at the house, we were just sitting down to a snack of coffee and muffins when Doug, my cousin, arrived with a boxload of lobsters for a lobster supper feast. Yummmmm! Doug works as crew on a lobster fishing boat, and invited me to come along for the experience the following day. We feasted on the great clawed beastie, and had a very pleasant visit. Arlene was able to help with some of the family dates and details as I pulled out my trusty computer and family history program. We went to bed fairly early, stuffed with buttered lobsters and salads, because of the early day of fishing the next day (up at 04:30 - a time which doesn't normally exist for me).


Lobster Feasting











It was up and away bright and early, and off to the fishing boat, "Isle of Skye II", a 40 ft boat run by a good-natured skipper, David. The lobster season here ended yesterday for most of the boats, but we were on a slightly later season for some boats, which ends early next week - so we were almost the only fishing boat out and about. We raised 155 traps, checking them, hauling out the crabs, undersize and pregnant lobsters (all thrown back), and kept the legal lobsters.....some of which I thought were quite large. I tried to help as much as possible, and got to do most of the jobs of organizing the bait (herring and mackeral, mostly), banding (rubber bands around the claws), and resetting the traps. Doug and David were quite good at training me, and by 16:00 that afternoon, we were back at the dock, meeting the buyer who took our catch off our hands. I'm not sure how these fishermen can make a living after paying for the fuel, bait, traps, crew, ice, etc. While we were out on the water, we were lucky enough to view a Beluga Whale spouting and feeding a short distance away from the boat. Belugas are apparently not a normal type of whale for these waters, and it was quite a treat to view one here. Back at the house again, we had a great family visit. We were determined to take them out for dinner tonight, and ended up going to a small restaurant recently re-opened, near Pt. Prim - the Chowder House. Here we discovered (yet again) down-east warmth and hospitality. They had just opened the previous day, and weren't totally ready for dinner menus, but welcomed us in. We had a very special chowder, and visited with the owners, who have just bought the place and moved back to PEI from Ontario (the sort of thing a lot of Islanders tend to do is go off for a bit of work, and eventually return). They had locked the doors behind us, as they close at 1900, but a fellow stood at the front door, looking in, apparently attracted by our BC license Plates. He was allowed in, and joined us for chowder. He'd lived in North Vancouver after leaving PEI, and moved back to the Island 30 years ago when he retired. The owners sat with us as well, and we had a fine old time joking and chatting. We may even have talked them into a weekly Celidh, with cousin Doug as their entertainer (he is a highly respected Piper). We didn't tell anyone it was Linda's birthday today, as Linda made me promise not to tell anyone, or to do any sort of celebration. She does want to replace our tent tarpaulin with a slightly larger one, so I'll likely get her one tomorrow, as her "birthday gift". Not everyone's idea of that sort of thing, but - trust me - it is the only thing I can get Linda to accept or even appreciate!