Trip 45 — Prince Edward Island Walk

Day 1: Airport to Cornwall
Sunday, 27 July 2025

Today: 14165 steps/12.21 km/7.59 mi/1h 58m

On the plane's approach to Charlottetown, I could make out large tracts of green farmland and their associated buildings, interspersed with patches of pine, spruce, and birch. The views down were hazy — was PEI being affected by the wildfires elsewhere in Canada?

I exited the airport to a warm, sunny, and breezy day. The first kilometer was the ugly, boxy buildings of sanitation, insulation, and auto parts. But after 12 minutes, I turned onto the Confederation Trail. I pondered the railway lines that used to cross the island, whose land was repurposed as today's network of Confederation Trail routes. They reminded me of the numerous New Jersey railroads from a transportation golden age that I can only dream of.

A couple on bicycles went by me and we exchanged greetings. When they stopped at a road crossing, I caught up, and I passed them as they walked their bikes up a hill. Then they overtook me again. "Tag!" she said.

I wasn't on the trail for very long. I proceeded onto a busy road that took me past shopping plazas, motels, and gas stations — so many gas stations.

I made it 53 minutes into the walk before seeing my first reference to "Anne of Green Gables," PEI's best-known novel. Beside a causeway, the Anne of Green Gables Chocolates store was between Moo Moo BBQ and Cows Creamery, which has been voted as having the best ice cream in Canada and, according to Tauck World Discovery, in the world.

The line was long and it took 15 minutes to get through it, a number that also seemed to represent the average age of the people doing the scooping. Cows went full-throttle in infusing cow-related wordplay into its flavors — Cookie Moonster, Moo York Cheesecake, Cowconut Cream Pie, Coffee Cowrunch — but it didn't stop there. At the back of the building was a small museum devoted to Cows' operations since its inception in 1983, along with a cheese-aging room and a section with made-to-order T-shirts featuring familiar films and programs with bovine alterations: Dairy Potter, Dancing With the Steers, Fifty Shades of Hay, The Milking Dead.

I stepped outside with my scoops of Fluff 'n' Udder and PEI Blueberry ice cream. Against my usual practice and better judgment, I had them in a cone instead of a cup. I paused to decide whether I was going to eat them at one of the picnic tables or while I was walking, but the decision was made for me. Within ten seconds, the blueberry was dripping down the cone and onto my fingers. I was going to need to rinse off before continuing.

I sat down at a table and looked out over the water. Or at least I should have been able to. Instead I got to watch people park. Why couldn't they put the lot behind the store, so people have a view while they're eating?

Apart from the mess, the problem with the cone was that one scoop was in the cone while the other was on top, so I had to eat all of the blueberry before having the chocolate with peanut butter and fluff. It became a race to finish the blueberry before it melted down my fingers, and then I got to the end of the ice cream and there was still so much cone left. To be fair, the cone was sweet and tasty (often they taste like cardboard), but the ratio of ice cream to cone was too small and the deadline to consume it too restrictive. And then I had to go back in and find the bathroom.

Yes, eating ice cream is difficult. But so is making it. Why, that requires...

...A tin pail, you pack it with some ice!
Rock salt, sprinkle it on twice!
A big spoon to see if it tastes nice...

...Chill, mix, cover it up tight!
Turn, crank — can't you do it right?
Well, you help! This is no time to fight!
Keep on with the churning and soon you'll be turning out ice cream...

...As one learns in the "Anne of Green Gables" musical, which is performed every summer in Charlottetown. Now I'm all ears when it comes to corny puns such as those at Cows, but I'm sure the show falls into the category that my mother would have called "dippy."

The sign at the causeway said North River, but from what I could tell, that was the name of the community on the other side. The water itself was neither a river nor in the northern part of the island, so the name established on my face a quizzical look similar to those given to me by the cows as I headed down toward York Point.

It was along this stretch that I had one of my stopped-me-in-my-tracks walking moments, similar to the one that made me abruptly halt a few years back when someone correctly pronounced "short-lived" on the radio. This time, the cause was sadder: I'd just learned of the death of the comic songwriter Tom Lehrer. My parents got me hooked on his records, and I could sing "The Elements" since before I became a bar mitzvah. At summer camp, we'd sing through his songbooks after dinner while I accompanied. My life has been a million laughs richer because of him.

The Chez Nous B&B was about 20 minutes away from Cornwall's businesses. During my fried-chicken dinner at Sam's Family Restaurant I heard some vigorous singing from the adjacent bar, and I contemplated staying, but things quieted down by the time I finished. I walked the dark road back to Chez Nous, where I found the other guests in the living room watching "Singer," a sort of Chinese version of "American Idol." One of the contestants was singing "Scarborough Fair," and from her gesticulations I inferred that the game must have included a requirement that she attempt to draw the herbs mentioned in the song.

Someone turned the TV off before the end of the song, and the resultant musicalis interruptus is getting to me, so I'll have to listen to a couple of numbers before I go to bed. Perhaps the ones that tell me that...

"Ice cream is wonderful on a summer's afternoon"

...And that "we will all go together when we go."

...The latter of which may not seem all that uplifting, but somehow the professor-songwriter makes it all smiles.

Go on to day 2