And then there was this day…..

July 28, 2017 | Stacy

You know – when you travel with Stacy you just accept that you are going to have at least ONE off day. This was the day.

We were up early, as usual, and made our breakfast. The skies were grey and two of us had not slept well. One was even a little grumpy.

I had prayed all night about our plans for the day. Not only did the weather not seem idea, but the activity I wanted to do was about an hour southeast of where we were and the girls had varying degrees of interest.

I had planned to visit this place:
Roma at Three Rivers
It sounded a lot like a Genesee Country Village and Museum, and I was going to buy us a Heritage Lunch there, where we would actually eat in one of the older structures.

Traffic was heavier than it had been and you had to drive through the island, not along the coast.

Half-way there I suddenly realized with all the other bags we’d packed I’d forgotten my purse. What made this super scary was I was just fresh off of having run out of gas in Massachusetts. The idea of running out of gas again made me sick as anxious as ever.

We headed back to our rental and somewhere in the midst decided we wouldn’t head to Roma at Three Rivers. (Not everyone had been on board in the first place.)

We got my purse, filled up with gas, and went across the street from our motel to visit the cemetery.

We decided to look at a few shops. A pottery place. An toy store.

And that is when I saw the gash I had put into John’s new-to-him van when we pulled off the busy expressway in Massachusetts.

I was sick to my stomach.

We went back toward our rental and I honestly can’t remember if we grabbed lunch or just ate snacks. We went over to a little touristy area with mini-golf and wax museum, and an arcade.

We took in a round of mini-golf. This was a great course. So pretty.

‘

Real water hazards.

We went over to a frozen yogurt store and enjoyed a treat.

And. You guessed it. Back to the beach.
Ahhhhh- this is what they really wanted from the start.

Since I’ve been home I’ve had to try to explain to people what exactly made this beach so nice when it really was too cold to swim-swim.

For starters, we weren’t hot and sweaty. There were no bugs, and very few seagulls. There were none of those little crab things we could see, and the beaches were decidedly uncrowded. The sand was so soft, and it was fun to play with all the red rocks.

And – OCEAN. There was OCEAN.

The girls built mermaids…

And a crab….

We stayed until dinner, and then headed back to our rental and watched another movie.

Green Gables and Beach-love

July 27, 2017 | Stacy

We arrived in Cavendish early evening on a Tuesday.

Wednesday morning I suggested to my girls that we take a peek at the beach before heading to Green Gables, etc. I wanted to dip my toes in the North Atlantic. We headed over and that was all she wrote.

Because the entrance to the beach was right across from our hotel, and because we are early risers, we ended up at the beach before the admitting booths were even open! (I love that the beach access is called Graham’s Lane, because Graham is my maternal grandmother’s family name and that’s my Canadian family.)

We first started out on a higher outlook area. (Remember my camera is messed up… I didn’t get the focus problem worked out until around 10 A.M.)

As we walked down this board walk it suddenly hit me that I was having a “Someday” moment. As in, I’ve often mused, “SOMEday I want to see Prince Edward Island.

It wasn’t cold or warm. It was just lovely.

We then got back in the van and headed to the beach access lot.

You can’t see it in this lame photo – but we saw a beaver at work that morning! We never saw him at it again.

We were so early to the beach, the sand still held the imprints of the earlier morning visitors. I can’t express how much I love this picture.

The beach. A big, clean, empty beach. The ocean. The sun. And me.

The red sand was perfect. Not coarse and seed-like, as in Cozumel, or creepy flour-like, as it is in Jamaica. It was fabulous sand.

This is the only NOT red rock we saw all week.

But these babies. They are everywhere.

At this point, I really thought this was going to be a one-and-done activity. After all, it’s not exactly 80F. This is the North Atlantic, right?

We had NO idea how fabulous this beach was going to be. We frolicked for a long while and I had to DRAG my girls away to go visit GG.

We got to Green Gables and it turns out that it was Canada’s Sesquicentennial year, so they were giving away park passes! Yay! So getting to the beach before the booth was open this morning didn’t make me feel guilty any more.

We hurried over to meet Anne and Diana, as I had heard they can be very hard to meet. The place was really crowded. Not Disney World crowded, but way busier than I enjoy visiting a museum.

This photo below marks when I finally figured out how to get my camera off the one weird setting I was aware of. (Sadly, I still took all my other photos with the weird .NEF extension.)

We had to walk in a person-to-person line through the house. While this is not where the author lived, this was the house she purportedly used as her setting for the Anne books.

While we did enjoy visiting, all the while they wondered out loud when we could head back to the beach. We went to our motel and got our swim gear. It had never dawned on me at home we might actually use swim suits at the beach! I expected it would be far too cold.
In fact, by the time we headed over with our packed lunch, it was teeming with activity.

There was a section with lifeguarding.

There were oodles of jellyfish carcasses both on the land and in the water. You just had to be alert.

From the beach into the water, there was always about a 6 foot span of these rocks and then sandy bottom again.

Dunes are everywhere, just like in the TV show.

It was chilly, but there was not way I wasn’t going to give it a try.

