We awoke to rain and mosquitoes. The idea of hiding away inside our van for the day was not appealing, so we left Panmure Island Provincial Park even though we had paid for a second night. We figured the weather had to be better elsewhere.
We started by driving from the campground onto Panmure Island to take a look at the lighthouse, the oldest wooden lighthouse on the island!
From Panmure we headed South and the East to look at Cape Bear lighthouse. As you can see, the sun came out.
Along the way we passed lots of lilacs still in full bloom and potato fields with the plants now appearing above the soil in nice neat rows.
As our plans had always been to leave PEI by ferry because it was something we’d not done on our last trip here many years ago, so we headed to Woods Islands to look at the lighthouse and check ferry availability.
The lighthouse did not disappoint, but the ferry did. They only had overflow available for the 3:00pm ferry or we could reserve for the 6:00pm ferry. It was 12:30pm and so we decided to drive back to the bridge and take it instead.
Along the way we stopped at Point Prim to look at the lighthouse. It is the oldest lighthouse in PEI and is built of masonry, is round and finished with wood shingles. It was completed in 1845 as an aid to sailors entering the Charlottetown harbour.
Crossing the Confederation Bridge took us from PEI and back to New Brunswick. We were stopped for road repairs on the bridge which gave us a good opportunity to look about and observe that concrete bridges also flex under the load of moving vehicles. Hmmm.
Entering into Nova Scotia we stopped at the visitor center and we’re welcomed by a piper. The light rains we’re about to get worse according to the darkening skies under which we were soon driving.
We were headed to Colchester, NS and were driving up and around Westchester mountain when the skies became really dark and the winds picked up. We paid the toll at the Cobequid Pass toll plaza and then the rains came. The windshield wipers were on full and the rain covered highway shone like an ice covered pond. We slowed (obviously) to about half the posted speed limit and luckily the worst was over in just a few minutes.
We stopped for fuel, dinner (fish & chips) and a few groceries at the Masstown Market. Quite a place that has just about everything you could want in one stop.
From the Masstown Market we drove 2km to the Elm River Campground as it had been a long day. Below is our site and a quiet one we are hoping it shall be. Good night.
