A Monumental Day Sixteen in PEI

The last day of the Confederation Trail for Auntie – a total of 273 km walking, over a two week period – pretty impressive!
While Auntie was finishing the trail, we went with Mommy to a little town called “Souris,” named after an invasion of mice that took place in the 1700s. Here we are, sitting outside the town’s reception hall and historical museum.
Inside the museum, the first floor had exhibits and posters about the history of the area. On the second floor, there was a room filled with artifacts from days gone by. Mommy remembers getting a soda from many coolers that looked just like this one, when she was a young child.
Using the bottle cap opener on the front of the cooler was always fun! This exhibit made Mommy realize how time flies, over a lifetime. Many of the artifacts on display were common household items when she was growing up, but now they are parts of history in a museum.
We especially liked the displays of sewing and clothing items, as Mommy recognized many of them, and told us stories about Granny and Great-Granny using them.
We never met Great-Granny as she passed away about twelve years ago, before we were born, but Mommy says Great-Granny wore boots like these until the day they stopped making them.
After our visit to Souris, we went to a workshop Mommy had booked with a lady named Lisa. The workshop was to learn how to do needle felting. Lisa was really friendly, and we learned a lot about blending wool rovings in different colours and textures. Mommy let us help her make a picture of a sheep in a meadow.
This is Lisa. We liked her a lot.
After Mommy finished her picture, Lisa put it in a frame for her, and then suggested Mommy make a book mark.
When Mommy told Lisa about Auntie walking the whole Confederation Trail in two weeks, Lisa gave Mommy a felted pumpkin to give Auntie as a reward. Wasn’t that a lovely thing to do?!
Lisa sold all kinds of things in her little shop. We liked these two dollies made from up-cycled fabrics, crafted by a lady in England. Auntie R. had sent Mommy a gift of some money to buy souvenirs with in PEI, so Mommy chose to get one of the dollies. It was a hard choice for her to choose one, but we helped pick out “Rosie.” Thank you, Auntie R.!
After the workshop, we all went to Elmira to wait for Auntie S. to arrive. The trail ended right here where these old railroad tracks had stoppers for the trains.
273 kim is a really long way! We were super proud of Auntie!
We walked down the trail a bit while we were waiting.
It was beautiful in the mixed sunlight and dappled shade.
We wanted to go to the Railway Museum in Elmira, but it was closed. Instead, we went to tour this old lighthouse.
You could pay to go to the top of the lighthouse. The money went to the upkeep of the museum inside. On each level, there were parts of the lighting system, posters to tell some of the history and other tools, from when the lighthouse was in use.
There were lots of levels, four in all.
The staircases for the first three levels were steep and narrow.
But to get to the fourth level, the lookout, you had to go up this pull down ladder. Mommy had to think about that for a bit!
In the end, we were glad she chose to go right to the top of the lighthouse. The views were spectacular, and we all felt like we were living a little part of history. We could imagine the lighthouse keepers watching the ships out at sea. They must have felt proud to know they were saving lives by keeping the light working. We wondered if the lighthouse keepers got lonely, and, we wondered too, what made them choose to become lighthouse keepers?
Going back down the metal ladder was scary. Even though Mommy did all the climbing, we were shaking by the time she got to the bottom.
The stairs looked a lot steeper going down the other levels, too. Mommy said that was just because we were getting so tired.
Auntie loved her felted pumpkin. Rosie joined our family. We saw the inside of a real lighthouse. Auntie finished the whole Confederation Trail. We learned to needle felt. And, that night, we all got to watch the sun set over St.Peter’s Bay together. It was a magnificent day.

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