Our Vacation to the East Coast

(Installment #1 - Saturday Sunday Monday)
Photos and many edits to follow.



The first few days of our vacation where spent on the road and in hotels, rather than camping as we had planned. Our first night after a feverish pace of travel, landed us in the mid size town of Riviere du Loup (pronounced Rivee-Air duh Loo) roughly translated as wolf river.

We arrived rather late about nine o’clock in the evening and as Michelle was very sick, her cold/flu having got very bad during the travel, we decided to search for an hotel. We stopped at a riverside motel that wanted almost eighty dollars for a room. It smelled bad and had an extremely rude owner who smelled like stale liquor, so we moved on. In Riviere du Loup we stopped at three different hotels, all were booked solid and we were told that there were no rooms available anywhere in town. At the last stop Michelle was feeling so miserable and tired, that she stayed in the car, as I fought with my very limited french to find out if the motel had a room, which of course it didn’t. However the owner did know a place down the road in a small suburb, if you can call it that, of Riviere du Loup. Michelle braved the rain to come take directions and we drove through the rain for a few minutes to a B&B motel called Hotel De La Plage (I think) It was an incredible place, very old and had a bathroom down the hall, but was creaking literally with charm. When we pulled in we hadn’t eaten so the owner had a meal made up for us less than 30 dollars. As I recall it was seafood pasta and Ham in maple sauce. We made our way up the creaking stairs and collapsed into a rather oversoft and small bed, but comfortable nonetheless.

In the morning Michelle was still feeling bad but it was evident that her cold was not as intense as the night before. We had breakfast looking out over the water, as the hotel was as it claimed, right on the beach. The food was great we helped ourselves to the buffet and ordered fruit wrapped in a crepe to go with it. We looked out at the water and thought about a hike on the beach, but had to get moving as we wanted to hit the Maritimes relatively quickly. As the rain was bad and we did not get off as quick as we hoped, we made our way to Moncton by evening and again we hunted for a hotel as Michelle’s flu/cold was being nasty. She cried on my shoulder wondering when this stupid cold/flu would pass. But we found a Comfort Inn easily as the weekend had passed. But when we were watching the TV we noticed that the weather was to be bad for two more days but the weather on Prince Edward Island (PEI) looked good so we headed for the island by way of the Confederation bridge. The clouds and rain remained, but got thinner. As Michelle was feeling better and did not want to spend her entire vacation in the car or a hotel, we stopped for a short hike in Kensington PEI along the Confederation trail which follows an old railway bed. There were also couple of museums in Kensington, a very cute little veterans museum and a rail museum which we walked through. By the time we reached Malpeque bay , the weather had improved we stopped for lunch at a great lobster hut on the harbour and had some delicious mussels. We hiked at Cabot Beach park where the cubs had the national jamboree last year. We saw some great views of the harbour and walked the dunes. The boats pass into the harbour there through a narrow channel and that made for great photos. We also collected a number of shells from the beach and Michelle warned me about what had happened last time as the shell’s owners had rotted in the car leaving the car with a bad odour for weeks so we checked out our shells with care to avoid bringing the remains of shellfish back with us. In amongst the dunes we found a dump were the locals had obviously illegally dumped mussel shells It seems not everyone walks the full length of the beach or turns back before they reach the shell dumping area. The camp area at Cabot Beach was full so we drove on to Cavendish beach and camped right on the grassy knoll before the beach. The surf was loud at night but the view was amazing. The evening we arrived we met a couple from Orleans as we walked on the beach flying our pocket kite. Our neighbours were students just graduated from high school in Germany who were hitch hiking from Montreal to the Maritimes and back. Although the wind was high and the salt spray coated the tent at night there were no leaks, our pre-trip water proofing seemed to have worked Michelle hinted at staying in cavendish beach, but being the not so good listener I am at times I missed the hint, I was also suffering from a lack of quality sleep and tended to be some what cranky to Michelle’s annoyance. It took me some time to live down my bad humour. However it passed and we did stop and do some shopping in Cavendish and then stayed for a while and Sandspit amusement park. Michelle loves Ferris wheels she finds them very romantic so that was our first stop. The wheel stopped a couple times at the top and the view from the top was breathtaking of the beach and dunes and ocean. PEI has this amazing contrast of grass green red mud and ocean Blue with highlights of white in the surf. If there was work there it would be an amazing place to live. We also went on the bumper boats which helped to cool us down as the sun was now shining regularly and leaving burn traces across Michelle’s shoulders. After that Michelle wanted to go on the roller coaster, which is not my favourite thing to do as I am a consummate coward about the things as I am sure the car is going to leave the track at any minute I haven’t got the trust in engineering that Michelle has I guess that is because her dad is an engineer.