Vacationing in Prince Edward Island Is a Bit Like Removing Your Brain and Putting It on the Dresser…
Just returned from a week visiting my sister and brother-in-law in Prince Edward Island, Canada.
She doesn’t live AT the end of the world, but I think that you can see it from there. I have a new appreciation of Palin saying that she can “see Russia from her back porch”. When you find yourself in the sticks, I think that you tend to lose all sense of proportion.
Gas Station Cuisine. Not Kidding.
It’s an adventure bringing two American kids on a 12+ hour car trip to a place where the hottest restaurant in town (and I am NOT making this up) is at the gas station.
Yup, you read that right: my sister’s local hotspot dishes out diesel and fish and chips!
I must say, even as a college student–on some wild road trips–I never actually ATE at a gas station. Oh, the occasional bag of Doritos maybe, but not a sit down dinner complete with screw top wine!
It was quite the venue, especially with the scads of nautical knick-knacks nailed to every wall and flat surface. Made Rt. 28 on Cape Cod look truly tasteful, and for any of your familiar with that stretch of road, you’ll appreciate the implications.
Mackerel, Mackerel Everywhere!
The high point of the trip was a deep sea fishing expedition one hazy afternoon just before the start of the tuna fishing season.
Apparently PEI is the mackerel kingdom of the world, because we were filling up buckets with the damn things.
My success was quite something, given that I fish about as often as I compete in the Pillsbury Bake-Off.
Can’t take too much credit, though. These particular fish seemed to have suicidal tendencies–they were literally leaping ONTO the hooks nearly as fast as we could pull them up.
Happily, my sister happens to have three cats and big plans for building a smokehouse, so the fish was put to good use.
Strangely mackerel has a powerfully soporific effect on cats; post-fishing-trip it was like a feline opium den at her place.
Her largest cat, who pre-mackerel weighed in at an astonishing 18 pounds, literally ate so much fish that he fell over after polishing off a bowl full, and didn’t move for two hours.
Apart from the disappointment at seeing only mackerel, the trip was fairly uneventful. We only suffered a couple of injuries (well, I suffered the injuries, actually).
My son managed to hook me in a moment of panic as a fish flopped off the hook and nearly worked its way into his shoe. And my daughter, a newcomer to fishing, could use a bit more space in her attempts to master rod control. Fortunately she hooked my finger, and not my ear while swinging her pole around madly as she landed her first fish.
Swimming with the Jellyfish and Other Cold Water Adventures
Given that PEI is an island we made some mandatory beach pilgrimages, despite iffy weather. We normally swim at beaches on Cape Ann, in Massachusetts, where the water is generally cold enough to make an Eskimo shudder. So, plunging into the waves in PEI was only mildly shocking–except for one thing. Jelly fish. A plague of freaking jelly fish.
My sister–who remained safely on the shore, I might add–enthusiastically informed me that they were “Arctic Reds”, as if they were some sort of prized baking apple instead of a glob of stinging hurt drifting beneath the surface, ready to catch you unaware…
She volunteered that we could stop and get meat tenderizer in the event that anyone did get stung, happily noting that the stings were said to be “much like a bee’s”. I have to say that this did not provide a whole lot of solace. I’ve been stung by a bee and it hurts like hell.
On the up side, in our beach adventures we did have relatively close encounters with some seals.
I’m fairly sure that they were laughing their blubbery little heads off at us as we alternately screeched as the cold waves hit us, or dashed madly about to avoid the floating pests. Apparently seals aren’t much impressed by jelly fish. Or pale out-of-towners who can’t stomach the bracing surf, for that matter.
Entertaining the Kids Who Hate Everything
Good bless DVD players, laptops and Nintendo DS!
PEI would appear to be designed for old people, and sufferers of nervous exhaustion…those needing to avoid excitement at all costs.
Needless to say, it was quite a challenge entertaining two kids.
Oh–and I forgot to mention that my sister doesn’t have a television. Prior to our arrival my children thought that I was kidding. I don’t believe that they’ve ever set foot in a house without a television.
Perhaps it was good for them to “detox” a bit…by the end of the week my son realized that his thumbs wouldn’t atrophy from a few days without texting. And my daughter got a chance to be up close and personal with a few cats (we have Greyhounds who regard cats as snack food, so no chance of getting her a kitty while they are alive).
And I actually learned that I could stop bolting upright in bed at 5AM every morning with a sense of impending doom.
I’m not sure that I’d want to spend all my vacations in the land of Nod, but it was okay while it lasted, and my sister, God love her, was a gracious hostess despite over exposure to two children who make more noise than a flock of Jackass penguins. (She doesn’t have kids…wisely realized at a young age that she was more suited to being a crazy cat lady than someone’s Mom.)
It’s good to be home. And it’s good to have been away. All things in due time.
