On the first day of our vacation in Prince Edward Island, after sleeping in to recover from our long drive, we drove a few blocks down the road to Green Gables Heritage Place!
I was a little taken aback by the shiny new Interpretive Centre and huge parking lot. It seemed so completely out of the spirit of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s times — yet it was precisely the popularity of her writing that made such a big centre necessary.
Once we got inside, the disconnect subsided. It was a very lovely presentation of the story of Maud Montgomery’s life, an interactive exhibit that you walked through at your leisure. I was glad that my friends were as interested in reading every panel as I was.
Now, I’ve read her Selected Journals and all her books, so the information wasn’t new to me. But I really liked how it was presented.
I got a special thrill out of seeing her actual typewriter:
And here’s the actual manuscript of Anne of Green Gables:
Have I mentioned that all three of us friends on this trip have different kinds of brain damage? Mine mostly manifests by getting motion sickness. Darlene and Ruth kept remembering important things and then forgetting little things. I noticed it at the Interpretive Centre when we walked into an orientation film about Green Gables in the middle. They started the film again, so we stayed to catch up the part we missed. But when we got to the part we’d seen before, neither Ruth nor Darlene remembered having just seen it! I went outside and took pictures while they watched the end of the film for the second time.
The former barn had more fun stuff. We all had to dress up as Anne!
Next to an exhibit about Anne and Diana’s vows of friendship seemed like the perfect place to take a picture of the Friendship Bracelets Darlene had gotten for each of us. On the side is engraved “A friend loves at all times” and “Proverbs 17:17.”
Once we got through the Interpretive Centre, the road was mostly hidden from us, and it did feel like we were back in Anne’s world.
And then it was time for a house tour!
Green Gables is interesting, because it’s a fictional place. Maud Montgomery never lived here, but she based the description in Anne of Green Gables on the nearby home of her cousins. So that’s the house that was renovated to look like the house described in Anne of Green Gables. It is a distance from the road (now filled by the parking lot), and it just takes a walk through the Haunted Wood to get to the home where L. M. Montgomery lived with her grandparents.
I never imagined Anne using a stove like this one!
And here’s the pantry:
I loved the geranium named “Bonny” in the window. We were told that in the days before screens, geraniums helped keep bugs from coming in the windows.
Here’s Anne’s room!
I was still excited by every red leaf I saw, and just loved this ivy on the side of Green Gables.
I wanted to go for a walk on Lovers’ Lane, but Alas! It was closed due to downed trees from Hurricane Dorian, which had hit the Island three weeks before. We saw trees down all over the island. They’d cleared the Haunted Wood Trail, but not yet with Lovers’ Lane.
I did cross the tape to take a picture of the beginning of the Lane, though.
We simply enjoyed the grounds, wandering around, taking pictures.
Have I said that my friends are true kindred spirits? I was so happy when I wanted to linger — that they wanted to linger, too. We all agreed that our families probably would have gotten impatient by then.
We finished off this first part of our day with a late lunch in the café — drinking Raspberry Cordial, of course!
Next — our walk through the Haunted Wood!