Day 9 – St. Peters to Elmira – 56 km (35 miles)

Today we rode the last section of the Confederation Trail’s main line from St. Peters to the end of the line in Elmira. There’s a nice little museum and welcome center there, and a sign that shows the ending point for those like us riding Prince Edward Island from tip to tip!

Today’s ride took us through a more remote area of the island. It’s actually all very rural with just a few scattered houses until you near a town. But we didn’t see many houses today, just beautiful scenery once again.

As we pedaled east, I began to notice wild strawberries and raspberries along the trail. The strawberries were very small, but sweet.

Today was the coolest temperatures we’ve had. I wore long sleeves most of the morning. It started out in the upper 50’s with a moderate breeze, and the high for the day was 64. Sunny skies kept us warm as we rode. Perfect bicycling weather!

At one stop along the trail, there was an artesian well bubbling up from the ground through a pipe. It is the only artesian well on the island. The water enters the subsurface at a higher elevation and is confined between layers of clay or hard rock. This causes pressure to build up and the water finds its way to an outlet at a lower elevation, and bubbles up to the surface. When the railroad operated along this line, this well was used to supply water for the steam enginnes.

The water flowing from underground is a consistent 45 degrees (7c) all year long, so it never freezes.

We made it to the end of the trail in Elmira, having ridden the Confederation Trail from tip to tip along the center of the island. There are many spurs that came off the main line, and the remainder of the week we will ride some of those. But with today’s ride, we had completed our tip to tip portion of the ride.

In the old train depot in Elmira, they have a museum, a visitor’s center, and restrooms. We received a certificate for completing the tip to tip ride of 273 km (170 miles), though our mileage is higher than that because we added some miles on the coastal roads.

After exploring the museum a bit, we found lunch at a food truck in the middle of nowhere. It was about 1.5 miles from the end of the trail. We took the road to get to the truck’s location, but the area is very rural so there wasn’t much traffic.

The views were fantastic and so was the food. I ordered the veggie sandwich with cheese, avocado, and coconut bacon (a new food I’d never heard of but delicious) and Jimmy ordered fish tacos. We had a view of the ocean as we ate.

Once we finished lunch, we had about a 6 mile ride to East Point lighthouse where we’d arranged with George to pick us up and take us to Georgetown for the night. The ride was all along the coastal roads. There was not a shoulder, but there were very few cars. This stretch was gorgeous!

We arrived at the lighthouse, parked the bikes and walked up to the top. The lighthouse was built in 1867 and was the tallest we’ve seen on the island. The others have been short and stocky, but this one was 66 steps to the top (I counted!)

George was right on time and loaded our bikes and another group’s bikes onto the trailer. The other group consisted of 3 ladies also from the U.S. Since it was the 4th of July, we had a little moment of celebrating Independence Day in the van, complete with cheers and applause!

George dropped us off in Georgetown so we could continue our ride tomorrow, and the 3 ladies were headed back to Charlottetown having completed their tip to tip ride.

The Georgetown Historic Inn was built in 1840 as a home. Throughout the years, the building has served many purposes; post office, general store, boarding house, warehouse and thrift store. In 1995, it was converted into an inn with 8 guest rooms.

There’s a restaurant on the ground floor of the inn, we’ll have breakfast there in the morning, but George recommended a restaurant a short walk away on the waterfront. We’re glad we took his recommendation because it was delicious with beautiful views on the deck. After dinner we walked to the wharf and I took more pictures. Though we missed being in the U.S. for the 4th, it was nice being in such a lovely place!