Our View From The Road

Day 29 – Home

Today was not what we had planned, it ended at home. We awoke relatively early enjoyed breakfast in the van, tidied up and set out.

Our first stop was just a few minutes down the road at the park in Nackawic where we saw a very Big Axe!

Returning to the Trans Canada Highway we head North towards the Québec border. It’s Sunday morning and the traffic is almost nonexistent as we wind our way along the shore of the St John River. The highway offers some lovely views of the river valley.

Crossing into Québec we also return to Eastern Daylight Time gaining an hour back. This leads me to conclude that we would be arriving at Drummondville before 2:00pm. As Drummondville is only about 3hrs from home, I put it to Barb that we could skip one last night of camping in the van and drive straight home and sleep in our own bed. Decision made! Home we go.

Traffic along the St Lawrence South shore is busy and gets busier the closer we get to Montréal, but we only get stopped a few times and make good headway. As we have done before, we take Autoroute 30 across the south side of Montréal towards Salaberry-de-Valleyfield and then North across the St Lawrence River to Autoroute 20 where we head West towards Ontario.

We stop in Cornwall, ON for our last gasoline fill up and then head to the Long Sault Parkway to use the publicly accessible RV dump station where we empty our tanks one last time.

45min later we drive into our laneway, tired but happy to be home. 11hrs of driving and we have a pizza waiting for us thanks to our daughter.

In all, 28 days to cover 8,184km. The total drive time being just shy of 112 hours and the campervan now has almost 75,000km of exploration completed. Where will we go next?

Day 28 – Back on the Mainland

11:43pm, Jul 3rd and our ferry, the MV Highlanders, pulls out of Port aux Basques, NL. The 7hr crossing begins.

We have reserved seating for this crossing and so are looking forward to hopefully more comfortable seating than we had a month ago. Yeah! The seats are more comfortable. They recline like the non reserved seats but also have a flip-up support for your legs and a small padded stool on which to rest your feet. In all these features should allow for a better nights sleep.

Ahem….. I said ‘should’. Neither Barb or I had a very good nights sleep. These chairs are just not suitable for us. In all I think we each only had about 3hrs of sleep. The remainder was spent trying to get comfortable or walking about the vessel to pass the time. Argh.

We arrived in North Sydney, NS at 7:00am and we were one of the first vehicles allowed to depart. We headed out of town on the TCH towards Antigonish; however, before arriving there we stopped in a small roadside park where we each slept for an hour and a half.

After catching up on a little sleep we drove to the Masstown market where Barb did some shopping while I slept a little more. We enjoyed fish & chips for lunch and returned to the TCH heading westward.

The weather is very different than we’ve become used to over the past month. We left Newfoundland in foggy and damp conditions with a temperature of about 15°C. Today on New Brunswick we are driving in beautiful sunshine with a temperature of 31°C. The vans air conditioning system is working wonderfully.

We stop at Nackawic, NB where we are staying at the Big Axe Brewery, a Harvest Hosts site. We enjoy a plate of Nachos and a beer each, and Tony buys a couple of cans to take home as well as a souvenir glass.

Tomorrow we drive into Quebec.

Day 27 – ‘So long’ Newfoundland, it’s been fun!

So, I’m going to keep this really short today. We are booked on tonight’s ferry to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia from Port aux Basques at 11:45pm. The drive from Gander is about 6hrs. That’s a lot of driving, it was foggy all morning and started to clear early afternoon.

We pulled into Port aux Basques at about 3:00pm and setup at the Mouse Island lookout to spend a quiet afternoon until it was time to check in for the ferry.

I’ll provide an update on our crossing in tomorrow’s post so come back then to find out how we made out.

Tomorrow we drive across Nova Scotia to New Brunswick.

Hang on a minute…. Where’s the summary? You know, the post where we tell you what we thought of Newfoundland and how much we really would recommend this trip to anyone and everyone. Well, its here. That bit above is true. Our three weeks here have been amazing and you should have been able to get that from reading our posts. Our pictures cannot really capture the beauty, tranquility and solitude that we found on ‘the rock’. Whether you choose to drive as we have done or fly you are sure to enjoy what you will find. This is not a hidden gem of an island for it is big, bold and out here for everyone to discover. Hopefully one day you too will find a little something special here as we have done.

