Belmont Park, PEI

This lovely little day use park is on Route 123, about a fifteen minute drive from Summerside. Along the way you pass fields of cows, horses and sheep; occasionally a tractor cutting grass or fields lined with bales of hay. It's a drive through a pastoral setting. We decided to take a picnic again and with Georgie, the granddog, Rick, and his mother, Sylvia, we headed out to Belmont Park. It was mid-week, a lovely, windy day but hot. Thank goodness for the wind because it kept the mosquitoes at bay after we used some insect repellent.

      

The park is along a stretch of sand on the western side of Malpeque Bay. It has an open field with picnic tables as well as some table areas among the tall trees, (with fire pits), which line the perimeter of the grassy area. There are bathrooms with hot and cold running water, showers and electricity as well. It's very clean. There is a playground for children which our grandchildren would enjoy as well.

The breeze that day was westerly and as we sat at our picnic table, the sound of the wind in the huge trees was almost melodic. We walked around some of the trails which skirt the area above the beach and heard various species of birds as they went about their daily activity.

Today we took the camp stove and cooked bacon, then added a can of beans. Sylvia brought some of her tasty home-made bread. The smokiness of the bacon went through the beans. Delicious! The environment and the menu were a perfect match as we talked over a leisurely lunch.

           

One of the highlights of the day was the walk on the beach. The area of the park is elevated above the beach by as much as fifteen to twenty feet in some areas. This is huge in Prince Edward Island. The sandstone is of varied hardness and the erosion along the beach is obvious as trees and sod, in some places, hold on with everything they can muster so as not to slide onto the beach.

Many shells line the beach, mussels, bar clams, oysters as well as crabs in various stages of decomposition. It proved difficult to keep Georgie from eating the rotting crabs. Lots of jellyfish look like they had just been deposited on the beach, big and small alike. 

We were alone in the park and walked the trails and the beach several times. The breeze made the sizzling temperatures bearable. It was another wonderful picnic.