I had work obligations down in New Brunswick and instead of tacking on a Charlottetown trip to visit Christian afterwards, this time I went to PEI first.

Landing at Halifax Airport, I rode the bus for 1.5 hours to Amherst, then transferred to the Prince Edward Island bus which I'd ride for 2 hours up to Charlottetown.

Arriving on a Friday afternoon, we lounged in Christian's backyard, sipped rum and caught up on things.

One item I brought up yet again was how it doesn't make sense to me that Charlottetown doesn't have any divey bars. It seems like a place where there just has to be something we've overlooked.

Christian was adamant that the Sportsman's Club was the diviest bar here, and while I had been to the Sportman's Club previously, it was a lot cooler than I remembered when we headed there this night.

Okay, so a passable dive bar does exist in Charlottetown.

Christian threw me a serious 12-6 curveball when he wanted to watch a sporting event for the first time since I've known him. He was caught up in the excitement of the Toronto Raptors and Golden State series, so at the Sportsman's Club we asked the bartender and she said there was a TV she could turn on in the side poker room. As the three of us walked over to this closed door, a homeless dude decided to join us, which was all well and good.

I was feeling pretty worn out by this point and I didn't care all that much about the Raptors and Golden State. I sipped on my cheap Schooner beer, but after the excitement of being in this weird room wore off, my eyes started to get heavy and then the game had suddenly jumped forward by a few quarters? Wait, what's this commotion? What's going on?

The bartender was suddenly in the room hollering, where I confusedly came to and looked over to see Christian equally in a confused fog. We stood up and fumbled through apologies and slid past the furious bartender, while she and another staff member struggled with getting the homeless dude awake as he had laid down in one of the booths.

All three of us had passed out and had a little sleepover together in this weird poker room at Sportsman's!

The next day we walked over to Christian's friend Taylor's house in order to organize maybe getting together later.

Since we were in the neighbourhood, I asked Christian to pop by the old Prince Edward Island hospital as I knew it was being demolished very soon.

Once we got over there though, he asked why we weren't going inside the half-demolished structure. I of course, didn't have a good answer to this sensible question.

The first hospital established in Prince Edward Island was the catholic Charlottetown Hospital in 1878. Following demands from the general public for a non-denominational hospital, the Prince Edward Island Hospital was established in 1884 at a property known as the Haszard House at modern-day 36 Longworth Avenue.

Quickly outgrowing this Longworth Avenue property, the province built a new building on Kensington Ave between 1898 and 1900. They too would eventually outgrow this building, so the province finally built a right-sized, 5-story structure north of Charlottetown's Government House and adjacent to Victoria Park.

The government took over the Charlottetown Hospital from the Roman Catholic Church in 1969 - at which time it was identified that Charlottetown didn't need two separate hospitals and that they should be replaced with a single modern facility.

This replacement would happen in 1982 with the opening of Charlottetown's Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

The old Prince Edward Island Hospital was then converted into a nursing home and palliative care unit. Finally, it was closed in 2015 following the construction of the new Prince Edward Home and another palliative care building. The 120 nursing home residents were moved over to the new structure in 2013, while the palliative care unit had to wait a bit longer.

My timing here was perfect as I arrived in Charlottetown just a day after they started demolition. That being said, it was impressive how much of the building's footprint they had already managed to reduce to rubble.

By November the site would be completely cleared at a cost of $3 million, with an additional $500,000 where they had to excavate soil near an old oil tank. As this site is right next to Charlottetown's beloved Victoria Park, the plan all along has been to seed the ground and simply return the site to green space.

There's something really sad about having a nursing home in an old hospital where they never renovated enough to remove the hospital feel. Walking the halls and peeking in rooms, this building felt just like any of the other 5 or 6 hospitals I've visited in my lifetime.

So as you grew old and into your last years, you'd sit in this building with limited mobility and limited visits, emerged in the atmosphere of a hospital after you've likely spent a lot of recent, hard times in hospitals. Those at the new Prince Edward Home seemingly have it better.

That being said, my Grandma currently lives in an unremarkable one-story building that was built in the last 15 years. At least if she lived in the old Grace Hospital, it would selfishly be a pretty cool place to visit! Haha.

(I still enjoy visiting my Grandma even though the building is boring. Keep your hate mail to yourselves.)

Reaching the elevator room and roof access, a poor pigeon was trapped inside and smacking itself against a glass pane trying to get out. While that was sad, I also had to laugh at how I could tell we were a bit turnt up here as my first thought was to put my fist through the window to free the bird - which I would never have done with a clear mind in peaceful Charlottetown on a sunny afternoon.

So instead I grabbed this giant 2x4 like I was Hacksaw Jim Duggan and rifled it through the window, still succeeding in making a good amount of noise, but also managing to free my flying rat friend.

Christian would open the double-doors out to the roof about 6 seconds later, which may have been another solution. There was no more thoughts about that pigeon now though, as in front of us spread the tall trees of Charlottetown with distant church spires and the mesmerizing Charlottetown Harbour. Oh man, this was going to be a sweet doorway to look out from, keeping out of the eye of any do-gooders or security who would love to spot us up here.

Christian strutted right out onto the roof though, showing no desire to hang out in that guano-filled elevator room.

