Prince Edward Island

 Saturday #8 (road trip)

I wanted to ride a bike in Newfoundland, but that would have been a 15-hour drive and two overnight ferry rides. So I settled for another island province with bike trails that's just a 10-hour drive -- and no ferries, just an 8-mile bridge -- away.

Prince Edward Island is the setting for Anne of Green Gables. So this change of itinerary also got Bettie very much on board. 

I groaned and walked out of our TV room so many times as a kid because my sisters had gotten there first and started the Anne of Green Gables mini series on our only TV. Since then, my worldview has broadened somewhat. I love a couple of Pride and Prejudice adaptations, for instance. And I was once in a book group with a full grown man who told me that Anne of Green Gables was his very favorite book of all time. 

So I was ready to let Anne of Green Gables into my Canada bike trip. We listened to the first book on the way up, and it's fantastic. The manic ups and downs of youth, as told by a perceptive, vivacious orphan girl as she comes of age around the turn of the 20th century. I guess I should have sat down a couple more times as a kid and found out what it was all about. 

We went on Memorial Day weekend, late May during what a local called a "slow spring." Most of the trees were still bare and we were told that the handful of blossoms that were out had just appeared within the last couple of days. The weather was beautiful for us -- highs in the mid-60s and partly cloudy most of the time.

It still looked pretty wind-swept and wintery. Actually, it wasn't just wind. It was Hurricane Fiona-swept. Last September, Hurricane Fiona, the most intense tropical storm to ever hit Canada, came through.

The businesses still looked like it was winter too; most were closed, even on the weekend. We watched the sunset too late the first night and couldn't find any restaurants open a few minutes after 8 p.m. We settled for road trip snacks and waited for breakfast. 

At church the next day, we talked to an old timer who still woke up nervous and early every time he planned to go to the mainland. A little post-traumatic stress from the days when ferries -- ferries that sometimes bumped private citizens at the last minute to let long-haul trucks get across -- were the only way on and off of the island. 

After church, we decided to ride bikes to Robinsons Island, where it looked like there was some dirt to ride. We parked nearby, hopped on the bikes and headed past a road that looked closed to vehicles. Perfect. As we passed a visitor center, I made eye contact with a park employee, we nodded at each other and Bettie and I pedaled up the road. 

He was the last person we saw until we were almost back to that spot. The road got worse, the tree damage was more obvious and it was just us, the birds and the ocean. The road goes out to a loop of bike trails, which were cleared, although some of the "features" like bike see saws and ramps were still under construction. 

It wasn't until we took a short spur to the beach, though, that I decided we probably weren't really supposed to be there. I got off the bike, walked a few steps straight toward the beach and looked down at what I'm pretty sure was the biggest chunk of ancient pottery I've come across. 

I've seen small pieces of decorated pottery in Chaco Canyon (NM) and Grand Gulch (UT), but nothing that chunky. I called Bettie over to see and said, "I don't think anyone is supposed to be in here right now." I left it there, of course, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would just sit on the beach for very long with a bunch of rangers and bikers and hikers coming through every day. 

Sure enough, when we got back, we had to get off our bikes to walk around a barricade that said "No entry" in the exact spot where I nodded at the park employee earlier that morning. He didn't say anything and there's no way both Bettie and I could have missed that thing. However it happened, it was clearly closed. Oops. But it was the best part of the trip.

The Anne of Green Gables stuff was fun, for sure. Picturesque cemetery where the author is buried. The church where she played the organ.

The house owned by her aunt and uncle that she chose as the setting for the book is now a museum packed with details from the fictional world -- an old-time vanilla bottle and raspberry cordial among tons of other items on the kitchen shelves, a broach set on an old dresser, a dress with puffed sleeves, etc. 

My favorite part of the Green Gables grounds was the Haunted Woods, of course, a set of paths that wind through thick woods and next to little streams. I walked through once with Bettie and we saw a bunch of birds in the thickets -- the Blackburnian warbler was a new one for me, and the yellow-rumped warbler and American redstart were ones I was really happy to see again. Then I went back for another half-hour or so while she made a phone call.