Walking in Prince Edward Island (with photos)

The Nerd and I are on holidays this week visiting family in Prince Edward Island.  We drove out with our looms over a couple of days (it turns out PEI is quite a hike from Toronto), and arrived Sunday morning on the Island.  It was a Very Long Drive.

I always find holidays to be somewhat stressful in part because my routine gets shot all to hell - - staying with family means no gym full of equipment near to hand and lots of meals out.  A fun time is had by all - - and don't get me wrong, the Nerd and I are having a fabulous time - - but the lack of routines can be challenging.  For example, 2 days of road food and all the Tim Hortons cookies we can eat (which is a lot) can really mess up good eating habits. 

Nature's awesome majesty

But we are here safe and sound on the Island and after a Sunday afternoon of more poor food choices we have gotten back into the swing of things with a modified healthy plan of activity.  We are trying to replace our usual workouts with nice walks through the area.  We are paying attention to what we are eating and drinking.  We are volunteering to cook our usual repertoire of healthy balanced meals rather than eating out for every meal.  Every little bit helps.

Confederation Trail map

One of the fun things we did today was walk part of the Confederation Trail.  The Confederation Trail is not unlike Toronto's Beltline Trail in that it is a multi-use trail installed where a railway once passed.   Used as a walking and cycling trail in the summer, the 410 km of crushed gravel path is used as a snowmobile trail in the winter.   The Trail extends from one end of Prince Edward Island to the other and makes for a simply wonderful walk.  The Nerd and I spent more than an hour exploring part of the Trail this morning for our morning constitutional and the entire time we saw two people - - in stark contrast to the Beltline with its traffic jams of runners, walkers, and people walking dogs and pushing strollers. 

View on the Trail.  Notice the complete absence of people.

We ended up walking 4.92 miles or 7 km this morning, which means we really walked about 3.5 km along the Trail (out and back), leaving a mere 406.5 km of Trail left to explore.  We're probably not going to finish walking the entire Trail on this visit (!).   

Aside from the legions of mosquitoes which made walking almost unbearable at times, the walk was peaceful and lovely.  The Nerd and I really enjoyed the walk and are definitely going to walk more portions of the Trail tomorrow...after bringing more bug spray with us for safety. 

We did a lot of sightseeing today including visiting a couple of local Island distilleries (that make Shine as well as a variety of spirits) and stopping for ice cream in downtown Souris (the local small town).

I can imagine you saying to yourself: "Ice cream?  Again?  But what about eating healthy?".  My response is my usual "It's all part of my balanced day that includes an hour of hiking to ensure that we have burned enough calories to let us have ice cream, silly".  Because hey, ice cream makes a long walk in the woods surrounded by mosquitoes totally worth it. I regret nothing.  Ice cream is delicious.