Nothing But Blue Skies Do We See

We were delighted to wake up to a blue sky after so many days of rain and fog, so we treated ourselves to a big breakfast and a slow start. We ride around Shediac a little and marvel at how much better it looks in sunshine, then set off to try to ride along coastal roads to Confederation Bridge. This incredible bridge, 12.9 kilometres long, opened in 1997, and crosses Northumberland Strait connecting Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick.
At the PEI end of the bridge there is a tourist magnet called Gateway Village where we stop, along with hundreds of others - PEI draws thousands of tourists from all over the world and we’re dazzled by the huge motor homes (mostly American) that we see. Interestingly just a few streets away from the Gateway area, where we ride to get good photos of the awesome bridge, dulce gatherers are laying out their seaweed to dry on an abandoned sheet of asphalt. We are immediately impressed by the pastoral beauty of PEI although the island is also very commercialized and traffic moves slowly (in the summertime anyway) around the cities, bigger towns, and major tourist attractions.
Our destination on the island is Clark’s Sunny Isle Motel in Summerside, which is situated on 20 acres overlooking Bedeque Bay. The motel has very pretty landscaped grounds to wander around in although it’s a bit buggy. We’re disappointed that the motel is just a little too far from busy downtown Summerside to walk. We spend the remainder of the day doing laundry, mapping out what we want to see in this “red dirt” province, and enjoying the sunshine.