Entries about canada day

1st of July is Canada's birthday, "Canada Day"! We wanted to celebrate as locals do and to our surprise the festivities are somewhat similar to the celebrations of Hungary's 20th of August. Fireworks! And barbeque in Canada which is less connected to Hungary's "birthday" but my favourite summer activity.

So we wanted to do something similar and we celebrated with a large fire on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean at the Waves End RV and Camping. It was actually the eve of Canada Day as the next morning we already planned to drive towards an exciting ferry crossing from Nova Scotia to Prince Edward Island (PEI as seen on traffic signs). The kids really enjoyed feeding the fire and we used a lot of semi-dry sea-weeds to frighten mosquitos with great success. After sunset we kept the fire alive and after about three hours of fun we called a day.

The next day (on actual Canada Day) we drove back to Shelby's for a stopover and the next morning we got up early, drove to the Caribou Ferry which was about 20 minutes away from Shelby's. The ferry is free of charge from NS to PEI, on a first come first served basis or you can book a certain spot for 86 dollars. As we have more time than money we took the risk of showing up without a reservation. Worst case we though we wait another ferry, there are ships leaving 8 times a day. When we arrived about an hour before the first boat there were about ten cars in front of us so our logic was right: locals are not moving around that much on Canada Day, they enjoy the middle of the long weekend. Good on you - as Australians would say, rigth, James?

The ferry was a huge ship to my standards, the passenger cars went to floor -1 and larger trucks and trailers went to the ground level. For walk-on passengers and people from the cars there were 3 levels of decks, some covered with large seating areas and some open air. The crossing took about 75 minutes and the salty air of the sea was my favourite. The boat was at about 25% of its capacity to my judgement so there was really not much crowd around.

After the ferry crossing we has about 150 km to cover and we stopped at an Atlantic Superstore to fill up our pantry in Charlottetown. Some fresh veggies, meat for the grill and hamburgerbuns to finish off the barbeque-part of Canada Day celebration! There was lots of rain as we drove to Twin Shore Camping which is open since the 1950s, now connecting two beaches and being the largest campsite since our journey. The campsite was 100% full due to the Canada Day long weekend and on Sunday evening the weekenders left for home, so we enjoyed staying another two nights in a half-empty campsite.