Prince Edward Island

Part of the reason that we wanted to go to Maine was the relatively short distance that it is from Prince Edward Island. Janae is a long-time fan of Anne of Green Gables stories, so she has always wanted to visit the places that served as the inspiration to Lucy Maud Montgomery's stories about Anne. Plus we'd never been to Canada before . . .


We crossed the border much later in the day than we thought we would, so it was getting pretty dark. And it was very foggy as we were driving in. We didn't think about potential currency issues until we hit our first toll booth. We fumbled around looking for something to throw in the bucket, and finally Janae ran over to one of the booths with an attendant to get change. The whole ordeal ended up taking a few minutes. Fortunately there was no traffic that late at night, but we did thoroughly frustrate a Canadian man behind us who yelled at Josh as he switched lanes to go around us, "You could have killed me, eh!"


The fog stuck around for one more day, and we were sad that we didn't really get to see much of St. John, New Brunswick.

St. John sits on the Bay of Fundy, which is home to some of the biggest tide changes in the world. The water fluctuates 28 feet between high and low tide. This change causes a unique phenomenon called the reversing falls on the river as it flows into the bay. We weren't able to see the falls at their peak, but we hear it's pretty impressive. We decided we'd had enough of the fog and headed on towards PEI.
Fortunately things did start to clear up when we got closer to the island. We got some great views as we were going across the Confederation Bridge. We were amazed at the bridge. It's very long (about 8 miles) and very tall (almost 200 ft). Pictures can't do it justice. It's also very expensive - $42.50 - but only on the way back to mainland. You can visit from Prince Edward Island for free, you just can't leave. We were also surprised at how big the island is, and how many beautiful things there were to see as we drove to the place where we were staying. We managed to get lost a few times trying to find our B&B, but were very pleased when we finally made it to the Misty Meadows. Janae picked the place partially because of it's convenient location, and the next morning we headed out to Avonlea village to get a taste of what life was like in the world of Anne of Green Gables. We started out at school . . .

Then we played dress up . . .

Yup, ALL of us played dress up . . .
We made crafts with Josie and co. (characters from the stories) . . .
Drank raspberry cordial (but not until Josh made Janae confirm that it was non-alcoholic) and ate chocolate covered potato chips . . .
And met Ms. Of-Green-Gables herself . . .

That afternoon Hurricane Bill threatened to hit the island. The storm ended up as a near-miss, but we got hit with a lot of wind and a lot of rain. So we ended up spending time in the car looking for lighthouses. We found some pretty good ones . . .
While we were at the Avonlea village we met someone who was born in this lighthouse . . . But Josh's favorite was this one. The storm was really blowing when we found it, but he decided to jump out for a picture anyways.

The weather cleared up the next day, so we headed back to Avonlea to go for a spin on the carriage ride and give the pony ride a try. Ainslie loved them both.

After that we headed over to the real Green Gables house that was the inspiration for the stories. We took a little tour of the house . . .

And we even put Ainslie in the "special backpack" for a stroll through the haunted forest and down lover's lane.

Sadly, we had to leave Prince Edward Island and head back home, but we loved the time that we spent there.