The Uncle Across The Sea

July Part 2

Lots more trips happened. Off they went to Summerside:

They went to the Potato Museum, and on the way saw the Confederation Bridge. The field has potatoes growing in it.

There’s a bottle house in that neck of the woods. It fell into disrepair but was rebuilt and refurbished by students.

There’s a giant potato outside of the Potato Museum.

I’m not sure what this is. It’s either the potato museum or a house nearby.

We went on a fishing trip from North Rustico. We caught lots of tasty mackerel and various other small fish, but failed to catch any cod.

Gulls and gannets followed the boat.

As we returned to harbour, the sun was setting.

The boat was very well equipped, with all sorts of high tech stuff on board. There was also a toilet and a kitchen.

While we were out fishing, the girls had cocktail at the 42nd Street Lounge in Charlottetown.

The fishing crew arrive safely back at harbour. The cocktail crew are there to meet them.

We put the relatives to work.

More shots of Dalvay.

We managed to get some decent shots of a hummingbird. They are so tiny, it’s hard to grasp how small they are until you see one on the flesh.

We visited Flex Mussels and had some delicious food. Andy bravely tried the Oyster Cocktail, and decided it wasn’t quite his cup of tea.

July, Part One

July was pretty busy, and great fun. The visitation continued. We explored all over the place, here we are exploring Robinson’s Island.

Canada Day was great. There was a Canada Day celebration at Stanhope Beach Resort. Live music, food, pop, pony rides, and rides in this restored carriage. This carriage was originally used to ferry people between Bedford railway station and Dalvay Hotel. Some local people have been working on it for a long time, to get it back looking like new.

People dress in red and white for Canada Day. They dress their pets up too.

There was cake and icecream for everyone.

There were hot dogs, burgers, and a canoe full of pop and ice.

We got a new hummingbird feeder. The old one got trashed by raccoons, so we put the new one on the washing line by the back door, where they couldn’t get at it. Straight away, hummingbirds turned up

Another of the places that we visited was Georgetown. It must be a good place for clams because we saw a group of people digging for them here.

Canada is a country of two languages, French and English, but before the Europeans arrived, there were the aboriginal people, call ed the Mi’kmaq. This plaque is in English, French, and Lnuísimk, which is the Mi’kmaq language.

The beach at Georgetown.

Another view.

There are some really nice houses by the sea.

Everyone having a well deserved sit down.

More beach.

We had lunch at Clam Diggers Restaurant, it was really nice. I think I had clams.

We also visited Victoria. It’s a really cute place but it closes down completely in winter.

Exploring Victoria.

Here’s the fire station.

Here’s a nice little summer house.

It’s quite normal for houses to have their foundations and basement replaced. They jack the entire house up and rest it on steel beams, then drop it back down when the building work is done.

The houses in Victoria are very pretty.

Here’s one of those gimmicky HDR shots.

We had a couple more visitors show up, more relatives from Ontario. Loads more adventures were had. We all went on a boat trip in the bays around Charlottetown.

The boat was pretty big.

We could see all the nice houses from the water.

Someone was trying out a jetski. Everyone waves at everyone here.

One of the many lighthouses.

Shore near Charlottetown.

The captain of the boat let all the kids on board take turns steering. At the end of the trip, they all got a certificate to say they had been captain.

Home again!

June

A tree fell down. No-one was harmed, and the hares carried on regardless.

Why did the duck start to cross the road and then just stop in the middle?

As the tourist season got started, an invitation was issued to the households around Stanhope and surrounding areas. Stanhope Beach Resort was throwing a party for the locals. There was a free buffet, which disappeared in seconds, an Gahan beer was on tap. There was live music:

As soon as the band started, everyone got up and danced.

All the boats had now returned to Covehead Harbour.

Soon, relatives arrived! Here we all are at North Rustico.

Exploring North Rustico.

The ladies visitied Charlottetown and had a chat with Sir John A. Macdonald, first prime minister of Canada and the leading light of Canadian Confederation.

Lots of lovely food was eaten, we visited a lot of pubs and restaurants. This pie at the Olde Dublin was somewhat larger than anticipated…

Pat had one too. Somehow we managed (I helped)

A visit to the Green Gables house.

It’s very nice inside.

We learned a great deal about living in Canada, from people who have lived here for a long time.

A gratuitous BBQ shot

As June came to a close.. more relatives arrived!

May

Loads of pics in no particular order!

I stop by the sea quite often on my way to work. This is a picture taken from the little car park that I usually stop in. Since I took this pic, a storm washed half of it into the sea!

