To be quite honest… I should have seen the signs.
Time and time again they were right in front of me but I looked the other way… buried my head in the sand.
It’s Mr. Beelers fault. He was my Junior High Geography teacher and I didn’t learn a thing about Canadian Geography… never mind Atlantic Canada or even Nova Scotia!
We piled in the car on Sunday morning and headed to PEI… me with an “approximation” of how to get there (I knew I could “sort of” see it from Gib’s cottage so I headed in that direction!)
We were a few hours into our family bonding trip and nearing the PEI ferry in Pictou, when I started looking for the signs directing me to the Confederation Bridge. I figured it had to be around there somewhere!
OK… in all fairness… for the last fifteen years I’ve been the passenger in the car on all of the family travels. There are a lot of places I’ve been, still a lot more I want to go to… but I really didn’t care how I got there as long as I was there. My job was to read the map… change the radio station when it got staticy… locate the good places to stop for a pee… make the arrangements… pack the bags… bring snacks… and be the person who swatted the kids when they acted up in the back seat. NEVER was my job to actually get us there!
We should also be clear here that I don’t talk in terms of North, South, East and West… I’m more about left, right, up and down.
After much debate… and seeing that we were in a different province than we should have been… we took the ferry.
I tried to explain to the children that they really should look at life with me as one big adventure! Luckily the seas were calm… or I don’t think they’d have been very happy with me (but the lovely couple from Ontario in the ferry line next to us thought I was hilarious!!)
Eventually we got on the island… but that was just the beginning of the issues I had with signs directing me where to go!
Whoever created the directional signs on PEI should be fired! The thing is… every single road leads to where you want to go… the island’s not that big. You get going in the direction you want and suddenly you’re lured away by a sign leading you a totally different way. It’s now taking you longer than you anticipated because the pretty little sign that tore you from the highway (otherwise known as the lesser of windy roads) is now taking you the “scenic” route. Did I happen to mention there were three kids in the car and at some point along the journey they stopped caring about red dirt, potato fields and cows! Not only that… but I can’t swat and drive at the same time!!!
In my humble, non-geographically friendly opinion, there should be two colors of signs. The green ones we’re all used to on the highways should be used to point you the “most direct” route to where you wish to go…. AND… call me crazy… but maybe they could include the distance in kilometers that it will take to get there! The second color… I don’t really care… make it PEI “dirt red”… those signs can let you know that there is an “alternate” route… possibly even a “prettier” route… but definitely not the “fastest” route to get to where you want to go while your kids are now licking each other in the back seat and the squeals are simply unbearable!
PEI was lovely. The signs were ridiculous.
Life with me is an amazing adventure! If only I can convince my kids!