11 of 17: A Motorcylce Tour of the Canadian Maritimes, Summer 2018 Northern Virginia to Nova Scotia, PEI, the Gaspé Peninsula and Back

7.1.18. Sunday. Georgetown to Tignish, Prince Edward Island.

Canada Day! (More on that later). Sunday morning in Georgetown is quiet, but it turned out to be quite fun. We had a huge over-the-top breakfast at the inn and then decided to hunt for the three geocaches near our hotel.

The first was at a store right across the street. The description warned that it would be out of our reach, but said we could borrow a ladder from the store. Sure enough, the sign outside had a horizontal hollow supporting beam, about 10 feet off the ground, with a bird nesting at one end and a geocache inside the other end. So, we wandered into the store, Daryl’s, to ask for a ladder. This small-town general store was a cross between a corner deli, a five-and-ten, a hardware store and agricultural supply store, all behind a gingerbread trimmed screen door which served as the main entrance. It was wonderful! The guy behind the counter did indeed lend us a ladder (otherwise used to prop open the side door for air) and Jeff climbed up to retrieve the cache.

The next stop was at the dock. We passed a group of colorful huts used to store fishing equipment and walked out to the town wharf. There was a little deck, meant for sightseers, with some benches and signage and working boats moored off to the side. Despite vigorous searching, this cache eluded us.

We continued on to the next one which was behind a private residence on the shore. We skirted along the shore line, scrambling along the water, rocks, mud, and rotting timbers of a small sea wall, and passed behind an old house under restoration (really re-construction), until we came to the remains of an old rowboat, that was beached and overgrown. The cache was in the boat and easy to find.

Rather than returning as we came, we decided to take the driveway of the house that was under reconstruction out to the road. We came out near a shop, Seaside Designs, that had been mentioned in the cache description. I suggested we walk past it, although given the early hour on a Sunday morning (maybe 8 a.m. or so), I didn’t expect it to be open. I was wrong! The owner and his dog were on the deck outside and greeted us warmly, and invited us in. What a wonderful stop!

He gave us a tour of the shop, including the incredible view from his back deck where he often works. I bought a necklace with what I thought was a black stone, but that he explained was a piece of black glass from an ancient rum bottle. The many shipwrecks off the coast scatter the glass all along the shore. In addition to talking about the town, what brought him there, and the shipwrecks, he asked if we had also gotten the cache on the wharf. When we said no, he gave us a hint. After leaving his shop we went back and Jeff quickly spotted the non-functional “bolt” on the side of a signpost, which turned out to be a very carefully and cleverly drilled out hole just large enough for a bison tube. What a great morning walk around Georgetown!

After leaving Georgetown we meandered through small towns to the East Point Lighthouse and Welcome Center. Adorable small birds had drilled holes into the red cliffs to nest. We picked up a ribbon at the lighthouse, expecting to turn it in later for a tip-to-tip certificate verifying our travels to the ends of PEI.

East Point Lighthouse

We continued to criss-cross the island, including a cruise through Charlottetown. We also encountered a few traffic jams in Charlottetown and North Rustico, as the Canadians crowded local parks to celebrate Canada Day. Even the buses, were marked for celebration.

We stopped at a city park at the Province House in Charlottetown that had samples of stone from each of the Canadian provinces, all very different from each other and some very unusual in any context.

We continued on, stopping for more lighthouses and geocaches. We breezed through the parking lot of the Anne of Green Gables house – not our thing, but we wanted to take a picture for Jeff’s sister – and also passed the Lucy Maud Montgomery birthplace and the Anne of Green Gables Museum. (We were on the Anne of Green Gables Trail.) There were tons of campgrounds, hotels, water parks, and other touristy stuff to keep families amused. We also stopped for a geocache hidden (by the proprietors) under Grandpa's Antique Photo Studio, one of the many kitschy tourist traps along the road.

We also saw lots of lobster traps or fish farms in the bays, colorful huts lining the wharf, and lupine, lupine everywhere in shades of pink, purple, and white. And wind farms! In addition to the fishing industry, the island is very agricultural. Plowed fields, grazing cattle, and processing plants were everywhere.

We ventured out to the tip of the island to the wind energy center and the North Cape Lighthouse (the relevance of which we did not realize until the next day). The approach was crowded with wind turbines, but the exhibits at the Center had closed due to a flood. We were able to get dinner at the restaurant. Jeff enjoyed his. But the restaurant’s concept of a vegetarian entrée was to just heap anything that wasn’t meat on a plate, so I got all the side dishes including several kinds of potato dishes. All on one plate. Then we rode to Tignish, our destination for the night.

12 of 17: A Motorcycle Tour of the Canadian Maritimes, Summer 2018 Northern Virginia to Nova Scotia, PEI, the Gaspé Peninsula and Back

7.2.18. Monday. Tignish, Prince Edward Island to Parrsboro, New Brunswick.

The inn we stayed at in Tingnish was very austere. The room was comfortable enough, but the high ceilings and dark colors gave it a very institutional feeling. The bathroom had been carved out of space that hadn’t been meant for a bathroom. Anyone with a girth larger than Jeff’s would have had trouble squeezing around the corner of the shower to get to the toilet. It was formerly a convent and still had the vibe.

