Dan and Hannah Bike Prince Edward Island National Park, Canada

Tucked away on PEI, we wake to the quiet of the morning at the Green Willow Farm B and B, which is well-back from the main road but conveniently still in town.  In mid-June, PEI is for getting away and solitude, which is just about perfect for those over 60.  The small city of Summerside (14,000+) has all the amenities of a big town in the States (e.g., Staples, Wendy's, Subways), but the feel is small town with neighborhoods and the occasional small farm bracketing the Confederation Trail that runs through town.  Gas prices are set weekly by the province and the price this week is $1.22 per liter (i.e., Every gas station has the exact same price!).


Willow Green Farm breakfast hour is at 8A so we set our alarm for 630A and take an hour to walk in town.  It's a mere ten minutes to the Baywalk boardwalk along the harbor front.

Summerside, PEI Baywalk

It's quiet early and we have the boardwalk to ourselves.   Stepping into an Irving Gas Station with a sign for a "washroom," we find that term more descriptive than "bathroom."  Do I hear an Amen?

Early morning on Summerside Baywalk

Arriving to silence in the breakfast room of the B and B (there are two couples - a retired couple from the States and a mother and daughter from Alberta, Canada here on holiday (i.e. Canadian for vacation), Hannah is on a mission, her spasmodic dysphonia is no match for her will to fully engage everyone.  Finding out where they are from and their plans for the day, Hannah greases the conversation wheels this Tuesday morning.  Hannah is a B and B pro from 1986-1991 when she ran Hannah’s Loft Bed and Bread out of our house.  She’s “Oprah” who puts the guests at ease and brings out their stories.  As her sidekick this morning, I lay back but chime in to redirect the conversation to the ones who haven’t had their voices heard.   Today we have juice, coffee, fruit cocktail, cake-y pancakes topped with bananas.  Raisin Brain and Rice Krispies are there for me to fill out my meal. 

After breakfast we buy our petrol for 1.22 per liter and pay $49 to fill our pint size Hyundai Elantra and purchase our beloved Subway sandwiches for our bike ride at PEI National Park.  Later we learn our credit card is docked a “foreign transaction fee” every time we use our card.   It’s a small price to pay for not carrying lots of cash or Traveler’s Cheques (Does anyone use Traveler’s Cheques anymore?  Do people under 40 even know what they are?)  Winding up and down country roads we arrive 45 minutes later at Brackley Beach on the north shore of the island.  

To our surprise, we find no one is at the toll gate to take our money.  Alas, it is mid-June and for PEI that is preseason.  We pocket the $7.80 per person and plan to invest it in a 529 college savings plan for our grandchildren’s college fund.  This midday there are not ten cars in the parking lot; in just two weeks, when schools let out and the season starts, we hear that the lot and the Brackley Beach will be teeming with families.   

Boardwalk to Brackley Beach

Today it's retired folk and mothers with young children who are able to take advantage of this preseason at  Prince Edward Island National Park.

Brackley Beach

Along the Gulf of St. Lawrence on paved bike trails that are set apart from the road, we take the Gulf Shore Way from Brackley Beach to Dalvay Pond, a distance of 10 kilometres.   

Covehead Lighthouse in the Distance

With the beach 50 to 250 metres to our right, we ride on the white lined divided bike path parallel to the road past sand dunes, beaches, fresh water ponds, forests, and salt marshes.

Bike path to Dalvay

This 10 km multi-use trail is ideal for biking, rollerblading, walking, running, and even pushing a stroller.  In the twenty kilometres (12+ miles) of extrememely level trail there and back we don't pass ten people.  It is the kind of solitude that we find in the northern Rockies of Wyoming and Montana as well as the northern Arizona plateaus and southern Utah national parks that we frequent.  Riding into the wind side by side, we talk and talk some more.  While riding, Hannah says, I love Canada.  I can see why.  We feel unencumbered and welcomed, relaxed and without an agenda.  Retired, we have the gift of time that we didn't have, or more accurately, didn't take when we were raising kids and earning a living.  We just have the time not to hurry back or get to the "to do" list.  The "to do" list can run the show when we are home in our need to be productive.  Not so on PEI.

Our zeal to be elite at what we did and do, be it parenting, teaching, or hairdressing, comes with a price.

Dalvay Park Entrance

Dalvay Pond across to Dalvay House

The ocean water is pleasing to the touch, nothing like the stinging cold of southern Maine where we live.  And yet we are some 500 miles north of York!    Thank you, Gulf Stream!

Riding back to Brackley Beach, the trail is just as level on the way back (who’d a thunk it!) and easy to catch a conversation rhythm.  In a relaxed, but enthusiastic one hour and forty minutes we are back at the picnic tables at Brackley Beach with just one other couple.  

In this summer preseason, it’s as if we have the island to ourselves.  Reading Ann of Green Gables (which has sold more than 50 million copies since its publication in 1908) to our kids prior to our last visit in 1991 got us here.  Any tourist-y hubbub in nearby Cavendish of the Anne phenomenon is still two weeks away.  The Anne of Green Gables series is timeless and pleasing to read.  (New parents please note – Read books to your kids that you like as well because kids regularly want to hear the same book read again and again and again.)

Then we load our bikes back on our rear mounting bike rack and drive 16 kilometres to the non-contiguous part of the PEI National Park to the west.  (By the way, we have an excellent bike rack.  It’s a Saris Bones 2 – Bike.)  Near the North Rustico entrance to PEI National Park, we take the Gulf Shore Way West.  Again, no fee for this separate entrance (maybe 15 kms from the Brackley Beach part of the park.) because it’s preseason. 

These are the red cliffs of PEI with beaches few and far between. 

Red cliffs of PEI National Park

In very proper English, the signs on the cliffs suggest “Prudence.”  Different from our morning ride with empty beaches to our right, we climb and descend on the bike trail for more of a workout.

After 8.5 kilometres of paved trail that skirts the red sandstone cliffs of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, we hit the forested trails of the Cavendish Beach Trail, our favorite part of the trail.  These crushed gravel or wood chip paths take us through the forest. 

Sunlight filters through the sugar maples, yellow birch, and eastern white pine, and we meander here and there beneath overhanging branches.  We’ve gone some 40+ kilometres today and I can’t imagine cross-country biking 100+ kilometres day after day after ever-loving day!  Can you say, “ADHD?" 

Heading for the parking lot nearly six miles away, it all seems downhill from the Cavendish Beach area, but it is not as we up and down it to our waiting car.  Perhaps, it’s just that we always seem to go faster coming home because we smell the barn.   It’s another hour and a half plus easy ride through Canadian paradise.

Saris Bike Rack at Red Cliffs of PEI 

The take away from this blog:  Go to PEI before the season in May or the first part of June.