Outside of Charlottetown, There Isn't Much to Prince Edward Island

Friday, May 18, 2018--Charlottetown and Northeastern PEI

Using the computer was a problem last night.  The Wi-Fi access was so slow (and sometimes non-existent) that I could barely  do anything all evening.  I couldn't even test the speed because the web pages for the broadband speed test sites wouldn't open.  It's strange that this area of Canada--not just PEI but also Nova Scotia--so far generally has slower Internet services than I encountered in Colombia and Ecuador last fall!!  The speeds I have tested seem to  be only in the 5 Mbps to 20 Mbps range for downloads which is pitiful for a hotel or an apartment where others are using the same service causing that speed to be cut into 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc., as much per instrument (phone, computer, TV, etc.) connected and using the service at any given time.

We left Charlottetown around 9:30 this morning expecting to spend most of the day exploring the coast and the towns in the northeastern part of PEI.  By 12:30, we were heading back in to Charlottetown.  Most of the towns on the map for the province wouldn't really be qualified as towns.  Many consist of maybe 3-5 houses with no businesses.  Some are just an intersection with some houses in the distant area!!  Georgetown, which is touted as a special town for its historical buildings, has fewer than 560 people living there and has maybe 8-10 old historical buildings with 2 of them being abandoned wooden church buildings that are falling apart. In the guidebooks, Georgetown was made to sound like a nice small city, and I even tried to make a reservation to stay there for tonight thinking it would be a good place to explore.  I had trouble finding anything, so I reserved the second night here where we were already booked for last night.  Today, it took us all of about 10 minutes to find every significant building, to see the port, and to read the informational signs about the history of the place.

To give a better description of PEI, it is a very rural province.  There are beautiful farms everywhere,  but the Charlottetown metro area is by far the largest place on the island.  So far, we have found no other towns where we might want to stay.  There is only one place outside the metro area with a population greater than 2000, but the whole province has only 143,000 people.

We did drive another two of the historical heritage roads today.  Both again were red dirt roads.  We got about halfway down one when we encountered a road grater working.  We had to turn around and backtrack because the road is so narrow that the area where he was working was impassable due the narrow sections on each side of the loose raised dirt in the middle that he would later smooth out.  In the second, though, we had a great trip through a beautiful wooded area with a nice stream crossing along the way.

We also came through an Amish area.  The Amish are somewhat new to PEI, but they seem to have been welcomed by locals.  We saw a couple of signs warning about horse buggies being on the roads, then we met an oncoming buggy with a woman and a girl in it.

We returned to Charlottetown and went to the Cows Creamery.  It is been reputed to be the company that makes the best ice cream in Canada.  We took their self-guided tour and then shared a cone with two dips of their favorite flavors.  It is good ice cream.  And it was fun seeing their t-shirts and their signs around the theme of their business.

Then we walked the Beach Grove Nature Trail between there and hour hotel.  It goes through a wooded area beside the bay.  The sun has been out all day, and with the wind speeds being slower than yesterday, the somewhat cold temperatures aren't bothersome.  At one point, we stopped to sit on a bench in the sunshine where the trail left the woods and had green grass and yellow and purple wildflowers growing beside it.

We had intended to be out exploring in the east until evening and to attend a ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee) at Pooles Corner, a crossroads outside of Georgetown.  It's a community gathering with Irish music dancing, and food.  But now we are questioning whether we want to drive the 45 minutes each way to go there for it since we finished our tour and ended up back in Charlottetown.  Maybe we will go out later to see what is happening here in town instead.