The eight mile long Confederation Bridge (the longest bridge in Canada) took us from New Brunswick onto Prince Edward Island in the heart of the Maritime Provinces. At 2,185 square miles it is the smallest of all Canadian Provinces. The red clay and cliffs offer stunning vistas and the Island is covered with farmland running right to the sea’s edge. We circumnavigated the Island camping mostly in Provincial Parks which are very well appointed with clean bathrooms and showers. Cavendish on the north shore was home to the beloved character in the Lucy Maude Montgomery novel Anne of Green Gables and the cult followers of Anne Shirley come from all corners of the earth (especially Japan) to see the settings where the novel was inspired.

Beautiful beaches, bays and inlets surround the Island where fishing is still king, lobster is on every menu and mussels are “grown” in estuaries. Lighthouses surround the Island most of which are still in operation though shipwrecks which numbered in the hundreds in years past have dropped off considerably with the advent of GPS.

It’s a delightfully bucolic place with a slow pace and friendly people throughout. The descriptions in Ms. Montgomery’s book seem almost as relevant today as when written in 1908.