The Cup, and (last) Friday in PEI

This morning I had an e-mail from a friend, forwarding a message she received that the Stanley Cup would be in a nearby town today. What?

And that is how I was about 15 feet from history today.


The gentleman you see is Harry Sinden, who has been involved with the team for years. Here he is, for instance, with Bobby Orr and the Stanley Cup, some 40 years ago.


It was fun to see the Cup again, and so many people excited about it. Pretty funny too that the Bruins rookies were starting training camp on the same day. This is the first summer I haven't had hockey withdrawal before camp started. Weird.

Now, I have one last day of PEI to show you: last Friday, when we went to see some of the eastern end of the Island.

It's beautiful there, too. Who'd have thought?

Our first destination was Souris, to tour the historic lighthouse there.

You can climb to the top, if you don't mind small, steep spaces.

I do, a little, but it was worth it. I ducked through this door:

And I do mean ducked.

And had quite the view down.

And out.

The water was fairly calm, but we did spot one breaker. See?

Going down the stairs was almost worse than up. I had to do it quickly, without thinking about it. And backward. Urp!

Then I read this message.

And looked at what they're calling a chair.

And my climb didn't seem so bad.

They have a large exhibit of sea glass, for so small a space.





I enjoyed the lighthouse, but wasn't sorry to get back outside again.

Did you know that falling off a cliff can be dangerous? Learn something new every day.

My mother offered to take my picture from the ground, if I wanted to run back up. I declined.

Even from the ground, the view was lovely. We stayed for a little while, enjoying the day.

And were rewarded by the sight of the ferry coming in. It's big!

I suppose it has to be, going all the way to Iles de la Madeleine.

At first we thought it was called the Travesty, which seemed highly unlikely. The camera's zoom cleared things up: the Traversier.


To explain this next picture, I have to explain two things. First, it took us a lot longer to find lunch that day than we expected it to*; and second, though I love the Island very much, it is, sadly, more a Pepsi place than I would like (hence the root been I photographed another day).

*We ate in Cardigan, though I don't seem to have noted the name of the restaurant, and the food was very good!

So you may surmise how happy I was to see this:

Also, the display case with a small whale's tail behind it.

And the bilingual mustard caught my eye as well.

As we were driving on, in a roundabout way back to Charlottetown, my alert mother noticed a sign that said alpaca yarn*, so we turned and went back. It was a small place, like a cabin in front of the house, run by a woman who quilts and sells the work of other locals.

*I like to think I have her well trained as an enabler, though she doesn't knit herself.

And yes, has alpacas:

Sadly, she was out of her own yarn, but I bought some other yarn that I am quite happy with.

Back in town, I saw this on the car next to me when I parked. Love this hockey feeling.


So that was Friday. I think I'll do one more entry to wrap the trip up, then we'll be back to the present day. For whatever that's worth.

Happy weekend!

Thursday was Our Anne Day in PEI

Ahh, Friday night, how I love thee. My beloved weekend is here.

Still working through the adventures of last week in PEI. Thursday was the big day, the day for Anne, who led us to the Island in the first place (in 1985, whew, what a long time ago).

Of course, we started at the mother ship, Green Gables.


We go every time. They've done more to the place every time, movies and artifacts and so on, but the essentials stay the same.


The typewriter, for instance.


Not everything is beautiful or meaningful, of course.


What, you haven't seen a turkey-in-an-Anne-wig lollipop holder before?
(No, I don't get that, either.)

Still, there's honeysuckle growing on the house.

And the usual old house/museum artifacts inside.

I can't quite picture using this stove.

Spinning!

Reminds me of my great-grandmother's sewing machine, which my mother still has.

Knitting! And a swift, even!

There's a beautiful walking path in the woods, which I highly recommend.

The woods and brook are wonderful.

And my mother commented how nice it was that they didn't try to pretty it up. It's a real woods. Things happen.

Photos can't capture how wonderful it smelled. I took this picture to remember to tell you, it was marvelous.

It wasn't cold, but summer was definitely on its way out.

See the little chippie "hiding" behind the fern? He must have been a young one, who needed to learn that running away from, not closer to the big scaries is the better tactic.

We also saw a small squirrel. I don't know if he was young, too, or just a smaller variety than we have around here.

We noticed these trees all over the Island. Mountain ash, my mother said.

The dew had landed heavily, to be lingering late morning.

At the time, I didn't want to know if this was more dew, or some kind of ... oozing. I'm kind of curious now, though.

We also walked through the haunted wood to the site of LMM's grandparents' home. I wouldn't say it wasn't worth doing, but it was kind of a long walk, and turned out to be a site we'd seen before and didn't really feel the need to see again. Live and learn. Should be seen once, I think, but if you don't feel like a longish walk, drive over.

We walked back via the cemetery where LMM is buried. I noticed this unusual stone as well. Do you suppose he was a lumberjack, or merely liked trees?


For lunch, we went to the PEI Preserve Company and ate at their Cafe on the Clyde. This is the front of the menu:

I share their sensibility. I did have a sandwich, in fact, and it was good, but then I had this:

Mmmm.

If you go there, don't forget to look up; interesting light fixtures and quilts on display.

And art in the garden, as well.

After lunch, it was time for a return visit to the LMM Birthplace, which is in New London, and then on to Park Corner to the Anne Museum, which is in the house that her cousins lived in, and was where she got married. Both places that we'd been before, and were happy to go again. We're funny that way.

Perhaps by now, you are done with the "isn't PEI pretty?" pictures, but I am not. Most emphatically.

This barn color was just wrong, though. Red, yes; persimmon, no.
Just say no to painting your barn persimmon!

Still, red roads make up for a lot with me.

Back in Charlottetown for dinner (good pizza at Castello's, by the Confederation Centre), and I saw this on a car as we walked over to Cows for dessert. It had a PEI plate on the back; I suggested that it could be a friend or relative of Adam McQuaid's, and my mother pointed out that it could actually be his!


It is nice, as a hockey fan visiting Canada, to have hockey references be so much more common. Though I also saw at least two Red Sox shirts that week; they're everywhere. But at Cows, there was this flavor (and wait until you see the shirt I got there):


And in the liquor store, the Red Sox were absent, while I learned that Wayne Gretzky has put his name to wine.


So that was Thursday. Now I'm off to dream of visiting the Hockey Hall of Fame. Have you been to Toronto?

PS Happy birthday, my brother!