I was talking to my sister yesterday and mentioned how stressful I found mountain driving and how, as a result, had decided against The Cabot Trail, and had just stuck to going straight up and straight back through the middle of Cape Breton, sticking to Hwy 105.  And she said the nicest thing:  “Elaine, that’s weird.  Because in the entire time we were driving around Eastern Ontario in June, you always looked like driving the RV was a breeze and that you weren’t bothered at all.”   

Two things come out of that statement: (1) I really am more comfortable behind the wheel of this thing than I sometimes realise; and (2) Abe Lincoln was right, you can fool all of the people some of the time. 

Let me preface this post by saying: I’m outsidey, not outdoorsy (important to know). 

The plan had been to take the ferry from North Sydney to Port Aux Basques (the shorter 8-hour ferry), work my way up to Gros Morne, across the island through Gander, east to the Avalon Peninsula, then back from Argentia to North Sydney on the longer 15-hour ferry.  It was to be a 12-day trip.  I’ve been to St John’s several times (and loved it), and toured the Avalon Peninsula a few years ago, but the rest would all be new to me.

In New Brunswick I started digging into the campground bookings and overall plans for Nfld.  Okay, I ask this question (and I am being neither sarcastic, nor facetious): what is there to do in Newfoundland?  I don’t mean in St John’s, which I do hope to visit again some day.  I mean, what does a single woman travelling across Newfoundland do with herself each day? 

I like going for a walk, but I wouldn’t say I’m much of a hiker.  So after I’ve watched the sunset at Wreckhouse Brook, hiked the trails in Gros Morne, and visited the Aviation Museum in Gander (which I really had been looking forward to), what else would I do other than drive from point A to point B each day? (Oh, and L’Anse Aux Meadows, while that would be extremely interesting, is a 5 hour (one-way) detour off the Trans Can.  And remember, I lived on Orkney for 2 years – I visited Viking settlements several times a month while walking Scout.)

I know there are those who consider this blasphemous, but I really didn’t see the point in spending 23 hours (8 + 15) on choppy water (I couldn’t get a berth on the ferry either way), then driving through repetitious (albeit beautiful, I grant you) countryside with nothing to do but go for walks.

So I cancelled.  I called up the ferry and got my money back, added 3 days to my stay in PEI, and an extra week in Halifax (I like towns and cities, so sue me), and slept much better that night.

Steps before 9am: 7,111. Chips: 1/2 a small bag of Covered Bridge Dill Pickle

The plan upon arrival at Little Bras D’Or was a day of housework: laundry, cleaning, topping up windshield washer fluid, changing beds, emptying the fridge, a real re-set; followed by a day of sight-seeing.

Woke up so sick this morning – it was a good two hours before I could even leave my bed (I don’t think it was food poisoning – is this just what happens as we get older – random mysterious attacks that come and go without warning?). So laundry was out of the question, as was any cleaning.

I just lay wrapped in a blanket, binge watching The Great British Sewing Bee for hours, ignoring the glorious sunshine outside. By about 2 o’clock in the afternoon I no longer felt that I was going to die, so decided to install the dash cam that I had bought months ago, with the intention of capturing some beautiful pictures of the scenery as I drove through Canada. I think I’ve done it right, but next week’s drive bck through the centre of Cape Breton will be the proof.

So not a complete waste of a day. (But still no fun)

Steps before 9am: 6.

Prince Edward Island was great – we loved the towns, the countryside, the beaches, and the city.  We even had fantastic weather – the day after I left I guess the skies opened and they had rain, hail, and funnel clouds – glad I missed that.

They did have one interesting idiosyncrasy: their speed limits.  We noticed this all over the island.  One minute you’d be doing 90kmh in the middle of the countryside (makes sense), and then suddenly, with no real logic behind it, the limit would drop to 50kmh for about 3 minutes (no town or village in sight), then pop back up to 100kmh.  There was a real sense of whimsy to it.

