The ShoreXplorers: Welcome to Prince Edward Island (PEI) Canada [June 26

To reach Prince Edward Island, you cross the 7 mile Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick across the Northumberland Strait. The soil here is red in color, heavy with iron oxide, and the cliffs facing the sea are red sandstone. In some places the sand is red, in others it is a light pink. There are soft rolling hills. The center part of the province is agricultural with well-tended fields the color of milk chocolate. The west and northern end of the island is more rugged with stands of trees and forest. As you drive along many of the roads you pass breathtaking vistas of red cliffs, blue ocean and green fields as you come around a bend in the road. Colorful lupin flowers edge the sides of the roads. The scenery is spectacular.

Lupin and potato field, and yes that is a lighthouse in the middle of the potato field.

Beautiful views in abundance

We have only found one area of the province to be touristy. Otherwise it is dotted with tiny towns of around 1,000 people. There are only two cities, Summerside (which we drove through to get to the north part of the island where we are camping) and Charlottetown (which we haven’t visited yet). The mood is very relaxed, the people are very gracious and kind. It is a welcoming place to visit.

Red sand

They call this sand "white", we call it "pink"

The weather has been windy and cool since we arrived here. We had several days of high winds and some rain. The winds drove the rain sideways. In fact, during one windy rain storm we were parked broadside to the storm and one side of the motor home got wet and the other side stayed dry. The sunny days are bright with azure blue skies and high wispy clouds.

To give you some “factoids”… Prince Edward Island sits in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with Nova Scotia to the South and East, New Brunswick to the West, Quebec and Newfoundland to the North. It is about the same size as the US State of Delaware. From tip to tip it is 139 miles long, and, at its widest, it is 40 miles wide, with 1,100 miles of coastline. The population is about 143,000 people. It is the smallest of the Canadian Provinces. They farm Blue Mussels (you know them as PEI Mussels) in most of the bays that we have passed, and fish for lobsters, Malpeque Oysters, and clams.

Rugged red cliffs

They grow a lot of potatoes here, and the town of O'Leary PEI is home to the Canadian Potato Museum. 29% of all of the potatoes grown in Canada are from PEI. In fact, over 50% of Canadian potatoes come from PEI and New Brunswick combined. We met an agricultural engineer at the campground who told us that by law farmers must rotate their potato fields every year and grow wheat, forage and other crops to add nourishment back into the soil. They can only grow potatoes in a given field every 4 years. We learned at a tiny local history museum that early farmers dug the lime rich mud from island riverbeds to spread on the fields to fertilize them. They called it Mussel Mud.

Yummy Poutine!!!!!!!!

The Potato museum was very interesting, tracing the origin of potatoes from the Inca in Peru. It had lots of cool old farm equipment, and fascinating facts about the nutritional benefits of potatoes. The best part of the museum is the kitchen where they prepare and sell you potato-based food. We both had different kinds of Poutine – a wonderful Canadian food made of French fries, cheese curds and gravy (for Dana) and pulled pork (for Russ). It might sound questionable, but, trust us, it is yummy! We bought potato fudge to sustain us during the drive home that afternoon.

North Cape Wind Research Institute

On another adventure, we drove several hours to the North Cape where there is a research wind farm. There are many types of wind turbines there, you can even walk underneath a few of them and hear the hum of the blades as they turn. It was very windy there. There is an exhibit about harnessing the wind for energy that sadly was closed for renovation while we were there.