Off on our own for a bit, touring PEI

Nice sunset at Cabot Beach park

Tuesday 

On Tuesday we left Martels for a few days, heading up the northeast shore of PEI. First we toured Summerside a bit, Cathie wanted to see the hooked rug exhibit that she and Nancy were unable to see on Sunday. It was open this time, here's a couple of samples that caught Cathie's eye:

I had a browse at a nearby Home Hardware while Cathie was at the exhibit. Once we got these vital chores dealt with, we headed for Cabot Beach provincial park for the night:

A nice unserviced site, with nearby washroom and laundry, and room for a drying line...

...until the downpour started

 

Luckily we had seen and heard the short sharp storm coming, so had all our laundry and chairs etc put away in time.

After the storm, the skies cleared and provided a gorgeous sunset, and we were able to cook our fish outside:

Tuesday's map. As you might expect, it took us a lot longer than Google's 1 1/2 hr travel estimate:

Wednesday

The next day we left Cabot Beach, heading for Alberton, for no particular reason. First it was back to Summerside for a stop at their Atlantic Canada Superstore for supplies. It's a large grocery in the Loblaws family, and had everything on our list, plus a bit. 

Then we started touring, staying as close to the shore as we could.

Large floats, used to float tethered lines in mussel farms I think 

Recreation at the edge of a large mussel farm. Notice the motor on the picnic table raft.

Not sure these are all mussel floats. Please comment if you know.

A very pretty bay for the shellfish farm

One of the back roads, this one is the Old Ferry Road. No sign of a ferry.

St Patrick Catholic Church

Somebody's special project

 

Along the way we stopped for a tour of the Shipbuilding Museum and Yeo House, with PEI history back to the 1860s. 

Here is a link to more info: <link> 

 

The Museum building and exhibit entrance

The Shipbuilding Museum was quite interesting, to me

 

The Yeo House was of more interest to Cathie than the shipbuilding was. The house was built by William Yeo in about 1865, and housed him and his wife, and their 8 children. Mrs Yeo had several domestic staff to help run the house.

There are 4 floors accessible, with the stairs getting steeper every floor level, until these to the top turret:

Steeper than they look in the picture

In the turret, tight quarters

The view out one turret window

In the kitchen a corner was worn away. The kitchen workers used to sharpen their knives here, on the stones behind the plaster that used to be there. 

 

Leaving the Yeo exhibit we noticed a small red fox at the side of the lane, chowing down on something tough. It likely wasn't a large cookie that it looked like. The fox wasn't distracted by our van at all:

 

It was starting to feel like lunchtime (after 1pm) when we finished our Yeo tour. As often happens in PEI, nearby Green Park provincial park has a free day use area, right on the shore, nice spot for a lunch break:

The picnic area is up on the right

Further along the way we noticed a large trailer backed down a launch ramp, maybe delivering or picking up the work boat used with the mussel farm, or waiting for a load of mussels:

We were getting a bit tired by now, with all the driving and tour stops. :)) When we saw Jacques Cartier provincial park described we decided that would be a good stop for the night. Only about 3:30, but we like stopping early. Lots of choice of nice sites, we took #68, unserviced again.

Nice sea view

I decided to add some charge to our camp battery in case it wasn't fully charged today

 

 Wednesday's route (approximate)

fyi, this was about 6 hours for us today.