Gen Y-er On The Loose: Prince Edward Island 2008 Trip Blog

DAY 4 (MORNING):
SITE OF L.M. MONTGOMERY'S CAVENDISH HOME
THE "HAUNTED WOOD"

GREEN GABLES

& CAVENDISH

Thursday was our day in Cavendish. It started out cloudy, with showers, but it would improve. We made our first stop at Rachael's Ristorante, a yellow restaurant just off the main corner in Cavendish. Remember how, in the books, Rachel Lynde's house was on the corner at Avonlea crossing? That's kind of what they were going for. Apparently the restaurant was once a house owned by a woman who was L.M. Montgomery's inspiration for Rachel Lynde. I guess it would be easy to be the town gossip queen if you lived in the center of town and saw everything that happened. Anyway, we ate breakfast there, and they had good food.

Next we decided to visit the site of L.M. Montgomery's Cavendish home, since it was closeby. You go up a dirt driveway and pay to see some interesting things, like an old well and the foundation upon which L.M.'s house once stood. Now, if you recall, we've already been to the home where she was born, but this is (or, rather, was) a house where she lived for a good portion of her life, the home of her grandparents, I believe. (Her mother died when she was young, and her father moved somewhere else; eventually L.M. went to live with him, but that came later.) Once you're at this site, you can follow -- on foot -- a path into some woods, then you can cross the highway and walk through more woods to the Green Gables House. (More on that later.)

Between this site and the Green Gables house is something called the "Haunted Wood." For those of you who haven't read the books or seen the movies, Anne's wild imagination turns one otherwise benign little forest into something creepy and ghostly. These woods were here in L.M.'s time, and were evidently her inspiration for that aspect of the novel. So below you'll see pictures of nature and plaques from both the site of L.M. Montgomery's Cavendish home and the Haunted Wood. Remember, you can click on any photo to enlarge it.

Below are photos of the foundation upon which the house used to sit. It must have been very small!

After walking through the Haunted Wood, you come upon the Green Gables House. (You can also begin your journey at the GG house if you prefer; either place will let you pay admission there. We just happened to go to the LMM Cavendish home, then Green Gables.) Green Gables is a house that was standing in LMM's time, and would have been her neighbor's house. She spent time here, she saw it often. I'm bad at estimates, but I would guess it's somewhere like half a mile from where her home was. The Haunted Wood is in between.

Years before the house became a tourist attraction -- when it was still a residence -- someone added on to the upstairs, so the house today is actually a little bigger than it was in LMM's time. However, once it became a national landmark or whatever, they decorated the interior to look just as it would when LMM was a young woman. Actually, to be specific, they've decorated it to look as if it could actually be Anne's "Green Gables" house. On the first floor there's a small bedroom, "Matthew's room." Upstairs you can find "Anne's room," "Marilla's room," a sewing room, and the coveted "Spare Bedroom." In case you didn't know, this is not the house that was used in the Anne movies; those exteriors are in Ontario at two different locations, and I believe the interior scenes were shot on sound stages.

Here are some photos taken inside the Green Gables House...