Tuesday, July 13- Green Gables Shore, Prince Edward Island

After a hearty breakfast at a restaurant in Cavendish, we found the historic site for Lucy Maud Montgomery and the most famous fictional person from P.E.I., Anne Shirley, of Green Gables and Avonlea. Julie has long been a fan of the Canadian made-for-TV movies about Anne, and she was part of the reason why we decided to come to P.E.I. in the first place. In much the same way that Earl Hamner drew Walton’s Mt. from the area of Schuyler Virginia where he grew up, Montgomery’s Avonlea comes from Cavendish. While Anne and the town of Avonlea are fictional, she lived in a setting that was very much drawn from the real life locations that Montgomery knew here in Cavendish as she was growing up.

We began our tour of the Canada Parks run buildings at the site of Montgomery’s home. Her birthplace is right down the road from where we are staying (and it is also a museum, though we didn’t tour it). However, her parents died when she was only 21 months old, and so from then until she was in her 30s, she lived with her maternal grandparents at the site we began at. There isn’t much left of the house itself-- just the stone basement. But the area around it is nicely kept with many signs with quotes from Montgomery about features that can still be seen, like the water well and the gnarled, split apple tree that is more than 100 years old. There is a cabin that serves as an interpretation center and a bookstore, and naturally, we bought two copies of Anne of Green Gables there-- one for us and a revised version that is easier to read for the girls.

We took a peaceful walk through the “haunted woods”, which the author once believed were full of fairies and which Anne said were full of more spooky things. When we emerged from the woods, we were greeted by the original “Green Gables.” The house was originally the home of the author’s uncle and aunt, and she used it as a model for the house that Anne’s adoptive family would live in. Unlike the first house, this one is very well kept and full of furniture from Anne’s time. The place was very busy and filled with tourists, but worth the stop. After touring the house and barn, we bought some bottles of “Anne’s Raspberry Cordial” at the refreshment stand in the barn, and watched the orientation movie at the main visitor’s center. It was interesting to hear how reluctant the author was to admit that Anne was fictional. Like the rest of the world, she preferred to believe that Anne was real and it pained her to admit otherwise. Certainly, it seems like all of the visitors to Prince Edward Island like believe in her.

By the time we made it back to the car it was very hot and time for lunch. We went to a local establishment called the Sandbox, which actually had an indoor sandbox for the girls to play in. Service was a bit slow, but we enjoyed the French fries made from P.E.I. potatoes. We had other Anne of Green Gables possibilities that we could visit, but Julie felt that she had seen all she needed to see, so we made our way to the Cavendish Beach.

At the beach, the girls didn’t go very far into the water. For one thing, the Gulf of St. Lawrence is a lot colder than Lake Ontario had been a couple of days ago. For another thing, there were occasional jellyfish floating by. We did enjoy walking along the beach to see the dunes that have piled high along it, and seeing the red sand that P.E.I. is known for. The sand that we were on was white, but you didn’t have to dig far to see the red sand, and there were red cliffs nearby and red sandstone all over. The girls tried making inukshuks on the beach from the sandstone.

After the beach, we went to Cows for ice cream. It is made in Prince Edward Island and the company seems as well known for its t-shirts and merchandizing as it does for its ice cream. It tasted good on this hot day.

From there, we took a drive along the coast. We stopped at a few outlooks along the way to admire the view. At the first one, we had already been there for a few minutes, and were actually on our way back to the car when Julie’s eagle eyes spotted something odd on the cliff side. When we zoomed in on it with the video camera, we could confirm that it was, in fact, a bald eagle. It was quite a surprise. (Of course, our animal spotting seems backwards. We saw the moose in the United States and the bald eagle in Canada. It’s hard to arrange these things.)(Click on the picture of the cliffs to see him.)

We continued on up the coast, making several stops. We’ve learned a lot about SpongeBob today. For one thing, we saw that the jellyfish aren’t as cute as they are on TV. For another thing, we got to see lobster traps up close. Anna had thought that the Krusty Krab restaurant on TV was supposed to be a treasure chest, but she can see now that it is actually a lobster trap. On our way back, we picked up some things for dinner, and Julie made hot dogs for us at the cottage. After dinner, Julie sat reading Anne of Green Gables on the porch while Scott played the guitar and the girls played tag between the cottages.

After we went inside, there was a knock on the door. A girl Anna had been playing with invited us to her family’s campfire. We almost wish we had said no thanks, because Anna and Emma got bitten pretty badly, and Scott got eaten alive in spite of wearing “Off.” Aloe helped us get through the night.