Thursday Travels: Greenwich

Standing near the edge. North Shore, near Rustico, Prince Edward Island.

I left us standing near the edge of the red cliffs of Prince Edward Island in my last chapter of Thursday Travels.  It’s not a bad place to be left for a while, to contemplate life, the universe, the gulf, and everything.

Cormorants contemplating the waves.

If some of the photos look familiar, it’s because I used them (or others that are similar) when I posted while traveling back in June.  I’m trying to keep the story in chronological order for my own records.  The cormorants, as you may recall if you were following along at the time, were gathered near the cliffs, and I was thrilled when hundreds of them took flight all at once.  (You can read more about the experience here.)

Unfortunately, it was one of those moments not easily captured with a camera.

We did eventually leave the cliffs and walk back towards the dunes.

And that was the end of our first day of sightseeing on Prince Edward Island.  The weather did not improve the next day.  It was cloudy, rainy, windy, and (to some) chilly (in the 40s).  Since we only had one day on PEI, we couldn’t very well let the weather keep us from seeing what we’d planned to see and doing what we’d planned to do so we made our way to Greenwich, part of the Prince Edward Island National Park.

There are three hiking trails in Greenwich.  We decided to hike out to the Greenwich Dunes area, a hike which takes you through open fields, wooded areas, over a pond, and up over the dunes to the beach.  (You can read the post I wrote the day of the hike here.)

It was not a good day for photography.  If we couldn’t have blue skies, dark clouds would have been nice in that they would add drama.  Unfortunately, I got the kind of skies that tend to look overexposed.  I decided not to try to fix it in post-processing.

I don’t think it’s likely, but I would love to go back and redo that hike.  We saw a lot, but I’m also fairly certain we missed a lot.  M is not a cold weather fan, and the wind made matters worse.

Going into the woods

If you only have one full day on PEI, I highly recommend going to Greenwich for this hike.  Had the weather been nicer, it had the potential to be one of the coolest, most interesting hikes we took during our trip to the Canadian Maritimes.

It was still very cool (not just in the literal sense) and very interesting, but we moved quickly from one area to the next, not taking much time to explore.

We’ll be leaving the woods soon.

Just outside of the wooded area, we came to a spot where a large swath of ground was covered with some kind of lichen or moss.

Once again, the photos don’t do it justice.  When I first saw it, I thought it looked like a greenish-white foam on the ground.

From there, we stepped on to the boardwalk that goes over Bowley Pond and through the dunes.

I’ll tell you a bit more about the dunes in my next Thursday Travels post.

You can see a dune off in the distance, just right of center.

Now it’s time to move along the boardwalk a little farther…

… and wrap this up.

We’ll walk on the floating part of the boardwalk next time.  I didn’t get nearly as many photos as I would have liked because of the rain and wind which kept me from shooting in the direction from whence they came.  Trying to do that resulted in a rain spattered lens.

In case you’re wondering, there was no one else out there.  As with most of the other places we visited, we had it all to ourselves.  That’s one good thing about bad weather.

Sunset behind the woods

That’s it for this week’s edition of Thursday Travels.  Thank you for joining me in a look back at a fabulous trip.  Here in the Bogs, it’s been cloudy, windy, rainy, and a little chilly (much like it was during our visit to PEI).  The photo just above was taken yesterday evening at sunset when the sun lit up the trees and shrubs from behind.  You can’t see them, but I’m pretty sure the local faeries were flying around in the sunlight.  Or maybe it was just seeds floating in the breeze, lit up by the sun.

Today’s view of the pond

Wishing you a lovely day, evening, or night… wherever and whenever you are on the spectrum of time.

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