Monday, August 29, 2011

PEI - THE NORTHWEST LIGHTHOUSE ROUTE

This part of the island has strong Acadian roots with a common name being Gallant or Arsenault. At Mont Carmel we stopped at this Catholic church which looked like a cathedral set against the sea. It was built in 1898 with 450 thousand locally made clay bricks.








The Bottle Houses in Cap-Egmont were built by an elderly Mr. Arsenault in the last four years of his life. He received his inspiration from the bottle house in Duncan BC which is no longer standing. He built a chapel, a house and a tavern with thousands of bottles that he collected.














The Westpoint lighthouse was established in 1875. It is Canada's only Inn in a working lighthouse. Boardwalks are along the sand dunes in order to preserve them.



The north end of PEI has a number of wind farms which produce about 30% of the islands electricity. At the North Cape lighthouse(1866) is a wind generating research station of which the huge fuselage and the 43 meter blades were of particular interest to Wally. Having traveled tip to tip on PEI we received a personalized certificate for crossing the island.


















Day 6 on the island, our last day ended with a huge rain storm. We toured the Acadian museum in Mistouche and the Potato museum in O'Leary and are ready to travel across Confederation Bridge in the morning on our way to Cape Breton Island. Our B&B hosts here for 6 days have been awesome, feeding us too good and giving us lots of touring tips.

2 comments:

heidi said...

Loved these posts, we love 'Anne', your posts are wonderful, so glad you are able share!
Heard about the storm and was wondering if it would hit you guys, heard there was going to lots of rain.

Shelley said...

Love all these posts!! That bottle built place is pretty fancy!