Lady Slipper Drive, named after a wild orchid, steers a 180-mile (290-km) course along the coast of western and northwestern PEI. It begins at the West Point Lighthouse, a century-old wooden beacon that was operated manually until full automation in 1963. The lighthouse, which stands on the island's westernmost tip on the grounds of Cedar Dunes Provincial Park, today includes a museum, handicraft outlet, dining room and guest rooms. 76 lighthouses once operated along PEI's coast, but only 16 still serve their original purpose of steering vessels through the local shipping lanes and warning of the nearby shoreline.

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Lady Slipper Drive passes by the monument to French explorer Jacques Cartier located in Jacques Cartier Provincial Park near the Kildare Capes. These windswept red sandstone cliffs battered by tides, especially impressed Cartier. The town of Alberton is known for its ,fbx houses, great manors built from the proceeds of the now-defunct silver fox pelt industry. The Drive then forks: To the north it leads to Green Provincial Park, where the Yeo House (built in 1864 and named after a shipping magnate) is now a museum devoted to the old shipbuilding industry an PEI. Then comes Malpeque Bay, renowned throughout North America for its oysters. These mollusks are cultivated and farmed in the sheltered bays and coves along this section of PEI's coast. Another local marine bounty is Irish moss, a seaweed used in the emulsifying trade. Horses are still used in the harvesting process.

The southern route leads to the so-called Region Evang6line. French Acadiens settled the towns and villages around Egmont Bay in the early 1700s, and French remains the dominant language to this day. When the British expelled the Acadians from the island in 1758, many families hid in the woods to wait for more propitious times, thus salvaging an oasis of Francophone culture. 3 miles (5 km) west of Mont-Carmel on Cape Egmont is the home of the Acadian Pioneer Village, a re-creation of an early Acadian settlement (1800-1820) with pretty houses in bright colors that could be spotted from the sea by their fisherman owners. The town also has the only restaurant on PEI - Etoile de Mer - serving authentic Acadian dishes. Every Labor Day weekend, Acadian handicrafts, livestock and farm produce are exhibited in Abram-Village during Le Festival Acadien. A few miles farther, in the village of Miscouche, is the Acadien Museum, which has ancestral portraits of Acadian families from the last century among its array of artifacts.