Day 84- Anne of Green Gables and Goodbye PEI- Hello New Brunswick

Day 84 Saturday, July 31, 2010 Distance 82.09 km. Time 4 hr. 48 min. Total so far 5810.46 km. A few sprinkles at the end of loading our bicycles brought us to the picnic canopy pretty fast this morning. It was a good thing that the tent was dry and packed already. The sprinkles stopped and we headed toward Cavendish. The hilly route took about an hour and a quarter. We stopped at one souvenir store but didn’t find anything. My quest for today was to buy an Anne of Green Gables T-shirt for Tryne. When we stopped at the tourist information center, there was a nice one there and the price was down by 5 dollars so I landed up buying one for each of my young grand daughters. There were none in Amy’s size. We headed right to the Green Gables Post Office to send them away with my usual message of “ Gramma Loves You” on the outside. We tried several times to call Clara because if she was home we would have gone to visit her in Rose Valley but again there was no answer and a message every time that her phone was not initialized. I felt bad about having to miss her and Craig. We then went to the Green Gables House and I did the tour as quickly as I could because I knew Dave was waiting in the parking lot with the bicycles and this isn’t his kind of thing to do. We had received an email saying the neighbour and his daughter who were watching our house weren’t able to do it again, and our neighbour next door had a leak and needed our vehicles moved but neither vehicle will start now. Dave figures it is time to double time it back home although, Matthew, who is now done school for the summer says he will take care of things. It was a good thing that we approached from the north because the whole section of road after we left was full of what Dave calls tourist traps-fun places for children that clean out parents’ pocketbooks fast! Our original plan had been to drive around the Darnley area where my sister’s family had vacationed in July but due to the looming weather we decided to go south. We left by Hwy. 6 which was quite busy here but then we turned to Hwy. 8 to go across the island. What a hilly road but the views of the farmland are very beautiful. The different greens of the crops, the yellows of the ripe oats and the dark puffy clouds of the sky were very appealing to the camera eye. We stopped at a guardrail at the top of a hill for our peanut butter and cheese lunch. Afterwards we took Hwy. 109, then Hwy. 225, then 1A and finally Hwy. 1. About 5 km. before the end of PEI someone threw a glass bottle out of a car window that smashed on the road just in front of Dave. How nice! We came to the Confederation Bridge just as the shuttle bus was loading. One problem though was that she wanted us to take off all the panniers and bags from the bicycles or they would be too heavy for her trailer where she would velcro them in place. It took me quite a while to unload Silver as my cheaper setup is more complicated. The other passengers in the shuttle were shoppers from New Brunswick. (NB) I felt that we had cheated PEI as we were only there for 3 days but it is time to head home. Maybe we'll be back another time. Dave took some photos from his front row seat of the shuttle during the 13 km. ride. When we arrived in NB, it took quite a while again to load the bicycles. We headed down the highway past marshy moose land and turned to Hwy. 955 to Murray’s Corners. We were told there was a campground there but haven't seen it yet. When we reached the little Irving Station at the Little Shemogue sign, we asked the owner if we could camp behind his shed. He said yes. We set up and took a short walk down to the water of the Northumberland Strait. We had a view of the PEI bridge to our right and some cottages to our left. The tide was out, the birds were looking for food and it was a little smelly. At about 8 pm. there was a short but nice fireworks display by the beach that we could see from the tent.