Prince Edward Island AKA -- Anne's World

There are 3 options to get to PEI:

*  Airplane

*  Ferry

*  12.9 km bridge over the ocean

We ferried our way over to the island, which carries cars, trailers, semis, or whatever needs to go.

We enjoyed being up top for a while, until the weather started to look a little ominous.

When we arrived, we were anxious to see the difference of the landscape.  It didn't take us long to notice --

You could actually see past the road!!!

The fields were gorgeous.  I believe this is a field of soybeans.

I'm not sure what this crop was, but they are famous for potatoes as well.

This was our view out of our window at the restaurant.

The next morning, we woke up and can you guess where we went???

What would a visit to PEI be without visiting Anne's house?  I guess you could say it would be somewhat like trying to eat pancakes without syrup -- a little pointless.

This was outside the Avonlea Village.  There was a hint of autumn in the air, and the trees were just beginning to turn into those fabulous colors that we all LOVE to see.

Milking Anne's Cow

Matthew's room

The coolest stove I have ever seen.  It had an oven on top.

Taking a stroll down "Lover's Lane."  They were laughing at us for taking a picture of their behinds, but we thought it was very sweet.

Jeff's driving his Dad pretty hard.

Here is the famous house --

Anne of Green Gables.

Eating lunch out on the picnic tables and drinking Marilla's famous "Raspberry Cordial."

After leaving the farm, we headed out to see the beaches that PEI is very famous for.  Because of the hurricane, we had extremely unusual waves breaking on the shores.

The famous red cliffs

The sandy beaches with wonderful white sand

Jeff thought he was very clever with this one -- this is mostly a picture for those of us who were on this trip.  FYI -- the whole trip, we would keep our eyes peeled for these cute little question marks, which would tell us there were "washrooms" for us to relieve the numbness.  We were very grateful for these pit stops, and when we couldn't find one, we became a little desperate.  At one point, we ended up buying 4 cookies just so we could use the toilets.

At the end of the day, we were able to go to a musical called Anne & Gilbert.  It was so cute, all of us loved it.  What a perfect ending to our stay on PEI.  If you ever hear us singing "Your Island Through and Through," you will now know where we got it from.

Upon leaving PEI, we drove over this bridge, that takes just about 10 minutes to cross.  Pretty incredible if you ask me.

Igor's Wrath at Louisburg

Igor was in all his glory on this "beautiful" Tuesday on Cape Breton Island.  His path was headed for Newfoundland, which is the next island over from where we were.  He did do some significant damage there, but, thank goodness, all we had to deal with was the extreme windy conditions.  Holy Hannah, I have NEVER felt wind quite like that.  That morning was relatively calm, but it sure built up to something fierce, I'll tell you!!!

We started the day in Baddeck, where our B&B was, and we went to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum.  I used to think he was the telephone guy and that's it, man was I mistaken.  He helped his dad come up with a phonetic alphabet to help the deaf speak, one of which was his wife.  He did come up with the telephone, but then he kept inventing stuff and really didn't stop until he died.  He came up with some really cool kites and tried to fly using them.  Then he helped in building an airplane that was one of the first to fly the longest distance.  He came up with this cigar shaped speed boat that was the fastest on water for years.

To me, the sweetest thing was how he took care of his wife who was deaf.  His life was devoted to her and helping her know what was going on around her, even though she couldn't hear.  I am usually not one for museums, but that one was really cool.

After that, we headed up to the Louisburg Fortress.  It was where the French had it's main hold on the America's and they had a huge fortress there that they would use to defend themselves.

After arriving, we were bused out to the fortress, then we had to walk some distance into the compound itself.  That is when we really got our first taste of the wonderful world of hurricanes.  I would be just fine to never have to go through one again.  We were literally being pushed in the direction we were walking, with occasional gusts that would carry us along for a short distance.  I was glad we were not walking against it at that time.

We ate at this "gourmet" restaurant inside the fortress.  We were each given a spoon and a rag.  We had a few choices for our entree, soup, meat pies, fish, or french toast.  They brought out some bread for our appetizer that was the heaviest, blahiest, disgustingest bread I have probably ever tasted in my life.  I had to soak it in the soup to even get it down.  My choice for food was the turkey pie, which was crust, turkey, then gravy on top, then as a side dish I had cooked carrots and turnips.  I'll just say, I'm not a fan of turnips and I wouldn't care if I never saw another turnip again.  The food was, well, let's just say it was food, nothing fancy about it, but the experience was very fun.  The waitresses were very cute, having a lot of fun playing the part of being a waitress back in the day.  I guess this was what they really had to eat when the solders were living there.

These are shots of what we really looked like pretty much the whole time we were there.

It was so windy and cold, but we did enjoy it while we were there.

 

This is the "outhouse", it's a 2 staller --

Which dropped off right into the ocean.  Nice -- Huh???

After that, we went to this fabulous lookout to see the incredible waves crashing against the rocks.  We just sat there for probably an hour or so just amazed at the power of the ocean.  Those were some monster waves we saw.  The wind was at our backs, so the waves were crashing and blowing the water right back into the ocean.  If it were blowing the other direction, we would have been absolutely soaked.

