Cavendish and moving on

Tuesday was to be our last night at Cavendish Campground, and there was to be a program in the evening in the campground, so we decided to go...

The information on the schedule said that it was 8-9pm during July...

... but when we got there, it was already going on -- turns out it started at 7pm.

It was a presentation by the indigenous M'ikmaq people, demonstrating some skills and sharing some of their culture. Carl took a couple of videos -- you can see them here (about 1 minute 20 seconds total): https://youtu.be/CYovjZfjqfY

Our plan was to leave Prince Edward Island on Wednesday morning, heading to Fundy National Park in New Brunswick... but we woke up Wednesday morning hearing the slide toppers snapping in the wind and thought, "Do we want to be crossing an 8 mile bridge in high wind? I don't think so!"

We looked up information online and there was an advisory that there may be restrictions on traffic on the bridge...

When I checked between 8:30 and 8:45am, the wind speeds were around 36MPH with gusts up to 48MPH... we don't even like to drive on surface roads in Gracie (aka driving a billboard) in those kinds of winds.

Additional information from the bridge data -- the blue dots are the average wind speed, and the red dots are the gusts -- the green line is where they will restrict high sided vehicles (trucks, motorhomes, etc) at 70kph (43.5MPH). It just didn't look like it was going to work out for us to cross on Tuesday. I checked our campground website, and, although our specific site was not available, there were a couple of other sites that were available for Tuesday night.

We drove up to the campground office and asked if it would be possible for us to move to one of those sites (the online reservation system wasn't letting me book either of them). They were very accommodating, and said that we could move whenever the site had been vacated and prepared by the campground staff -- about noon, they suggested. The site was right behind and to the side of us, so we could see when the camper left... we didn't really see any staff come through and "prepare" the site, so we decided to move at noon. Carl "prepared" the site (for some reason, the previous camper had moved the fire-ring right onto the area where we would drive/park, so he moved the fire-ring back to its normal location and then wet down the ashes to make sure that there were no hot embers remaining. We backed Gracie out of her previous pullthru site, moved down a couple of spots, and then backed into her next pullthru site -- we could have pulled out, driven all the way around the campground, and then pulled into the new site, but this was a little easier.

The funny thing was, we were watching folks packing up a 5th wheel just in front of our previous site, thinking, "wow, they are leaving late after the 11am checkout time!" -- turns out, they were moving to *our* previous site!

A picture after the move, with Gracie close by the camera and the 5th wheel that had been waiting for us to move just beyond!

Carl said he likes short drives like that! It is actually a bit annoying, because we need to close everything up just as if we're driving hundreds of miles, but, at least the drive is quick!

It was a rainy, windy day -- we went out just for a few minutes to see the surf...

Whitecaps at the beach

Not many beach-goers -- though the surfguards (lifeguards) were there!

When we got up on Wednesday, the day was nice, the winds were calm, so we packed up and left early (for us) from the campground.

On our way out of Cavendish -- we saw a couple of interesting things on the roof of this shopping area...

... a cow...

... and a shark!

Further along -- they were replacing the bridge...

... so traffic diverted onto this temporary bridge. We have seen these a number of times as we've been traveling around Canada -- they look very sturdy but also "easy" to construct for a temporary bridge.

I remembered this traffic circle from when I was here 7 years ago -- in Miss Doozie -- I think we were turning left at this corner, and I ended up pretty much driving across the center -- there was no way that Miss Doozie was going to make it around that circle! We ended up turning right this time, and Gracie made it just fine without going over the center section. (The center is just a different color, there is no grade difference.)

After filling up Gracie with fuel, we headed to the Confederation Bridge -- no issues on Wednesday!

Just after paying the toll (CN$75.75 for Gracie and the Jee-rage "round trip" since there are no tolls charged for the trip *to* PEI)... our view out over the Northumberland Strait.

We had been driving in and out of fog on our way across PEI, and it appeared that the bridge was taking us right into the fog bank...

... yep, there it is!

Is there still a bridge there?  Hope so!

Looking a little east toward the land (I think that's New Brunswick, but Nova Scotia isn't far away).

Looking west - the clouds over the strait were making a glow on the water - so pretty!

We had an uneventful journey across the bridge, and then on through parts of New Brunswick to Fundy National Park. I had called on Tuesday to let them know that we could not come because of high winds at  the bridge, they had held our reservation for us, so it was no problem checking in at the campground. We're glad to be at Fundy National Park for a few days!