Sunset on the beach.

I can’t remember if this is sunrise or sunset. It’s on the beach anyway.

A lot of other things happen to us of course, but I just tend to post about the wildlife and countryside etc. because I love it. Here’s a rare photo taken indoors, during May the company moved to a new office, and here we are getting it all set up.

Towards the end of May, thousands of dead fish washed up on the local beach. It looks like they tried to swim up a freshwater stream which comes out onto the beach. They must have been driven there by a predator, probably a whale.

The birds return from migration.

Various birds from the Corvid family are very common here, and I think most of them stay all year round.

Robinson’s Island

The squirrels and bluejays have been around all winter, and they continue to enjoy the food we put out for them in the back yard.

Squirrel in the yard.

This building took a beating in the winter. When farm buildings get in poor shape, the farmer builds a new one nearby, and just lets the old one fall down.

Snowshoe hare enjoying the grass and clover in our back yard.

Dalvay Hotel and Dalvay Lake. This is near where we live, and just across the road from our local beach. We haven’t visited the hotel yet, apparently it’s really nice.

Another nice sunset.

The sea is really really cold this time of year. Despite this, someone’s going for a swim. At the peak of summer there are supervised sections of beach with lifeguards, but most of the time there’s no-one around. It’s not particularly safe to swim if you’re not aware of the risks – there are rip tides which can pull you under.

We’ve already been round the east coast, so we decided to go out west and explore. It’s beautiful and quite different. People up there still use horses for farming.

Once spring arrives, everything starts growing at a very rapid pace.

We keep trying to get photos of eagles but they are very camera shy. Despite their very large size, it’s difficult to get close enough for a decent shot. Here is a family of eagles on the dunes along the north shore.

The missus spent a long time hunting this bird down. The rare and endangered Piping Plover. It makes its nest on the wrack line of the beach, which is where the line of seaweed is. Just the perfect place for people to tread on it and for dogs to eat it. When the Piping Plover is spotted, the beach gets shut down so it can breed in safety.

A close up.

We saw this nice osprey in North Rustico. It was fending off crows who were trying to steal the fish it had caught.

Catching up with the blog: April

April started with snow and ice, but everything gradually melted away, with just one final snow storm for the year.

As the thaw set in, the dirt roads became extremely muddy, many of them becoming impassable except for monster trucks with 4 wheel drive and jacked suspension.

The blue jays carried on as usual.

By the end of the month, the lobster fishermen were getting ready to deploy their traps.

Spring

Spring started at the beginning of May. The weather warmed up, the golf course opened, and the drive-in cinema is open now too. When I drive to work I can see people working away, getting their holiday cottages ready for the tourists. The last traces of snow lingered for ages, there were some really big drifts on the shores of Covehead, and they’ve only just disappeared. The plants are going mad, everything has gone lurid green, and the frogs all suddenly started to sing at once. The wildlife activity round our house has increased somewhat, we have snowshoe hares, and a raccoon prowls around, checking the barbecue for scraps and diving in our bins. More birds have turned up, including grackles and crossbills.

We’re still getting the occasional frost, in fact we can get frost until the first week of June. Right now it’s fairly warm but raining a lot.

Keep an eye on the flickr link on the right of the page – it gets updated very frequently and has some nice wildlife pics which were taken recently.

A walk on the beach

I managed to drag myself out of bed and have a nice peaceful walk on the beach near the house. It was very nice indeed to not have mt head frozen.

Spring Storm from a few weeks back

Here’s a video of (hopefully) the last snowstorm until next winter.

Some warm weather at last

We’ve had several days of warm weather, and the snow is rapidly melting away. It’s going to get chilly for the next few days but spring is definitely on the way.

I took some photos today on my cheapo camera, and found a few old ones on there that I had forgotten to download. Here’s a photo from February, taken from the roof of the car park on Fitzroy in Charlottetown:

You can see the trucks on their way to gather snow and take it away, and in the middle of the picture you can see a wall of snow in the middle of the street, caused by snowploughs.

We went to the beach today as the sea has become liquid again. There are still big piles and patches of snow around, especially amongst the trees, but out at sea there are only a few clumps of snow and ice left, perched on top of sand bars.

Webcam no longer busted

Looks like a Java update scuppered the webcam server. I finally gathered the enthusiasm to heave the monitor 2m over to where the server is and plug it in. I have no idea why the Java update should stop the VNC server working on that machine, but it did. Ho hum.