However, any lack of ambiance was forgiven the next morning with the amazing spice cake that appeared at breakfast. That alone made the visit worthwhile. The innkeeper is a lovely, quiet woman, who made every effort to assure we were all well-fed before we departed. In addition, the inn is set in a lovely garden next to the church where we poked around the next morning unsuccessfully searching for a geocache. An all-female grounds crew was working that morning and one of the helpful workers offered to give us a hint. I, regretfully, brushed her off. Fifteen minutes later I was hiking across the parking lot to beg her for help when she pulled away in her truck. So, another “did not find.” But we enjoyed the garden with its small brook, a bridge, benches, birdhouses, and a miniature church to echo the big one.

We then took a lovely ride and walk around Tignish enjoying the small town sights and visited its war memorial.

The day’s ride brought us many more fishing villages, coast lines, wind farms, cows, and plowed fields. It also took us to the West Point Lighthouse where we produced our ribbon hoping for our tip-to-tip certificate. No! We should have done that at the North Point Lighthouse the night before. It’s East to North, not East to West! Apparently, we were not the only people to make this error. The West Point Lighthouse is now a gift shop and inn, and the nice women behind the counter produced a “Lighthouse Lovers” certificate of their very own, verifying our visit. But we did not get the tip-to-tip certificate although we did the trip and have the photos to prove it.

We walked down the beach for a geocache. Although others were wandering about looking at shells, it was quite windy and cold. Fortunately, it did not appear that anyone was interested in swimming, since the three young women huddled under towels and blankets on the lifeguard stand did not seem inclined to jump into the water to save anyone that morning.

One of the trip highlights was the Bottle House at Cape Egmont. A hobby-run-wild resulted in a multi-building complex built of old bottles, set into a beautiful garden. A chapel, house, and bar reflected the light from a diverse array of bottles that were embedded in mortar to form the walls of the buildings. The property also had a small lighthouse replica housing several loose-leaf binders describing the plants in the garden. A truly delightful visit. (The bottle buildings are actually replicas, as the mortar in the owner’s original creations crumbled over time).

We stopped for lunch in Victoria, a little cluster of buildings around a wharf and lighthouse that was obviously a tourist draw. There were several restaurants, but the first we stopped at was not serving in mid-afternoon so we ended up eating at a burger shack. My hunger trumped my commitment to vegetarianism, as the options were limited and not likely to improve at the trip progressed. Vegetarian options in quick-stop places in rural Canada were often limited to iceberg lettuce with a slice of tomato and maybe a side of French fries (if you don’t ask what they were fried in). I was hungry and tired of eating just fries. The burger was probably pretty good as burgers go, but it reminded me why I don’t miss meat. I can easily wait another 10 years for the next one.

Before leaving PEI, we stopped at the “Welcome” center so we could take pictures next to the welcome sign. The welcome center is a cluster of shops meant to look quaint. We left with some more Christmas ornaments (which I buy on all of our trips so we can look back in December at where we’ve been) and another geocache log.

A causeway brought us back to New Brunswick from which we continued on to the northern part of Nova Scotia. As the day lengthened, we stopped at the Joggins Fossil Center. It was already closed, but the area behind the museum offered a great view of the Bay of Fundy. This end of the bay is the best lace to experience the high tides. Unfortunately, tide changes are a time-lapse event. It is hard to be awed during a short visit. We admired the wind turbine and picked up a geocache. We continued on to Parrsboro, which was our destination for the night.

On the way into Parrsboro (actually on a small detour in which we were trying to reach the Bay of Fundy energy research center until the poor condition of the unpaved road-not-meant-for-motorcycles forced us to turn back), we passed a manor house that although almost hidden from the road looked interesting. It was called the Ottawa House. We learned from another couple the next morning that it was a museum and very much worth a visit; but that will have to be another trip. We were also both struck by the The Ship’s Company Theater – which has two old boats built into it, one of which, at at least, is apparently a part of the stage. That would be fun too.

Ottawa House

The theater

We came into Parrsboro rather late, but went straight to the dock to check on the tides. Parrsboro is the point where the tide differential is the sharpest. We arrived at low tide and looked down onto boats sitting in the mud, way below us, and outward across acres of mud flats.

Parrsboro Mansion Inn, our home for the night, was fabulous. Our hosts were lovely, greeted us warmly, and showed us to our huge room. The room was beautifully decorated in cream, sage and gold, with fairly ornate furniture in white and gold. I thought it had a sort of Palm Beach feel and Jeff thought it felt more European, but we both liked it. We spent part of the evening lounging on the porch and then retired to our very comfortable (and air conditioned!) room. Breakfast was very European style – meats, cheeses, tomato and some really delicious bread that you could toast.