September 14 PEI and lobster

The mosquitos came out quickly this morning, so they pushed us to get moving away from them. So we took down camp, called Jamie to wish her a happy birthday and left a message on her cellphone, packed up, and headed south to Shediac. New Brunswick is just lovely, and most of the roads we took were great. We arrived in Shediac about 11:30 and stopped at the giant lobster statue for a photo opportunity. We also checked in with the visitor’s bureau (a very unlively sort of guy). We got directions to the lobster boat tours, and headed downtown to the quay.

After a false turn that took us to the public quay, we got back on the main road and took the next road to the commercial quays. We found the boat tour people, but they didn’t have any opening for a tour until today at 4:15 p.m. Sounded like a good little tour, you got to go out with the lobster boat, pull up lobster crates, learn about the Shediac Bay and how lobsters grow, with the finale being learning how to crack a lobster and then a eat lobster dinner. But since we would have to wait for more than a day, we decided to ask about a place to have lobster at.
She recommended Terry’s Fish Market two doors down, so we went over there for lunch. Terry was an older gentleman who had run the fish market his whole life with his wife. They are the only two working there. He had a pile of cooked lobsters, and picked out a couple for us, cracked them, and gave us some potato salad, a roll, and coleslaw, for a total price of $26 Canadian. We took our trays upstairs, (see the picture) and gorged on lobster.

Then we headed over to PEI and crossed the Confederation Bridge (the longest span of bridge in the Western Hemisphere). We headed to the west coast, going through Summerside first. The tall ships were at anchor there, we missed them sailing in, but they were good to see.

Then we drove up the west coast for a while before heading across the northern tip of the island for Jacques Cartier Provincial Park. The word to describe this area is wild. The wind sweeps across it from the west and keeps it fairly deserted. The Prov. Park was on the lee side, and pretty empty. Another couple was there for several days from Ontario with their two standard poodles, and a third couple pulled in from BC later in the evening. They all came over to check our our rig, no one had ever seen anything like it before. This has been a common reaction at just about everywhere that we stop.

We had nice chats, and then retired to our nest for some soup and to watch a couple episodes of Heroes, the first season. Life is very tough!