And so, we lounged on the black shingles in the late day sun, sipping beers on a day of simply perfect weather. I'd obviously had this experience in Detroit before, but if I was creating a list of cities where I'd expect something similar, Charlottetown would've been nowhere near the top. This was the definition of a pleasant surprise.

If we fast forward a bit - since you're reading about this 2 years after it happened - things changed in the meantime as they tend to do. Christian has moved multiple time zones away and there's no longer the promise of good times in Charlottetown whenever I'm in the area.

Things like people moving or making life changes happen all the time, but it's strange to edit 25 pictures, check notes and write a lengthy blog about some passing day that one might've taken for granted at the time.

The next day was actually supposed to be the abandoned building day.

Without any pre-trip plans to go into the old hospital, I'd used the internet to research abandoned places near Charlottetown for our visit. I was fired up to check out something, but struggled to find much of anything.

This old church seemed somewhat promising.

So we drove for nearly an hour and Christian humoured me as we checked out the inside, then he joined me in laughter once I remarked on how empty & boring it was.

Through 3 or 4 PEI trips, I've had better luck every time simply driving around and happening upon abandoned houses and churches than I ever have researching things on the internet.

We also decided to check off a nearby lighthouse, as Christian was surprised that I'd never been to touristy and popular North Rustico.

Heading back to Charlottetown, we had more of a chill night, especially Christian who called it in early. Meanwhile, I stayed up on the edge of my seat as Boston took on St. Louis in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, lol.

The Bruins thankfully won, but this also setup a Game 7 that would be tricky for me to catch in the coming days.

Having now spent the weekend with Christian and with plans to return in just a few weeks, I actually left a day early as I was longing to see someplace new. In fact, my flight down to Halifax went Deer Lake -> Halifax -> Boston because I was so fixated on new adventures prior to learning about my work obligations. I actually had to convince the airport staff to "short check" my bag, which meant it came out on the conveyor belt in Halifax & I simply abandoned the Halifax -> Boston leg of my flight, leaving the airport without incurring any change fees or having to pay for a more expensive flight.

Anyway, riding the bus back to Amherst, then Amherst to Moncton, and then finally Moncton up to Miramichi; I was dropped off at their bus stop which is an Esso about 8km outside town. At least this area used to be a military air base, which meant I sniffed out an abandoned building in no time.

The local skatepark was also nearby, and boy did it make me wish I had dragged my bike along with me. What a fun, old school, X-Games-style park!

One day I will return to the Miramichi Skatepark, but in the meantime, I boarded the city bus and headed through the nearby historic town of Chatham which I'd read was handsome and home to some gorgeous old buildings. The only problem was that the Miramichi city bus was a 15-person short bus wrapped in advertisements where you could only make out strange coloured blobs from the inside.

Personally, I couldn't believe New Brunswick's 5th largest city (pop: 17,500) hadn't thought of all the tourists who would ride their obscure city bus to check out the sights.

Eventually the bus dropped me off sort of near my hotel. I lugged my bag another kilometer or so, over to the Knights Inn in the other direction of where I wanted to be. Still though, my room was only an unfathomable $58 taxes in, so the extra walking was easily worth it.

Heading downtown, for how much I'd heard of Miramichi before, I was surprised with its small size. Regardless, there were some stately homes, interesting old signs and gritty businesses that I enjoyed.

One fascinating thing I came across was Capt. John's Used Books, where the eccentric owner has such a love of books, and such a collection, that maybe a thousand books are stored outside in plastic tubs with garbage bags providing protection from rain and snow.

Capt John's closed a few hours prior to my arrival, so I wasn't able to go inside. I can't find any interior pictures either, but reviews say that it's hard to turn around and you have to be ready for a good dig to find what you want. Which, ooh baby, sign me up!

Whenever you have a fleeting place like this, where I can't imagine someone taking it over after Captain John, I would love to get inside and check it out.

Another thing that caught my eye was this fast food restaurant with decor, branding and architectural features like the big chains back in the 80s.

I'd never heard of Dixie Lee, but the thought of catching one last remnant of a fast food chain excited me.

Except that there's 17 Dixie Lee locations in New Brunswick and more than 30 when you count Ontario & Quebec. LOL. I guess I just haven't driven around small town New Brunswick enough!

Whatever. I don't know if the other Dixie Lee's exist in the same buildings from the 80s and that was the part I was really digging. Plastic seats in booths, swirly metal chairs, that KFC tile on the floor, little curving window solarium areas, old school sliding nameplate menus above the workers, and old, straight-on pictures of the food with those 1980s glamour shot bright backgrounds.

I still wanted a delicious dinner though, so I went with the foolproof chicken poutine. And what did Dixie Lee teach me? That a chicken poutine is not foolproof.

Holy hell have I never had such a gross affront to said beautiful dish. It tasted so heavy and like the fryer hadn't been cleaned in ages. Dixie Lee's have great ratings on Google, but this left me wondering if it's small town syndrome where you love the local institution since you grew up on it.

Anyway, it was back to the Knights Inn afterwards, then soon enough into a cab and back to the "Miramichi Bus Station" aka a curb outside the combination Esso/Subway.

At least there was some humour when the bus driver pulled up, recognized me and asked, "leaving already?"

More to come.