Kensington to Stanley Bridge: There's no Hills in PEI, They Said

It was our first day of walking from our lodging to our next night's lodging.  

Patti next to the Island Trail sign

It was all road walking, mostly along country roads

through agricultural land.

Cool old barn

The most common crops were potatoes, beans (soy?),

Patti in a bean field.

And corn.

Patti in a cornfield

We asked a couple if we could have lunch in the shade on their property and they invited us up to meet their dogs.

Patti bowled over by a boisterous Irish setter.

Like many people,e we met they were retirees from Ontario who'd moved to PEI after spending their summer vacations here.

I dried out  my freshly washed socks on the back of my pack.

Lupines are a common symbol of PEI (but not the Provincial flower, that is the ladyslipper) but we saw only one blooming.  We did see lots of lupine already gone to seed.

Most of the maples had this fungal disease. We were informed that it was harmless.

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Tar Spot of Maple (Rhytisma acerinum)

We were told that there are no hills in PEI but we found out otherwise today!

What is that I see in the distance?

Looks like a hill.

Looks like a really steep hill.

That pickup had to gun it to get up the hill.

It turned out to be the first of a series of hills we climbed for the rest of the day.

At the top of one hill we saw a modest house.

That turned out to be the birthplace of Lucy Maude Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables.

We walked a total of 21 km today. Finally at the top of the very last hill we arrived at the Stanley Bridge Resort where we found our luggage had not arrived.  Our baggage shuttle had picked up the wrong bags and delivered them to our hotel.  The guy at the hotel realized the bags didn't belong to any guest so he phoned the number on the bags and the owner picked them up.  Any way it was sorted out in half an hour after phoning our shuttle guy.  We walk for 3 days straight but it's only a half-hour drive from  Charlottetown.

It's only a half kilometer walk to the only restaurant in town, Carr's Oyster Bar, but to in our state of fatigue us it seemed to take forever.  But we had a great waitress and they make a good Lobster roll.

It must have been a combination of our fatigue and the one beer we drank but we took a wrong turn and wound up walking a long way up the wrong road in the dark in the pouring rain, totally lost.  Patti wound up knocking on a stranger's door and asking for directions.  She drove us back to the hotel.  Do neither of you know how to use a smartphone, she asked.  (We'd left them in our room charging).