Jen's East Coast Adventures

Bike lock in tow, I headed over to the ferry, stopping at a camp ground nearby to ditch my car and load up the bike. I, of course, arrived at the ferry about 5 minutes too late and had to wait for the next one, but it turned out into a nice social experience. A group of older men saw my loaded bike and stopped to ask what I was up to. They too were headed over to PEI, but for a fishing tournament. They were members of ROFFA: Retired Old Farts Fishing Association! Not sure if you can make out the hat, but they even had paraphenalia! They then insisted on buying me lunch, which was fine with me, because I was starving! This was a recurrent theme throughout the trip; not the people buying me food, but the starving bit.

I made it on to the ferry, got on deck (beautiful hot day, so might as well enjoy the sunshine), pulled out my journal, finished my entry about, but we still hadn't left so pulled out my Anne of Green Gables book. I've read it before but a long time ago, and I'd bought a new copy last year and hadn't gotten around to reading it yet, so I figured what better time to read it than on my trip in PEI! After an hour of reading and not going anywhere, I finally took off my head phones and caught the overhead announcement talking about mechanical problems and delays and it'd only be a few more minutes! After 2 1/2 hours of delays, we finally got underway... not that it mattered to me, cause I didn't have anywhere to be! I was happy reading my book in the sunshine!

Once off the ferry, I got on my bike and headed off to the visitors centre. During the crossing, I'd read a bit in my PEI book about where to go and how to get around, and it had mentioned the Confederation Trail, which had been the railway system that had been converted into a set of walking and biking trail; nice smooth grade, no traffic, sounded ideal! I hopped on to that and headed east.


Reaching MurrayRiver after only 20km or so, I set up camp but wasn't ready to call it quits for the day, so headed out on my unloaded bike to explore Cape Bear. Did you know that the telegraph station at this lighthouse was to first place to pick up the distress signal from the Titanic? Kinda cool; a little piece of history.


After biking down along the coast and finding this beautiful group of flowers (which someone has informed me look an awful lot like opium plants!), I stopped for my first meal in PEI. I really wanted some good seafood, but I ended up in a deep fry joint, so I compromised and got chowder and deepfried clams. Pretty decent, and not a bad start to the trip.