Green Gables PEI

A blustery, windy day...all day.  Not too cold, just a cool wind.  We left the RV about 9:30 and drove over the Confederation Bridge onto Prince Edward Island.  The bridge is 8 miles long.




There are 3 driving loops on PEI 1) the North Cape Coastal Loop 2) the Central Coastal Loop 3) the Points East Coastal Drive.  We chose the Central Coastal Loop which is also the Green Gables loop and took us through the area where Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote the book, Anne of Green Gables.  We drove through beautiful farm lands and touched the coast on occasion . 

The fields meet the Atlantic. Farming, especially potato farming, is huge here.  Lots of huge farms, agri businesses.

 Evidently, they are doing well.  The houses are all very, very nice.  A pretty high standard of living here, I would think. 






We saw the home that inspired Lucy Maud Montgomery to write the book.  The actual home  was owned by the McNeil family, who were cousins of author Lucy Maud Montgomery.  The farm's name is derived from the rich dark green paint of the gables on the farmhouse. The main exterior walls of the farmhouse are painted white.

Montgomery visited the farm as a young girl and based her best-selling Anne series of books on the Green Gables farm. She drew romantic inspiration from the house, as well as the surrounding area, including the "Haunted Woods", "Lovers Lane", and "Balsam Hollow."


Upon Montgomery's death, her wake was conducted from the living room of the Green Gables farmhouse for several days prior to her funeral at the local Presbyterian church and burial in the nearby Cavendish Community Cemetery.

We enjoyed seeing the house (after finally finding it), but the entire area around Cavendish (the local town in the book)  has commercialized  Anne, Green Gables and Lucy Montgomery to the point where everything is named Green Gables something; Anne something; Cavendish something.  You can't tell the historical from the commercial.    The gift stores are so trinket oriented it's just sickening.  Cheap stuff.  We walked through the house which is decorated as it would have been done in the 1800's....quickly.  It smelled of old things and I don't especially like that sort of thing.

We continued on around and touched the southern coastal area.  The dirt here is red (makes good potatoes, I guess) and the ocean has a distinct red tint for hundreds of feet out.   

One stop around Charlottetown port showed a cruise ship was docked.

We stopped at Gateway Village, but most of the shops are closed up for the season.  We went into a couple and it was more tee shirts and tacky souvenirs.  We drove onto the bridge to come back to the RV.  There is no charge to ride the bridge over, but to get off the island, it's $22 per axle.  That's why we left two of our axles on the mainland.  

Overall impression:  Glad we went, but it wasn't exactly like I expected.  Maybe the North Cape Coastal would have given us the rocky wave scenes we had imagined.  Except for a couple of places, most of the water we saw was a protected bay or strait.  One of the things I've loved about Nova Scotia and PEI is the beautiful churches.  Most that we've seen in the Cape Breton and PEI area are Anglican Churches. 

This was the eastern end of our trip....now we turn around and head back home.  We are READY to get back to the states.  But I do dread the long drives ahead of us.