They’re also big on traffic round-abouts, which I consider very sensible – after 2+ years in the UK, I came to appreciate the efficiency and ease of travel that round-abouts bring.  We were a little surprised to find more that one brand-new, absolutely massive round-about on the outskirts of a little village, or at the crossroads of two farm roads in the middle of nowhere – I feel there was a certain optimism to those – an anticipation of great development in the near future.

It all came together on my drive to the ferry on my last day.  The speed limit skirting Charlottetown was a sensible 60kmh, until I got near a causeway, when it dropped to 50kmh.  Fine, that continued for a good 10 minutes.  Then, less than a kilometre from a double round-about in Stratford, in what I would describe as a stretch of retail plazas, it jumped to 100kmh.  Did I mention the upcoming round-abouts?  The recommended speed limit through them was 30kmh, so we sped up, just to slow down.  As soon as I left the 2^nd round-about, the limit jumped back to 100kmh (as the twit in the black Ram truck let me know with his horn), stayed at 100kmh for less than 1 kilometre, then dropped to 70kmh for no apparent reason. (less than 1 kilometre)

Do you suppose the road planning commission just drew numbers from a bowl and threw them at a map of PEI?

Off to the tip of Cape Breton today. I just went online to find the ‘least mountainous, best for RVing highway – 105 or 223?’  Google came back with 105, which it says is for, ‘transport trucks, heavy commercial vehicles and large tour buses.’  Great.  Perfect.

But right below that it says, ‘though it does feature a notable climb over Kelly’s Mountain. And beware the hairpin turn at the very bottom of the mountain.’

Well, isn’t that just dandy. Wish me luck!

**Edit:  Well, it was neither as bad as Google made out, nor nearly as bad as my imagination had inflated it.  I made it to Litte Bras D’Or just fine – I will say, a hairpin turn at the bottom of a mountain (and I mean a full-on 180° switchback) seems like poor planning by the Nova Scotia roads department. 

Steps before 10am: 6, 355. Chips this week: None.

One of the things that made our week so great was a good friend of MB’s who lives in PEI.  She had a car to spare and was so incredibly generous, so we were able to zip all over the island , park everywhere, and not take down the RV every time we wanted to go anywhere.

Had to laugh at some directions we received: her friend Brenda has lived in the countryside in a small province for too long.  She recommended a certain restaurant, and the directions included the sentence, “It’s right across the street from where The Blue Mussel Café used to be.”  Think about it.

Recommendations for future visitors:

North Rustico (The Little Maison’s lobster crepe and affogato crepe were both spectacular).

Victoria by the Sea (we had prosecco & seafood nibbles on the end of a pier watching the sun set).

Dining: Reel Seafood, Tyne Valley Tea Shop, Casa Mia & The Lobster Barn in Victoria

Shops: Fleurs de Liz, Bittersweet Rose, Red Sand Jewellery

And our biggest surprise?: The somewhat mundane-seeming-at-first-glance town of Summerside.  The Summerside Waterfront Café was a complete revelation; I had the best massage of my life in the Golden Lotus Spa (and Michele had the best pedicure); and although everyone thinks Cows when they think PEI ice cream – trust me, Holman’s is the place you want to go.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot – you must sign up for the Prehistoric Island Tour.  Really.  A 90-minute walking tour of the only beach in PEI that has revealed fossils of giant reptiles and 2’ long millipedes (eeh) from pre-dinosaur Permian period.  Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Just had the best week in PEI.  I have a friend in Burlington who says, “PEI is positively my most favourite place in the world”.  And now I see why. 

It seemed we were showered in a week’s worth of pixie dust, because every little town we visited, every café or restaurant we checked out, every boutique we went into was lovely.

I picked MB up at the Charlottetown airport (gotta love an airport with cheap – and more importantly, easily accessible for a big rig – parking).  My lunch at Claddagh Oyster House was delicious, but I have never been served an entire head of lettuce before.  I asked for the wedge salad (you know: blue cheese, bacon, hard boiled egg, etc) and a WHOLE head of iceberg lettuce was put in front of me. With my frugal mother’s words ringing in my ear, I ate all the most expensive ingredients and left the lettuce (did I mention it was an entire head of iceberg?) behind.

(As per usual, forgot to take pictures.  Sigh.)

