Okay, now where did I leave off?

The first night in the cabin was good, and the next morning we were up and out and in search of breakfast. This is the seashell giraffe standing out in front of the PEI Toy Company up the road, and while I'm not a big fan of lawn ornaments, this is one I wouldn't mind hosting.



It was supposed to be a warm, cloudy, misty day so we left the bike back at the cabin and decided to head southwest to the Evangeline Trail, and the Acadie influence. Abrams Village was the target and the song in my head was this beauty .
 


And here's the fun part about PEI: wait a half hour and there's a good chance the weather will change, especially when the forecast says partly cloudy with spots of sun.







Well, we took a pretty good tour of the area but never did find Abrams Village. I don't know whether it was me or the way the roads were marked (in retrospect, it seems the signs were placed a good way before your turns, and then the turns not marked at all, so it wasn't uncommon for us to pass a little dirt road with no sign and me to go, about a half mile later when no big marked turn showed up, "Um, remember that little dirt road with the cow in the field? I think that might have been the turn." Sigh.)

But our exploring turned to gold because we ended up along bays and shoreline, and since the day had turned lovely, we decided to see if we could get closer to the water. One of the funky things about the shoreline is that there are tons of little red dirt roads leading to the water, only if you look at them really closely, you will see a tiny little PRIVATE under all the street names that only host houses. I, of course, missed the small print for the excitement of meandering down a Skylark Lane did not notice the PRIVATE at first and so we ended up in several peoples' front yards and had to turn around and start again. It's a very gracious island.

And then we found a public red dirt road that led down to the shore and with the exception of one other couple, had the beach to ourselves:









The water was pretty warm and colored red by the sand. We walked and climbed and beachcombed for hours, and had a blast.







There was a changing house there and bathrooms, and that's it. No foodstands, or boardwalk. No crowds. This is my favorite kind of beach.





Alas, no bathing suits either but we just rolled up our jeans and went out in the surf. We also found real mermaid hair:



And yeah, okay, if you put this stuff on a manatee I guess I can see how sailors in the olden days decided they were sea sirens because it undulated really beautifully.



This was the road out of the beach.



The scent, the breeze, the view. Sigh.

There were a fair amount of these little lighthouses around.



And lord have mercy, the happiest cows I've ever seen:



And why not? With the exception of being passed at 80 mph everywhere we went, this place is like a pretty, happy dream you don't want to wake up from. There are flowers EVERYWHERE, thousands of wild roses, primroses, the wild lupines, daisies, queen anne's  lace, just everywhere. It is the most vividly-colored, tidiest place I can think of. The air is clean and smells of the ocean or french fries or flowers. The farms and houses are lovely. Everything is backlit by a wide open sky.

And we hadn't even gotten to Green Gables yet but that's coming. Oh my, yes.