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Prince Edward Island Part 1

PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World

Published: June 18, 2018

ROADTRIP. Yup, it’s that time of the year, time to get yourself psyched up for summer, time to start planning your next adventure, time to explore this crazy, wonderful planet.

So with that as my refrain, I’m devoting the next two columns to a little adventure destination that just might surprise you as being an adventure destination.

It sits as a far flung, pastoral island off North America’s Atlantic Coast, a storybook kind of place that may have eluded many of us Yanks during all those boring high school geography classes. I’m taking about tiny Prince Edward Island.

In ancient times it was called Abegweit, cradle of the waves. Today it’s simply referred to as PEI. And as Canada’s smallest province, PEI occupies a minuscule .1 percent of country’s total land area.

Situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence off the coasts of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, PEI is approximately 140 miles long, and from 5 to 50 miles wide. Its topography ranges from nearly pancake flat, to gently rolling, to hilly and its highest elevation is a scant 466 feet.

Now before I launch into a tsunami of platitudes for this wonderful little place, not to mention the adventure opportunities it has to offer, I’d like to use just a smidge of space to reveal what this island taught me about myself.

You see, many decades ago, based on the pedestrian stats I just cited, PEI held a zero probability of making my wanderlusting bucketlist. I just couldn’t conceive of spending my valuable travel time in such a seemingly mundane, elevationless spit of land that seemed devoid of any potential for real adventure. And that preconceived notion, that vague picture conjured up in my brain from a paragraph or two worth of facts, figures and text, stayed with me for far too many years.

Well, it wasn’t until I rode my bicycle across Canada back in 2009, when I had to enter PEI in order to claim all of the country’s provinces, that I discovered PEI’s simple and stunning beauty. Just two days of cycling across the island helped me see how preconceived notions can have a detrimental impact on one’s perceptions and reactions to the world.

And did those notions ever evaporate. Heck, they were quashed nearly an hour prior to setting foot on the island. Because seeing the 8-mile-long Confederation Bridge, PEI’s only connection to the mainland, was God-smacking. This billion-dollar structure is the world’s longest manmade crossing over ice-covered waters.

It rises off the New Brunswick coast and climbs high above the Northumberland Strait like the tracks of a gargantuan roller coaster. It’s so massive, so imposing that I could see it looming over the horizon 15 miles before reaching it. And because of its vast length and height pedestrians and cyclists must use the bridge’s fee shuttle to reach the island.

Now PEI itself could be termed “the little Island that packs a big punch.” A deep, rich red soil is easily its most prominent feature, and that coupled with the all encompassing deep blue waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, and the vibrant green ribbons of farm land, create some strikingly beautiful scenery. What’s more, its crenelated shoreline, alternating between steep red sandstone bluffs and luxurious red and white sand beaches, make for a beach lover’s dream.

All that notwithstanding, the island harbors one of the most unique rail trail systems I’ve ever ridden. The full trail, including several of the side branches into coastal communities, is 242 miles long. It passes through woodlands and farms, over bridges, along rivers, and across peat bogs and luxurious blueberry fields, offering cyclists unlimited opportunities to experience a peace and solitude that’s often hard to find in today’s busy, plugged-in world back in the states.

And this is where I’m going to park it. Next week I’ll talk in depth about PEI’s Confederation Trail. But in the interim, take a little time to think about some of those places you might be missing out on this summer - maybe because of the same kind of unfounded biases I once held.

As I learned 10 years ago, you can’t go through life blindly attached to your own notions and predilections. Scrutinize them, question them, revise them…and you just might discover a little Shangri-La.

That’s what I learned from PEI.


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