Update: PEI Lighthouse Tour 2 Our time on PEI was getting short, but we had one more day to play. Rather than an overnight trip, we decided to see how much we could accomplish in one day.
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National Park Although we didn't have tons of time, but we wanted to be sure to spend some of it in the Prince Edward Island National Park. The park was only about an hour from our campground. As we drove along the coastal roadway, we saw the sign for the Reeds and Rushes trail but we continued down the road. About a minute after passing the sign, Annette asked if we should have stopped for a short hike. Larry was thinking exactly the same thing, so we did a U-turn and parked along the road at the trailhead.
The nature walk included a boardwalk through a barachois pond and marsh area with lots of interpretive signs. We saw water striders, whirlygig beetles, damsel and dragon flies, yellow warblers, osprey, blue-winged teal and black ducks, and a leopard frog. The area was filled with wetland life.
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Cove Head Our first lighthouse of this day was in the National Park. Called Cove Head, this cute little lighthouse was the site of many storms and shipwrecks. We enjoyed walking on the dunes and taking photographs.
The Dunes After leaving the park, we made a stop at a great shop called The Dunes. This cafe and art gallery was very busy. We bought a vase, flowerstand, walking stick, wood tongs, and something called Canadian chopsticks. They are more like tongs than chopsticks but they work great eating stir fry and grilled veggies.
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 North Rustico Lighthouse
This lighthouse was located in a small fishing community that was attempting to attract tourists with a couple of shops and restaurants. The lighthouse was in a residential area, so it was a little strange. It was close enough to Cavendish that the tour buses stopped here too. After a quick stop, we moved on down the road.
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Cavendish We quickly determined that Cavendish was the main tourist destination on the island. Many people come to the town because of the book Anne of Green Gables. Mini-golf, water parks, and other amusement places line the main drag through town. The Green Gables Heritage Place, part of Prince Edward Island National Park, has tours of the house that is the setting for the fictional story. However the highlight of the town for us was a visit to the place where the author of the book, Lucy Maud Montgomery, lived and wrote most of her books.
Montgomery's mother, Clara Macneill Montgomery, died when she was 21 months old and she was raised by her grandparents, Alexander and Lucy Macneill. After her grandfather died, she spent many years caring for her grandmother. Since she had lots of time on her hands, she began writing. The post office was in their home (common in many rural communites of the time) so even though she received lots of rejection letters, she kept sending in her manuscripts. The site of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Cavendish home is just east of the Cavendish United Church on Route 6. Today, the author's uncle and his wife are working to maintain and restore the site. The wife (below with Annette) works in the bookstore/visitor center and provided a wonderful overview of the life of the author. She showed us the desk and postage cancellaion stamp from the post office along with many other artifacts.
Although the house is gone, they've done a great job landscaping, placing interpretive signs with quotes from the books, and giving you a sense of what it would have been like to live in the area in the early 1900s.
Check out the virtual tour created by a Grade 4 Class. |
Lunch We decided to stop at a nearby Subway outlet for lunch. Across the road from the restaurant was a beautiful field with hay bales.
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We couldn't get close to the New London Lighthouse, so we took a picture from a distance. The person who owned the property where we parked was growing a garden with HUGE pumpkins - - four feet in diameter and protected with a awning sunshade. Someone is going to the fair maybe?
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The island is filled with little fishing wharfs like the one below. Many of these boatdocks have small buildings clustered nearby for storing lobster traps, nets, lines, buoys etc.
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The Empty House Have you ever had one of those "Kodak" moments where you see the perfect photograph in a piece of scenery? That happened to us as we passed an old abandoned house sitting in the middle of a bright yellow wheat field with the azure blue ocean in the background. Larry immediately pulled into the dirt driveway and began taking photographs while Annette grabbed her sketchpad. If we'd had more time, it would have been a great place to get out the watercolors and do some painting!
As we were photographing and sketching we were wondering about the people who had lived in the house. What was their life like? Why did they leave this beautiful place? Did the family still live in the area? The place reminded us of the many abandoned farm houses of the midwest US. Just down the road a short ways, we enjoyed watching a farmer and combine harvesting a seaside field.
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Cape Tryon Lighthouse In this same area we almost missed the Cape Tryon lighthouse. It was on a small, unmarked dirt road. At first, we thought it was just a driveway, but we could tell it was well-traveled. The lighthouse was at the top of a beautiful cliff that houses thousands of nesting and roosting birds. You could see, hear, and smell the birds along the cliffs. The locals recommended a walk along the beach to some of the isolated beaches, but we decided we'd save that for our next trip.
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Northport Lighthouse After another short drive, we arrived at Northport. We were running low on time, so this was a quick stop. The lighthouse was located way out in a roadless area, so all we could do was take a photograph from a distance.
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North Cape Lighthouse North Cape Lighthouse is the northern most lighthouse on PEI and a long drive from our camp location, but we had decided that if we were going to "DO" the lighthouses, we needed to make this stop too. This end of the island contains a large wind farm with windmills that produce energy for the island. Check out the article titled "PEI officials plan self-sufficiency using wind power." The wind turbine below is one of eight new ones generating power for nearly 6500 homes. To learn more, read "Provide Doubles Wind Energy Capacity."
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West Point Lighthouse It was almost dusk when we reached West Point. Since Annette was going to be gone for her birthday, Larry suggested that we stop for a birthday dinner. The West Point Lighthouse has the only hotel and restaurant in a lighthouse on PEI. We had fresh lobster from right off the coast, new potatoes (PEI is known for potato fields), and shared a great bottle of German wine called Burg Layer Scholosskapelle by Pieroth Blue. As we finished dinner, we watched the sunset through the window.
It was a long drive back to the campground that night, however we had lots to talk about on the drive home. All and all, we had had a great day! |
Go to Lamb & Johnson Menu
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The photo on the left shows the cellar/foundation site of Montgomery's grandparent's farmhouse, where she lived from 1876 to 1911. She wrote four novels including Anne of Green Gables as well as other works, while living here. 
New London Lighthouse 
