Welcome to our

2019 Newfoundland

with Ernie Tortuga, our Sprinter van

This trip will be a variation on our initial trip in our van to the Maritime Provinces in 2017. We loved visiting Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and New Brunswick. We don't want to repeat out last trip, but we ran out of time in Newfoundland, and want to revisit the island, and expand our experience over a longer time.

A consideration when visiting Newfoundland is the ferry schedule. We try to avoid having too many reservations locking in our schedule, but we prefer to know that we can get on the ferry when we get there, and not risk sitting around for a day or three. So the arrival and departure dates are locked in with the reservations. In 2017 we made our return just two weeks after arrival, too little time for such a beautiful world to enjoy. So this time we're looking at four weeks.

Like our initial foray, we will take the "short" ferry from Sydney, Nova Scotia over to Channel-Port aux Basques, a 6 hour ride. Our return be from Placentia back to Sydney, an 18 hour overnight cruise. And it's expensive. The trip to Channel-Port aux Basques will be $40 for each of us, and another $180 for Ernie's 24' length. The return trip will be $110 apiece and $370 for our ride. Ouch!

Plan, Year Four.

Our destination is Newfoundland. So the plan is to get there, enjoy more of the island and its surrounding territories, and then wend our way back home. Simmple!


leg 1 of our trip

But it's a long drive to Nova Scotia, and we don't want to take the same routes, so we'll take a more roundabout route up, and a different route back. My back forced us to cut our 2018 tour short, resulting in missing a visit to my brother, so this year we'll start off stopping in with Frank and Family. And we missed out visiting Shenandoah NP in '18 so this year we'll try again. Then hopefully we'll catch friends on the St. Lawrence Seaway, and then some mountain biking in E. Burke Vermont and friends up there. Then North into Quebec and a tour of the Gaspe peninsula before dropping South to Sydney.

touring Newfoundland

We will make the Grand Clockwise Tour of Newfoundland, heading up the West Coast. We plan to take the ferry over to Blanc-Sablon ($10 each + $45 for Ernie) for a few days in Labrador. Then back on the Rock we plan to visit the areas we missed the first time around before we finally settle in for the trip back. We may boondock at sites suggested at Free Campsites, and maybe we'll suggest some other sites.

 heading home

The route back to Florida we'll meander through New England. Sharon wants to spend more time in Arcadia NP in Maine before we meet up with her son Josh and Jeanette in the Adirondacks of New York. We avoid population centers, and our route down the East Coast will be an effort to find different roads and different parks to visit and traffic to avoid.

 So this is our initial plan. It will change right up to hitting the road, and then the actual will hopefully bear some vague similarity to the plan. As we drive, Sharon will decide if our destination is acceptable, or whether she finds another that is more appealing to her (or not full - we tend to make reservations later rather than sooner). We also aren't sure how long we'll stay at each spot, it will depend on how much Sharon wants to do at each place.

Reality is what it is...

We are planning. Until we hit the road, there is no reality for this adventure, just anticipation.

Blogging about our experience.

My thoughts as we progress through this adventure. The list below is my lame attempt to keep this simple. The more recent entries are in doc format to make my life simpler.

Seeing the United States from our Tortuga Sprinter.

Click to our photo albums. We will be trying to document our process and the beauty we find during our travels. We'll be adding albums as time and beauty allow. The best pictures will be in our year-end calendar, which will be printed by PrintingCenterUSA. Drop a comment for a chance to pick up one of our calendars at the end of the year!

Keels

Eden at the end of the road

West 2018

A video slide show of last year's tour

A walk-through of the Version 2 upgrades