Here’s a breakdown of what the summer trip is supposed to look like between July 5th & October 5th:

1. Bruce Peninsula, Manitoulin Island, Muskokas
2. Montreal CFUW Conference & tour of the Quebec South Shore
3. Saguenay and Charlevoix
4. Miramichi, Shediac, and the east coast of New Brunswick
5. Prince Edward Island
6. Cape Breton
7. Newfoundland
8. Central & Southwestern Nova Scotia
9. Halifax to Saint Andrews, then the Saint John River Valley
10. Quick bolt across southern Quebec and straight home to Milton

But that’s not what is happening.  Routes #1, #2, & #3 – all as planned, no changes there.  And I continue to tell people they need to go to Charlevoix – absolutely stunning.

But then #4 changed to the Saint John Valley (Edmunston, Fredericton, Moncton), as I couldn’t find decent campgrounds near Miramichi, and the roads across to Bathurst and south looked pretty mountainous.

#5 is still PEI, but extended at either end.  Because, you see, I’ve cancelled #7 – Newfoundland. Yup, cancelled. The whole province – not goin’.

More to come.

Yesterday I left Truro, after a wonderful stop at the Masstown Market (thank you CH) and headed to PEI. I’m not afraid of heights, I am a level-headed, practical driver who knows that if she has no problem staying within the lines on a regular road, she will have no problem staying withing the lines on any road. And yet . . .

I wish I had had one of those rings that can measure your stress level yesterday afternoon. The first spike would have been just outside Port Elgin, NB, when I first glimpsed the massive (20km long and 200 feet high (in places)) Confederation Bridge. Then the signs saying it was a toll bridge – of course it is. So I’m driving along the Trans Canada at 90kmh, with at least 15 – 20 cars and trucks behind, scrabbling in my wallet for my credit card with one hand while steering with the other, as this monstrosity looms ahead.

Then we get on the bridge, whose speed limit is 80kmh. Eighty. Single lane, either way. The barriers are 3’6″ high on either side. Yes, less than 4′. I’m driving an 11′ tall, flat-sided wind-catcher at 80kmh. (By now the stress ring would have exploded under the pressure.) I had checked the wind speeds, which were quite low. Yeah, sure, low whilst on terra firma, surrounded by trees, with hills and buildings all around, breaking the wind up.

I am quite sure I was whimpering aloud. By the time we were halfway across and the bridge had levelled out to a nice, low 130′ above sea level, I was feeling a tad better. And then I saw the last third of the bridge which, like the New Brunswick side, rises back up to its fun, daring, jaunty height of 200′ high. The whimpering returned. Finally we were nearing the end, thank God. Inexplicably, we were directed around the toll booths (so that mad, one-handed scramble at the beginning was completely unnecessary, how nice).

You know in those comedy movies, where the nervous flier gets off the plane and bends down to kiss the ground in thanks? Had I not had half of NB traffic behind me on the highway, I’m pretty sure I would have done the same thing.

Of course I made it just fine. But you know all that was going through my head on the last half of the trip? ‘Maybe I’ll take the ferry from PEI to Nova Scotia next week instead of the bridge.’

(I forgot to take a photo – yeah, right, when exactly would you have been able to do that? – but I’ll try to remember on the way back)

Steps before 9am: 6,543. Chips: none.

I bought a folding bike, then discovered that it wouldn’t fit folded into the storage compartment.  So I had a bracket installed in the back hitch and tied the fully-unfolded bike to it (so I could have just brought my own not-foldable bicycle and saved myself a chunk of change).  Then I thought it would be better to have my new bike protected, so I bought a travelling bike/rack cover and tied it on.  But the cover started flapping, so I bought more bungee cords (cordons élastiques au Québec) and tied that sucker down good.  Great – problems solved.

Yesterday, a camp staff member was capturing my info, standing at the back of my rig.  “Do you have a license plate?”  ????? Of course I have a license plate – what kind of a question is that?  Oh, wait.  Rats.  It seems I have fully obscured my rear license plate with my bike, rack, and cover.  Splendid – a traffic violation waiting to get caught.

I will figure this out in PEI.