musselbound

Prince Edward Island is green.  There are a lot of trees and vegetation here which makes it green, but that is the same with most of Canada with the exception of the prairies which is mostly yellow.  They recycle, reuse, eat organically, and compost so that makes them green but, again, that is true for most of Canada except Alberta.  They envy richer provinces so that makes them green, but again, that is the same with most of Canada.  What is so green about PEI?

Their obsession with Ann of Green Gables and grass!  There is nowhere you can go without seeing some reference, picture, play, doll or precious little gifty  having to do with Ann of Green Gables.  And she did not even exist!  She is fictitious!  Kind of like Stephen Harper.  The whole province is head-over-heels for a character from a children's book.  Time to move on PEI.

The other thing they are obsessed with is grass.   Granted, in BC we are obsessed with grass as well, but this is different.   I am talking about lawn.  You would not believe the lawns here in PEI.   I have seen tidy little houses sitting in the middle of a hectare of lawn.   NO DANDELIONS!   I think the province has outlawed them.   Judging by the conspicuous lack of dandelions I think the penalty might be execution.  The ride-on mower people have done the same brainwashing here that the pick-up truck people have done in Alberta.  The money lost to the economy from people missing days at work, leaving their families and committing crimes to pay for their lawn care must be staggering!

We rode out to a place called Panmure Island the other day.   That was when I saw a whole town sitting on a huge lawn...  but I digress.  Panmure Island is an island which up until the mid-century had a causeway to it that was only accessible at low tide.  They then created a causeway that was useable at all tide levels and over time a large beach formed from the famous red sand of PEI.  Almost nobody has heard of the red sand, but  it is famous!  So, we rode over the causeway to visit the lighthouse on the island and paid a few dollars for a tour.   The tour consisted of us climbing up to the top of the lighthouse and looking out.  The young lady who was our tour guide didn't seem to know much about the lighthouse but she took our picture at the top and that was that.

Climbing up a lighthouse in cycling shoes with cleats is not recommended.  Climbing down is even less so.  Cycling shoes are kind of like a duck's feet.   In the right environment they work really well.  Otherwise, you walk like a duck.

We visited the beach and put our feet in the Atlantic (Northumberland strait, actually) and gazed at the pink sand.   I am still having a bit of trouble with that.  The problem with walking on the sand, putting your feet in the ocean and then putting your cycling  shoes back on is that the sand sticks to your feet.  Riding after that is like wearing sandpaper socks.  And there is a kind of weird smell to your feet when you take your shoes off at home.

Also on the causeway there was a little outdoorsy, fast-food place where we stopped for lunch.  Only in PEI is lobster and seafood chowder considered fast food.  There were a lot of flies around the eatery so after the young lady closed her little window after taking your order or passing out your food we were serenaded with the sound of fly swatters coming from inside.  Kind of put you off your feed a little.

We rode in to Saint Peters yesterday from Montague.  The map shows the route as straight as an arrow almost the whole way and the write-up that accompanies it says the same thing.  It is true, the road does not deviate left or right for about 40 kilometers.

They did not mention the up and down bit.

Yesterday and today we are at the little town of about 500 called Saint Peters on the PEI north coast.  The original name was Saint Pierre but that got changed when the touchy-feely English chased the Acadians out, leveled the forest and alienated the native people.  Now the primary industry here is mussel farming.  Telen is in heaven.   If we stay here any longer  there will be no mussels left.  The only place to eat in this little town is a chippy called, strangely enough, Rick's Fish and Chips.  They serve mussels there as well as an occasional bit of fish.   The chips, of course, are made from famous PEI potatoes.

Yesterday when I went to upgrade my operating system on my computer it got part way through the upgrade and crashed saying that my hard-drive was corrupted.  I am writing this on Telen's I-Pad and so I don't have access to any pictures on my computer, so I am sorry about no pictures on this entry.  We are not in any large towns for the next little while so it may be some time before I can get my computer fixed.  My hard-drive has been hanging around with the wrong crowd!

Telen writes

I am enchanted by the people and pace of life in PEI.  The 3 bed & breakfast places that we have stayed in do not lock their doors at night.  No one locks their bicycles outside either.  Cars would stop half a block away if they see us with our bikes on the side of the road, to give us room!  My cycling experience on PEI is definitely one of the best.
I think  I need to back off from mussels for a while as I have eaten so much of it.  PEI has been successfully cultivating mussels since the 1970's and it is big business along with the potato farming.  Just outside of our windows at the Tir Na Nog Inn, we can see hundreds of buoys marking the mussel "socks" in the St Peters Bay.  A mussel sock is a mesh bag about 20 meters long, for the mussel to grow on.  It takes about 2 years before the mussels reach the commercial size.  We found that a lobster needs to grow for about 7-8 years before reaching the size of about a pound, before marketing.