Wise Woman Travel

On the way from the Moncton airport to the Confederation Bridge which would take us over to Prince Edward Island, I checked our rental car’s passenger side mirror and noticed a long lineup of traffic behind us.

Uh oh, I thought. Even though we were doing the speed limit, I wondered how long it would be before the car following us – and probably a bunch behind him- zoomed up behind us in a rush to pass, squeezing their vehicles back into our lane just ahead of us, or even passing on the right. On the QE II, the highway between Calgary and Edmonton, where we live, this is a regular occurrence. We’ve had a few close calls from people taking high speed risks in crowded traffic conditions.

But the situation I was dreading never happened. The traffic settled in sedately behind us. No one tried to pass. We all streamed calmly over the bridge and dispersed on the other side to continue our journeys through PEI.

This set the tone for the four days we spent on the Island. The pace of life matches the countryside’s calm pastoral green. Summerside, a small city of about 15000 people on the south central coast of the Island, became our base for taking day trips. It’s big enough to have amenities, but small enough to have a close knit community feel.

We stayed at the Summerside Inn Bed and Breakfast , a gracious Queen Anne style house built in 1891 and home to two of PEI’s former premiers. Cool, airy, and meticulously decorated, it’s owned and operated by the gracious Mary Anne, who made us a different breakfast every morning. Unlike some b and bs where we’ve stayed, our breakfast time was our choice, and we never felt rushed. We sat over many cups of coffee and compared notes with other travellers at the big dining room table. Mary Anne gave us restaurant and ” be sure to see” suggestions for wherever we were headed on the Island, and provided a quiet place for us to land at the end of every day trip.

Next post: A visit with the Mi’kmaq on Lennox Island; the hidden gem of Thunder Cove Beach, and the quirkily beautiful Bottle Houses at Cape Egmont