I got up about 7. Keenan was still asleep. I went out to the cliff to watch the river. The tide was just past full and receding. There was just a bit of fog hanging in the bend of the river on the shady side opposite me but the sun was bright above/through it. The sun was shining (the first fog-free morning!!) on the cliff-face and I could really see the colors and rocks for the first time. I took a few pictures of that then wandered around the property to get pictures of the music house, our cottage and the car. I didn't get the golf course or tennis courts as there just wasn't a good vantage point for them.
I did some packing until about 8 or so when K got up. We finished packing and neatening the cottage in just a few minutes and went to the big house for breakfast. We had a "Santa Claus melon" with our breakfast that was wonderful! The outside of the melon is kind of striped like a gourd or watermelon. It's shaped sort of like a blunt football. The flesh is pale green, like a honeydew but much more flavorful than any honeydew I ever tasted. Good stuff!
We cleaned up breakfast, said our goodbyes and hit the road around 9:30.
We headed out across the big bridge where we watched the tide a couple days before, skirted Truro on a sort of back highway through dairy lands, then onto the main highway for a bit. We got off at an interchange along the way to stop at a local market. We got some wonderful plums, bread, cheese, a tomato, peanut butter and a bag of Cape Cod potato chips. I'm generally not a big potato chip fan but we bought several more bags of these chips before the trip was done. I'm a convert!!
We made really good time from there to Oxford (via a $3 toll road), where we turned of to take a coastal scenic road toward the Confederation Bridge. It's a toll bridge but only from the PEI side...which we found out later is $37 CA (!). We wound our way across PEI to PEI National Park and the Rustico Island campground where we had reservations for the next two days ($15 per night plus a $7 registration fee).
Its a very nice campground...heavily treed and low visibility of other campsites. It sprinkled occasionally as we were setting up camp but it waited until we were done to really rain for a few minutes. We ate lunch (cheese and tomato sandwiches) snug and dry under our tarp...which I was really glad I went to the trouble to get here.
We went for a walk in the rain out to the end of the peninsula and along the beach. It rained off and on but wasn't cold.
When we got to the beach, there were all these large (some, dinner-plate size), smooth, dark, round stones on the shore. I started toward the water using the big round stones like stepping stones when I discovered that they weren't stones at all...they were jellyfish left stranded by the tide. Most were a beautiful amethyst color although some were clear and uncolored except for some whitish innards you could see. We flipped some over to check for tentacles and to confirm if they really were jellyfish. They were. Some were pretty disgusting...looking like afterbirth...others were actually very pretty. There were tons of them all up and down the shore.
We walked along the shore until it looked like it was getting too rocky to be worth the trouble. We turned back and returned to camp. We sat at our picnic table writing out postcards and hanging out. We could hear the roar of moto-cross cars coming across the channel...I hope that doesn't go on too long...
There are lots of bike and sailboards on the other cars in the campground. And we saw lots of sail boarding as we were driving to the campground. There was a sing up at the front of the ground that said there was no vacancy. When I made the reservation a couple weeks ago, I got one of the last couple sites available, so I imagine it is pretty full. I don't know if all the sites are reservation only or if they hold a certain number of them for walk-ins. In any case, the campground doesn't feel crowded, even if it is full.
I made sun-dried tomato/parmesan pasta with dried mushrooms and zucchini for supper. It was way tasty! I though it had just a touch too much dried red pepper but K thought it was fine as-is.
We went for a walk after supper into the twilight and found an old, long-unused outdoor amphitheatre. It was a very nice walk. Then we took showers and went for a little drive to scope out the rest of the park and find the trailheads for our hiking adventures tomorrow.
We went to bed around 10 and chatted a while before sleeping the night through.