We ate our lunch at picnic tables near the parking lot, then ventured out onto the trail.

Millions of little fishies.

It went on forever, but we turned around after about 15-20 minutes to wander back.

We eventually went back to the motel to swim and eat our dinner. I wish I could remember what we dined on. It was a little like camping.

After dinner we went to another beach east of Cavendish – another national park – Prince

Edward Island National Park. This place was gorgeous, too.

We headed back a little west toward North Rustico.

The receding tide was leaving exquisite sandbars.

Some photos are from my phone. Some are from my fancy camera. Neither gave me images good enough to blow up for a wall print. Ouch.

We headed back to our apartment and watched another movie, eating butterscotch ice cream out of mugs.

Anne Shirley Motel–we’ve arrived!

July 26, 2017 | Stacy

In order to get to Prince Edward Island, you have to cross over a Giant Bridge.

This photo is from the “Seven Wonders of Canada” website (I didn’t look at what the other six were…).

If you travel at posted speeds it takes 11 minutes to cross Federation Bridge. The weather was beautiful, and I did get a few peeks, but it is definitely not something the driver gets to fully appreciate. It is free to go across into PEI, but you pay ~$40 on your return to cover the fees. There are also ferries, but you can’t take one TO PEI unless you have already taken one FROM PEI. Clear as mud?

Once we got to PEI we navigated to the mid-north side of the island to Cavendish. “What does PEI look like?” It looks like a chunk of semi-rural NY cut out with a cookie cutter and plopped into the ocean. In other words – it’s gorgeous.

(Image from here.)

We arrived about 30 minutes later at our destination.

Normally when we travel we stay in a vacation home rental or an IHG property. A four-night stay on PEI with the intended purpose to visit the Cavendish/Green Gables sites had us looking elsewhere. Using TripAdvisor, in conjunction with other search engines, we decided on Anne Shirley Motel and Cottages. I called the number in April to make reservations and my call was promptly returned. The operator helped me select a one-bedroom apartment which had a bedroom with a queen sized bed and a sofa bed.

We had a little apartment unit.

So – in no particular order, here are my thoughts.
•Staff on check in was EXTREMELY helpful. Without being asked anything, she provided a map and some very useful information. She saved me a BUNCH of time in understanding features of the area.
•Unit. Clean. They clearly care about their property. Way smaller than I expected. I don’t think there was anything dishonest about representation, I think I just pictured larger.
•Kitchen. Minimally appointed, but not bad. We have rented dozens of vacation rentals and I am used to the element of surprise. This was average in appointment. Everything was clean and in good working order.
•Bathroom. Good water pressure. Nice hot water. Small, but updated.
•Beds. Awful. I had Marie and Tabitha in the bedroom because the bed was slightly bigger than the fold-out couch. They said it was very uncomfortable. I slept on the couch and it was awful. Enough pillows and blankets.
•A/C was window unit in bedroom. Cooled apartment sufficiently. (Daytime highs only mid-70s F.)
•Parking – directly in front of unit. Nice.
•Pool area. Clean. Pool was warm. Hot tub was nice and hot. We used it a few times. Lots of seating and pool towels provided.
•Also had grill and playground we saw other guests using. Nice touches.
•Location. In my opinion, it was hands-down the best location in Cavendish. I’d stay here again if only for that.
•Housekeeping. Very good.
If we visit again, I will go for the largest unit available. The unit was small and I’d need a bed. At 45-years old I don’t think I’d try another sofa-bed. Live and learn.

We went into town for some groceries – a Walmart superstore. Some prices were similar to home, some much higher, some considerably lower. We bought a goodly number of treats and/or things we can’t eat at our house because of allergy issues. The major fail I made was I bought a pound of American bacon. It was costly and later I realized if I cooked bacon in that tiny kitchen everything would REEK of bacon henceforth. So we ended up leaving that for the housekeeping staff when we left.

We went home, made ourselves dinner and then sat down to watch a movie. Only then did we realize our unit did NOT have a DVD player and we had no way to hook up the computer to the television… so we watched our movie on the computer. Smile with tongue out

NY to PEI–travel day

July 25, 2017 | Stacy

It’s really not a lot of fun to go back and catch up on blog posting. This trip was almost six months ago and I’m already afraid my memory has lost some of the small, but fun, details that I normally would recollect on my blog. But we had a major camera issue, that actually still has not be completely corrected and that held up my posting.
Stewart had just completed a Digital Photography class at FLCC that required he put the camera into a setting that stored each picture as a .NEF file. Unfortunately, most applications do not recognize images in this format. It took him months and months to convert my over 300 photos to .JPG files. Sadly, even after doing this the images turned out badly pixilated when I printed them into a photo book. I haven’t given up hope that one day they may be extracted well enough that I can blow up a few of the amazing shots. But until then, they are at least decent enough to share online.
And so.
SURPRISE TRIP!!!!
John and I first started planning this adventure in April. Once we’d realized we would not have the opportunity to go to Wyoming, we knew our summer was kind of sitting there waiting for some fun. Working around Nigel’s Costa Rican missions trip meant I’d slip off with Marie and Tabitha at the end of July for a surprise trip to Prince Edward Island for some Anne of Green Gables visiting and the North Atlantic.

