The island I imagined

So grateful for this campground

We crossed the 12.9 kilometer Confederation Bridge onto Prince Edward Island with Jerry the Wheel feeling the effects of a flu-symptom night.  

Completed in 1997, makes the island far more accessible.

We rested once we reached land, then made our way to the one campground we could find that was open for the season.  That's been a pattern all along on this trip.  Plus side?  No crowds, little traffic, no lines.  Down side?  Attractions and campgrounds not yet open.  We settled in, and I had my turn with the flu for a day and a half.   We were so grateful for and  blessed with this spot.  
  

Tucked into our site, a cabin up the way.  The red dirt is really that color.

It was quiet, magical, creatively developed.  A healing place.  And we needed healing!

Soon we were up and around and on our way, in the north central area of Prince Edward Island.  The area of Lucy Maude Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables.  The area of Marie Bostwick's Red Door Inn series.  I had so many pictures in my head from years of books.  We decided to scout out the area on our first outing.  We found the Cavendish of today, not yesterday.  The place where summer must be a noisy, crazy circus. 

Summer in Cavendish must be a wild ride

There was evidence everywhere:  a water park, an amusement park, oodles of Anne-themed motels and candy shops, a big fake cow living on a rooftop, tons of shops.  All closed, all waiting for the tourists to roll in.  We chose to look further afield, and there we found the island I had imagined.

Prince Edward Island is predominantly agricultural.  The farms in some places spread out right to the sea.  Sometimes there are small, simple homes on the edges of fields, looking over acres of land and miles and miles of water.

Farming with a view

Inland water abounds

A small Amish community has moved onto the island

We enjoyed sunny weather and foggy weather, and in-between weather.  Some of my most memorable images were the fishing boats waiting in the bays and wharves.  And the sea.  Always the sea.

The fog just rolled in under the blue skies

Red earth and rocks, blue sea and sky, green fields and forests.  L.M.Montgomery called it her emerald, sapphire and ruby island.

 

I love the boats

Lobster season lasts two months on the island and had just started the day before.  The skipper of the Jason D. (I thought of you, Jason D.B.!) invited us to walk anywhere we wanted as he readied his boat for the next day's work.  He said he'd had a pretty good day for the first day of the season.

We were invited to wander anywhere on the wharf.  What fun!

Readying the traps.  I could maybe live in a fishing shack for a season.

It was there.  I found the Prince Edward Island that lived in my mind's eye. 

Beyond all the crazy, touristy, attention-grabbing kitsch, there it was.