PEI 18 - Have you got thyme?

Day 12
Saturday, July 30, 2016

We got an early start, on the road by 7:40. We were heading to North Cape, where there's a lighthouse, wind farm, gift shop, restaurant, and the Atlantic Wind Test Site. When we were here in 2009 we'd had dinner at the restaurant. We talked about wouldn't it be nice if it was open for us to have a second breakfast. I love eating breakfast out and, other than Tim Horton's, we had not yet done so on this trip.

The views along the way were tremendous. In one grand sweeping view I took in fields of white Queen Anne's lace dipping down to the ocean, horses, sheep, wild thyme, a barn, and wind turbines, too much to capture in a photo. 

But here's a picture of some lobster traps. They still use the traditional wooden ones.

One thing we had begun noticing on this part of PEI were the purply-pink flowers that looked like thyme covering many of the lawns.  They were really lovely.

"Excuse me, what are those purple flowers growing everywhere?" I stopped to ask a woman who was walking down the road toward the North Cape. She was an older woman, wearing a red T-shirt that said "North Cape," a baseball cap, and long black pants.

"Oh, that's wild thyme," she said.

"Do people want it in their yards or do they consider it a weed?"

"Well, we cut our grass close, stay on top of it. You can't really do much about it."

I wish I had that problem. Back home, I'm trying to grow creeping thyme in between the flagstones of a path behind my garage. It's been a slow process so far.

We arrived at the North Cape around 9:30 (a.m.). Other than a young couple sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean, the place was deserted, our hopes for breakfast dashed. The restaurant wouldn't open until lunch. But the gift shop was open and Rob went in to ask where we might be able to pick up some lunch. We were both getting tired of bicycling lunches. All they could think of was a convenience store in Miminegash, which was about 20 miles down the road. Besides wind turbines and farms, there's not much on this part of PEI. Doesn't matter, though. The cycling is phenomenal.

As we were sitting on the benches outside the tourist center, the woman I had spoken to earlier came up and sat down on the bench across from us.

She said, "It's hot." She told us that she walked here every day. 

I asked her about the wind turbines. "Does the noise bother you?"

"Puts me to sleep," she said.

I wondered how people made a living around here. She told me she'd worked collecting Irish moss. "It wasn't easy. Washes up on the shore after a storm."

Then, "Guess I'd better start heading back. I left a pot of soup cooking on the stove."

This is a photo of the North Cape taken in 2009. Left to right that's me, Kylee, and Tim. Check out all that sustainable energy in the background.

Collections of rock towers along the shore of the North Cape

That's me.