The Joyney to PEI

EntryOne.

[august 2o1o]


multi-day bus rides are always... interesting. thank god for stop-overs. taking a bus from toronto to PEI thankfully is only 27ish hours, as opposed to bussing home from Vancouver which takes almost 4 full days. the big stop-over on the way to the east coast: Montreal!

it seems that every time i go to montreal it rains. this time we had just missed a big storm.. it was dry enough to walk around for a couple hours, take a stroll down the pedestrian road and check out the rainbow strip.

yeah, we.. it's always nice to have a travel partner. shawn and i have traveled together for a few years now, hittin trails and highways all across the country. we've each gone adventuring with others as well, but our travel karma together is unmatched.

overnights on the bus are the worst, for me anyways. it's pretty hard to sleep when rolling down the highway at a hundred kilometers per hour. every time i close my eyes and attempt to make myself sleep, my stomach does flip-flops and i feel like tossin my cookies. i never do though, just gives me a huge headache. the small suffering is always worth it, to get so far so fast.

the best part about taking the bus is meeting the people. we met a man named Tony on our way to PEI.. he was originally from Newfoundland, but had met his wife and moved to her town there on the island. Tony spent most of his life working and traveling, from working on freight ships to the tar sands, he even had a hand in the building of PEI's 13 kilometer Confederation Bridge. his name is engraved in the concrete, where thousands of worker's names are.. to forever commemorate their contribution to the longest bridge that spans over flowing ice anywhere in the world.

coming up to the bridge and seeing it for the first time was a trip, to say the least. it was so surreal, the bridge seemed to dissapear into the sky. just as trippy was seeing the island fast approaching, the red dirt unlike anything i had ever seen. like a strange alien territory. it's nice that we can feel like we've left the country without actually leaving it. i couldn't wait to get off the bus... i couldn't wait to set foot in the ocean.

Tony gave us a rundown of the history of the place, told us his own story, and listened as we told him where we've been so far. it's so hard to let people go once you meet them. there's a part of me that always wants to get everybody's info and keep in touch, it's amazing how attached to people you can become even after knowing them for only a few hours, or even minutes in some cases. Tony told us about some sweet places to wander if we got a chance, wished us luck and got off the bus. we were close to our destination, which was technically just the beginning of our journey, Charlottetown PEI.

whenever we take a bus somewhere, the first day after landing is always the worst. nothing seems to go right, it always rains, and i always seem to panic just a little. my body is sore from multiple days stuck on a bus, my pack feels ten times heavier and my brain goes to mush.

we wandered around for hours in Charlottetown. it was already well into the afternoon, and our priorities were presenting themselves quickly. one, find somewhere to blaze. two, find somewhere to eat. three, find a place to pitch our tent. Victoria Park was our first stop. we had yet to find a map of the city, but it was kind of a given to find the water. walk downhill.

priority one and two taken care of. i spun up a couple dubs to blaze, and we feasted on the rest of our bus snacks for dinner. the boy and i couldn't resist playing on the cannons with the other children. so much history out there on those dunes. battles fought, blood spilled, history set in stone. we stood a good long moment, facing the sea breeze to soak it all in before heading back inland for the night.

the wandering continued. i was too busy being hard on myself, saying things like "i'm not strong enough to do this anymore" and "maybe i'm too old for backpacking" to pay much attention to where we were going. shawn did his best to reassure me that i'm not as weak as i felt right then. how many other people do we know that are willing to do what we were doing? grab a rucksack and take off across the country, carrying everything they'd need for weeks on end. not many. all i needed really was a good night's rest.

we found what we discovered the next day to be the Charlottetown section of the Confederation Trail. a couple of foxes were playing around ahead of us on the path, leading us into the darkness. hoping that we were moving in the right direction, we hit the trail in seek of a place to pull over and sleep. the sky was changing. it was already well past sundown and the clouds were getting ready to rain. our packs were feeling much too heavy to keep on any longer, so we dropped off behind what looked like an inner city farm plot and set up our tent for the night.

the air was strangely still. i insisted on the rain tarp, and good thing... moments after we had it fastened down, in comes the rain. more like a monsoon... it rained so heavy we couldn't hear each other's voices from a foot away. i was starting to worry about how low we were sitting and if there was a chance our tent would get flooded out. i held my hand outside the tent in the grass to see if the water would start flowing under us, but before long i couldn't care anymore. i was so tired i could no longer stay conscious. i zipped up, rolled over and passed right the hell out. tomorrow is a new day.