Today was a day without much of an agenda. We went for a nice long road, working towards my personal goal of exploring every single highway, byway, and driveway on this island. Lots of houses and lots for sale; Though no prices were listed, the trends would suggest that we could buy a huge house on a huge lot overlooking an ocean cove for considerably less than what we could sell our house in Calgary for. To put it bluntly: I’m 90% convinced that if I can find solid work out here, I’m packing my belongings and heading east permanently. I love this place.
I went over to the nearest internet connection (a little shop at the entrance to the provincial park we are in) in order to upload all of the journal/blog entries and photos of the last few days. I paid $4.00 for half an hour on a particularly glitchy internet connection and only managed to get day one and part of day two up in some semblance of their proper order (I’ve been writing and laying-out rough versions these posts every evening at the cottage, it takes a bit of work to make blogger.com do what I want). Day three, four, and five, as well as edited versions of one and two, will likely come when I head in to Charlottetown and find a nice coffee shop to connect from.
I’m not particularly proud of today’s crop of photos. Most were captured as we were driving down roads much too small to safely pull over. All I will post for today is a lupin. These are purple flowers that inhabit many of the fields and ditches across the island. It seems to be the fifth color in the island color scheme (earth red, potato-plant green, ocean blue, sky blue, pupin purple). I hope to redeem myself with some better shots of the little houses, blue bays, and rolling fields over the next few days. Morning light seems to be what most of these scenes need, unfortunately this means waking up earlier than 10am...
Dad and I went to the beach at 10:30 tonight. Oddly enough, it was too bright for really good star-gazing or fox hunting. Once our eyes adjusted, the waxing moon (sitting about 35-40 degrees above the horizon) was casting strong shadows across the beach and making it nearly impossible to look south without losing our night vision. Normally the solution would be to wait for it to set, but this might take a while. It is midnight right now and the moon is still blazing bright in the sky. With it being in its waxing stage, we may find that the completely dark star-gazing may evade for most of the rest of the trip, the moon likely becoming full at some point in the next week or so. Not good for star gazing, but it certainly was beautiful with the glowing moon and clouds silhouetting the rugged dunes.
In past trips, the foxes have been a pleasant addition to our daily events. Evening walks often include one of the red and white creatures running across the path or eerily staring out from the bushes, only being seen as two points of light when our flashlight happens to catch their eyes. We saw some eyes and heard some noises when we were down on the beach, but we never actually saw our quarry in all of its furry majesty. But as we were driving back, I did catch some eyes on the side of the road. After some particularly skillful and dangerous (at any other time of the day in any place other than here) driving in reverse by my father we set our headlights and flashlights on a fox-like creature. To me it seemed longer and thinner than our usual foxes, and it was either very dark brown or black with white only on the tip of its tail. Also unlike the foxes, it’s eye glow shifted with the angle from the familiar white/yellow to an (I’ve got to admit) slightly more menacing orange/red. Hope to talk to a park ranger at some point this week and find out what this may have been. In Alberta, we’re used to having a plethora or mammals around us; As I remarked in the car on the way back, a book called “The Mammals of PEI” would be about ten pages long, three of those being varieties of cows, four being varieties of mice and voles, an entry for the coyotes, and entry for the foxes, and an entry for our mystery creature. I love this island, but the Rockies it is not when it comes to ecological diversity.
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