Day 26 – Gander

It’s 4:30am. Why am I awake? Argh!

It was windy overnight and we found out that when parked in a particular angle to the wind it might spin a fan in the air conditioning unit on the roof of the van. It did this last night and kept me awake. 😞

By 7:30am we were leaving a very nice beachside parkup and heading to Gander. This takes about 3hrs and during that time we drive through fog and rain. A good day to move along.

Arriving in Gander we visit the Silent Witness Memorial where the story of an air crash from Dec 1985 is memorialized. The crash killed 256 men & women of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division as well as the flight crew. They were returning home from a peacekeeping mission in Egypt. It is the deadliest aviation accident on Canadian soil.

Next we visited the Gander International Airport where we looked around the International lounge which has been left pretty much as it was used in the 1950’s – 1970’s. It was during this time that all flights heading to Europe stopped at Gander to refuel, as such passengers disembarked and relaxed in the lounge while the planes were serviced. This means that many celebrities were seen socializing and enjoying a drink during these years at Gander.

The airport also has a very nice exhibit that describes how the airport has changed over the years and its critical role during the events of 9/11 when it became a temporary diversion location for 42 flights coming from Europe.

After relaxing at a park for the afternoon we visited the North Atlantic Aircraft Museum and arranged to park in their parking lot overnight.

Ahead of parking up we headed out for dinner and then a little shopping before returning to park and settle in for the night.

Day 25 – Canada Day 🇨🇦

Despite a number of us parking overnight fairly close together, there was no noise at all from any of the campers. This morning we awoke to heavy fog (again) and couldn’t see across the bay directly in front of us. The town was going to be hosting a Canada Day celebration where we had parked and by 9:00am they were asking overnighters to relocate so that they could get things setup.

We headed off to the West and said goodbye to our busy little parking spot.

View of last nights parkup from the highway.

We were headed toward Cape St Mary to visit the Ecological Reserve. The drive was about 2hrs and we saw sunshine and then more fog. The best thing we saw along the way (but got no picture) was a female moose and her calf drinking at a small lake. That makes moose’s #7 & #8.

Arriving at the Ecological Reserve we were hoping to be able to parkup for the night but they had clear signs stating no overnight parking. Other plans will have to be made. Anyway, we headed into the information centre and then out along the 1.4km walk to view birds at Bird Rock.

Cape St Mary’s Ecological Reserve information centre

The fog was real. Here’s Barb finding her way along the trail.

The walk through the fog along the cliff tops was magical. Sure, it would have been nice to look out across the ocean and maybe see whales, but the fog had its own wonder and cast a soft light on everything.

Arriving at Bird Rock we saw 1000’s of Gannet’s, Razorbill’s, Kittiwake’s and Murre’s. We were on a rocky headland about 300ft (100m) above the waves crashing on the rocks below. The birds soared in the wind and somehow found their way back to their mate sitting on nests of eggs.

After enjoying the show for a while & realizing that we were drenched from the fog we walked back to the van and enjoyed a light lunch before leaving.

We had decided to drive North toward Placentia where it appeared that there were several park ups from which to choose. After just a few minutes of driving the fog dissipated allowing us a better view out to sea as we drove along the coast. Through small hamlets in deep valleys, the road twisted, dove and rose again as we proceeded northward.

Arriving in Placentia we decided to take a look at the Parks Canada historical site, Castle Hill. A French built fort atop a hill that overlooks Placentia Bay. The fort was lost by the French to the English during the seven years war. The ruins today are remarkable intact and the views are spectacular.

Leaving the historical site we head back into Placentia to fill up on fuel and then head back South of town to a park up spot we passed earlier. Just a few minutes of backtracking and we had a lovely grassy spot next to the sea.

Woody Point, just south of Placentia, NL

This will do nicely ahead of our drive tomorrow to Gander.