This glorious day is brought to you by the letters P E and I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our campground for the night was at Red Point Provincial Park.  When we got there, the day was so beautiful, the campground so well appointed, we decided to stay an extra night.  Our site was high on the hill, overlooking the Straight of Northumberland, with a view of Pictou and Cape Breton Island on the other side.  Neat or what?  And the beach was soft, squeaky sand.  Now, we didn’t know we had a squeaky sand beach right here, but you should have seen Leon doing a little dance to make the sand sing under his feet (they refer to it as singing sand here, not squeaking sand).

We had a late lunch and I started up a conversation with our neighbours from North Carolina/Barrhaven/the Netherlands (they’ve lived all over the place).  It turned out they were going to Iles de la Madeleine the next day, so they gave me lots of info on it.  We have booked our campground in the place they are staying, so we’ll see each other again.

I took a walk on the beach while Leon did some reading.  It’s true, I’ve been using my teacher voice on him, encouraging him to hit the books! As I arrived on the beach, I was approached by an RCMP officer who asked if I had seen a dead seal washed up on the beach.  Intriguing!  So I just had to walk as far as I could to see if I could spot that seal.  No luck, but I did get a picture of the dead gannet, poor thing.  I walked for about 1.5 km until I reckoned I was all alone on the beach and figured I’d better start back the other way.

While making dinner, a nice young man came over shyly to ask about using our can opener.  It turns out he is from France, doing a term as a student teacher at the University of Montreal.  Of course, we had to invite him and his girlfriend over for a glass of wine, especially after I realized they were tenting, without even a bicycle to get them around.  They were on their way to I de la M. the next day as well.  They were certainly glad to share some wine and company since they didn’t even have a glass with them.  They had bought a bottle of the local vintage but had to drink it out of the bottle.  Ah, you remember those romantic days of youth, right?

So we sat for hours drinking wine and tea and looking at the starry night.  The next morning, we invited them to join us for eggs, toast and tea then we all got ready so we could drive them to the ferry terminal.  We had to go there anyway to book our own crossing.

The rest of the day was spent touring another distillery where they make legal moonshine (not to my taste) in a gorgeous setting of vineyards and English-style gardens.  We can only dream of all the types of houses or properties we might own if we wanted those kinds of lifestyles.  We love to dream.  It keeps us young, right?

We then went to Basin Head beach to see the real singing sands and found they have a neat activity.  People jump off a catch basin into the stream that takes them into the ocean.  The water is warmer there, thanks to the sand bars that seem to form.  We walked in the water for a while, had a yummy ice cream and spent the rest of the day second guessing the weather patterns – rain, thunderstorm or just a cloudy swirl?  Each time we sat outside, a drop would fall into the page of my book.  I finally served dinner at 5pm, since we hadn’t really had lunch and we managed to eat it outside as the skies cleared.  A nice long walk on the beach, a hot shower and a short time spent watching the sunset with a cup of tea in hand, under a blanket, then we were off to bed at 8:40pm?!? We’ll we knew we had another big adventure ahead of us the next day.