Jeff took some really neat pictures of this lighthouse.  The clouds and the sky just looked so awesome.

Ceiliah Trail

I am a little out of order with this one, but I still want to post some pictures.

Saturday we went along the west side of Cape Breton.  Now Cape Breton is very famous for their Scottish heritage, and with that, they still do many things that are very -- Scottish.

This is one of them -- it's celtic music.  We stopped here for lunch and to listen to this fabulous fiddler and his wife on the piano.  This was so amazing.  We stopped and listened for over an hour and we could have stayed there longer except they stopped playing.

A little further down the beach, we found this cute old man who, to pass the time in between his golfing outings, would set up his own golf course of sorts to practice up.  Jeff's dad took a swing at it and did very good.

Just playing on the beach.  The water was oh so cold.

But, there is something magical about the ocean and it's waves.  I find it so mesmerizing.

Another look off.

And here is the sweetest couple, George and Ann Little.  Jeff knew George when he was on his mission.  He had the opportunity to teach him the new member discussions since George had just been baptized days before Jeff came into the area.  It was such a neat opportunity to seem him and his wife, doing so well, and most of all, they are so strong in the gospel.  They truly are an inspiration to me, seeing their dedication to the gospel.  They fed us dinner and we had a very delightful evening with them.

Sunday, we had the chance to go to church in the Port Hawksbury Branch along with the Littles.  I think this would have to have been one of the highlights of my trip.  I am always amazed at just how strong some of these members are even when they are pretty much alone in their worship services.  When we went to church, we arrived just a minute late, but Sacrament meeting had already begun.  I counted the people there, the number was 10 and then there were 4 of us.  After a little while, I figured out that 2 of the others were visiting from the District, so that took this branches number down to 8 members at church that day, and 2 of them were children under 10.  They each had many hats to wear.  I felt the spirit so strong and it completely thrilled me to be able to attend church that day.  I have a strong testimony of the gospel, and I KNOW it is true.  I get excited to be able to go to church in different areas we are visiting.  I realize that the church is true wherever you go.  It is that simple.  I do see many of the hurdles these saints must jump over in order to practice there religion, and it is not easy for them.  Many of them have had to choose between family or church; friends or church; jobs or church; Life is much different here.  I am so grateful for the generations after generations of members in our families.  It is amazing the difference that makes in strengthening testimonies.

Cabot Trail

From the time of preparing for our trip, Jeff has been talking about going around the Cabot Trail, which is a road that winds around most of the northern tip of Cape Breton.  This has been item #1 on the agenda of “Things to do” on our trip.  He had given us 2-day window so if we were having bad weather one day, we could still see it on the next day.  This is where we kinda hit a roadblock – because of this little guy – 

Hurricane Igor

As we were looking at the forecast 5 days ago, we were thrilled with the outlook.  Sunny, low 20’s (Celsius), calm, we thought we were geniuses with such great planning.  And then the hurricane decided to come up this way.  In the end we decided we were still geniuses -- geniuses in finding our way to the hurricanes.  Geniuses in bringing the colder than normal temperature to Nova Scotia.  And especially, geniuses at navigating through the streets of Nova Scotia.  BUT, we did not let these small factors dampen our sense of adventure and stop our curiosity, NOPE, we still did everything we had planned even through the rain and intense wind.

The ferry that took us across the bay in the ocean.

This lake was so still it looked like a mirror.  

We sat on these rocks for 45 minutes just watching the waves crash up against them.

This sight is EVERYWHERE!!!  A cute little church, usually white, surrounded by a cemetery.  I just had to get a picture of it.

Jeff drove, a lot!

We all enjoyed a yummy dinner of lobster.

They call these mountains, but we who know what REAL mountains are, we called these hills.  Whatever they are called, they were absolutely beautiful.  The one thing that is for sure about Nova Scotia is that EVERYTHING is GREEN!!!  The "mountains" are covered with trees as thick as you could imagine.  We were kind of hoping that we could see the autumn leaves along this drive, as you could imagine what it would look like, or maybe not, but we did get a small taste of the color as a tree here and there had started to turn into the brilliant fall colors.

The coast had parts that were extremely rugged like this.

We were so excited when we saw a moose on the side of the road.  They don't look like this in Utah.  I don't think this moose particularly liked us snapping photos of him.  He kept looking at us a little suspiciously.

The scarecrow, whatever it was, that Jeff said has been there for a very long time because he remembers it from way back when.  We just needed a little stretch and this was a nice excuse.

And then we saw this --

And this--

It was very cool.  We sat there for about 20 minutes or so just snapping picture after picture of it.  The clouds are compliment of Igor, so I guess he did produce something very incredibly gorgeous that we did appreciate.

We did have a very nice time and on top of that, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves along the way.  We spent 10 1/2 hours of driving around the Cabot Trail, and we were very happy to see our beds that evening.