We stopped for breakfast an hour or so out.

It rained the ENTIRE day… If we had a solid 10 minutes of no rain anywhere along the way I think I would have noticed.
My plan had been to end up in Boston around 12 P.M. where we would grab some lunch and do a walking tour of Beantown.

Instead I ran out of gas on the Massachusett’s Turnpike in the driving rain, feet away from a ramp for oncoming traffic, where I used the features on TWO cell phones to contact AAA, 911, John, my mom and praying friends. Marie read aloud from Psalms as I made Tab move up from the back seat to reduce likelihood of injuries should we get hit from behind by oncoming traffic. I was scared. It was miserable.
Finally someone showed up and put some gas in the van and I gave him $5 and off we went. Although the needle on the gas gauge didn’t budge and I had no idea how little or how much we had. We got off at the next exit, into the heart of downtown, near the big stadium, and I continued to hang to the right as both of said cell phones tried to help us find a gas station. It was a congested, intertwining one-way-streets, kind of Toronto feel and gas stations were hard to spot. We finally found one and the girls and I prayed God would keep our car running like He kept the oil going for the widow. We made it to the gas station.
It was maybe 50○F and windy and rainy. I said goodbye to the idea of a walking tour and we pressed on in the rain.

We made it to our hotel in Bangor, which was a lovely Holiday Inn. We swam a little and had dinner in the bar. It was not the best or worst meal, but I had lovely dining companions, so that was all that mattered.
We had a crazy-good breakfast the next morning that was free because of the way I had booked it on the website.

We were on the road by 8 A.M. I believe and although it wasn’t warm, it was at least dry. We stopped on our way out of town to meet Paul Bunyan. Smile

The drive was really pretty, though I confess I was petrified of hitting a moose the entire time. We had no problem crossing the boarder into Canada. We stopped in Saint John, New Brunswick for some sight-seeing and lunch. It was chilly, but not cold.

I wish we’d done a little more shopping, but we were interested in pressing on.

We passed the hours listening to Johnny Tremain on audio book. And the girls took some turns watching movies and listening to music. It was a very easy drive the second day.
We arrived at Cavendish around supper time… I’ll start a new post for that.

Prince Edward Island Surprise Road Trip

July 24, 2017 | Stacy

This is where I should be starting my series of posts on the surprise road trip I took Marie and Tabitha on the morning on July 24th. However, Stewart had JUST completed his digital photography class at FLCC and the camera was set to record each photograph as some fancy .NEF file instead of the normal .JPEG. We need to find a time and a way to convert each image. There are 300 of them.

I’ll be back.

That was then, this is now.

July 23, 2017 | Stacy

July will be remembered as a Very Busy Month. But amidst mission trips, birthdays (2), VBS, and a surprise road trip (still to come) what will be remembered loud and clear was the times we spent with our friends the Maxfields.

Original summer 2017 plans included a road trip to Wyoming where we would spend a week with our friends the Maxfields and the Steins. Well, the Steins moved to the U.K., and the Maxfields decided to head back to Rochester for 4 weeks to see family and celebrate Lauren’s graduation. These changes moved the west trip off the calendar and instead we spent most of July waiting daily to see if we’d be able to hang out with our friends that day, or not. The joy-meter ran high on the days we knew we’d get some hours (or overnights) with our dear friends.

During our last dinner together we decided to recreate this image from October 2013.
They’ve all grown so very much.

All three kids slept over here the last night, with Lauren sneaking in to Johanna and Katriel’s room to bless them with a surprise in the morning. When the time came for them to pile into their van to head home I won’t pretend it was easy for any of us. It’s always hard when you don’t know when “next time” is going to come. Next month? Probably not. Next year? Mmmmm – maybe?

VBS 2017

July 21, 2017 | Stacy

While Nigel served in Costa Rica this past week, Stewart, Marie and I had been serving the campers at the VBS at Pittsford Community Church. Tabitha, Johanna, and Katriel all got to embark on Operation Arctic. The emphasis all week was the Bible.
B = Book of Books
I = Incredible Impact
B = Bedrock Base
L = God’s Love Letter to us
E = Exciting to Explore

Marie worked in the four-year-old group (Katriel’s group).
I led group 1A (Johanna’s group).
Stewart was a Bible teacher.
Tabitha was in her final year as a camper. Fifth graders get to do their camping out in the “Garage” where they follow a slightly different rotation and dig a lot deeper into the work. Next year Tabitha gets to come back to VBS as an assistant.

Costa Rica–update…..

July 21, 2017 | Stacy

Well – life got busy as VBS began, and I didn’t get to do daily Costa Rica updates.

But we got our son back from his first short-term mission trip in the wee hours of Friday morning.

He did not take a ton of photos, but here are some from his camera.

And I have a few some of the other members sent to me.

They spent one day doing a debriefing in a hotel on the Pacific coast. The sand was very course and the waves were strong. A few team members were baptized that day.