St Stephen NB to Battery Provincial Park Cape Breton (Nova Scotia)

Battery Park campsite, 2 Mews vans

 

For Friday June 2:

Another travel day Friday. After a very nice overnight boondocking in St Stephen near their Pizza Delight shop, we had a leisurely start, about 8am ADT. That's only 7am Eastern time, as we lost an hour to Atlantic time when we crossed back into Canada.

All main roads today. A lot of the limited-access highways are fenced to help keep moose off the road. The fencing is extensive (and expensive I'd bet). Every so often there is an escape route for the inevitable moose that reaches the road. The fence designers try to make it easy for the moose to get back into the woods:

One-way entrance for moose to leave the road area

 

These are not the scenic coast-hugging back roads we usually go for, but since we have a fairly long drive today, we'll stick to the thruways where we can. Low traffic volumes and good roads make this an easy drive:

Lanes are usually well-separated

When the tide is out near St John NB, the mudflats appear:

Heading towards St John, the Welcome centre that we planned to stop at is closed, apparently permanently. We've noticed this trend in other provinces too, including Ontario. A sign of tight provincial budgets:

People still park here at the former entrance as a rest stop

Nearing St John we noticed some strange-looking structures:

As we got closer, it became clear these were large cranes used to unload shipping containers from large ships, or to load them:

Red arrow points at a shipping container

 

The shipping containers look larger when they are sitting on the ground, all stacked up for further deployment:

Seagulls enjoying a flat roof, it must be almost like a beach for them:

Luckily the iconic Nova Scotia Welcome centre is still open. Often they have a bagpiper welcoming visitors, but it's likely too early, and the cold wind would have been ruffling the piper's kilt today. A good Scot wouldn't worry about that though:

Around the Welcome Centre there are a lot of power-generating windmills in the nearby marshlands:

Pretty straight drive, 88 km to the next turn

Some of the newer paving along here looks quite different from the usual blacktop:

Some strange place names here :)) 

FYI, Heather is our older daughter, and we live in Bayfield:

An overview of our campsite at Battery Provincial Park, with a strangely-familiar van parked next door. What a coincidence!

Well, maybe not so much of a coincidence. We visited Diane and Gary in their van.

Our Bayfield Mews neighbours Diane and Gary are also heading to Newfoundland, catching the overnight ferry Saturday night. We're heading that way on the day ferry Sunday. We've travelled here separately but have kept in touch, and coordinated a stop at Battery Park. We're about 1 1/2 hrs drive from here to the ferry terminal in North Sydney.  

Cathie and I are staying here another night, heading to North Sydney tomorrow morning (Sunday). It's a cool breezy 9C/48F here today, overcast with periodic showers. A good day for us to just to stay hunkered down in our comfy van with the electric heater going.

Today's view:

 

Friday's drive:

 

Quechee Gorge to St Stephen NB - we're back in Canada

A little park along the highway. No story info though.

It felt like another somewhat arduous drive today, especially the part along hwy 2 to Bangor. Although picturesque, often running alongside a river, we found that leg tough today.

An otherwise uneventful drive through more hills, with the temperature reaching 35C/95F degrees. That's not with any humidex rating. Thank goodness the van AC kept working. We don't like driving with AC on, but it was sure a blessing today.

Here's a sign from our Quechee Gorge campground, especially for Pat:

We didn't encounter any bears though, active or otherwise.

After crossing the border back into Canada we were still deliberating where to spend the night. A campground we've stayed at before was 1/2 hour further, and we were tired. No Walmarts in St Stephen, what will we do?

Passing an Atlantic Superstore we decided to check if they allowed overnights in their large lot, and after due deliberation they decided that they do. Unfortunately we found the parking area teeming with large black ants, and decided to move to a town park further into St Stephen. 

After checking things a bit, it seemed we'd be ok parking there overnight. What a lovely spot!

Here's the evening view from the van parking spot:

And here's what it looked like in the morning light. Notice the water level changes due to the tides:

A cell phone note:

We have used Koodo Prepaid cell service for a number of years now. While at home we get by fine with their cheapest 30-day $15 auto-renew plan, but it's pretty limited for travelling. Just today I noticed a Koodo special to upgrade to a $35 plan (still a 30 day prepaid plan), with 3GB data per month and  a bonus 8GB of data per month for 6 months. Very timely!

So you may be seeing more blog posts than I had expected when we left. 

Today's route:

Troy NY to Quechee Gorge VT

NOT at Walmart :))

We took it much easier today after that tough drive yesterday. We stuck with it yesterday though, to position ourselves for what we expected to be a lovely drive today. No thruways today.

After a pretty good night at Walmart we took our time this morning, doing exciting things like adding DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid) to the van. We finally got away about 10 am, unusually late for us. 

The driving today was all on "back roads", still paved but not fast roads. Most times speed limits were 45-55 mph, with quite a few small villages along the way. These were familiar from years (decades) gone by, when we used to travel these roads for trips to Atlantic Canada, or even just to where we are today, touring Vermont and New Hampshire. Back in the days of throwing the kids and tent into the old Volvo for 2 whole weeks of vacation with limited means, wanting to get somewhere different than home. Lovely country, even when the trees are not in their fall colours.

It's hard to do a drive like this justice with our pictures. We thoroughly enjoyed it, ending up in an old favorite campground, Quechee Gorge (pronounced Kweechee)  where we had no problem finding a campsite. We did get there early in spite of the late start, about 2pm, only 4 hours drive today. 

Ii

This puma statue looks like people are still shooting at it

Very hilly drive, with several emergency pulloffs for trucks with brake issues

Even though flattened by the camera, you can maybe sense the steep slope here

I was taking a picture from down there by the guide rail...

 

... of Cathie on this cool pedestrian bridge

A passerby walking her dog over the bridge

New England styles

Maybe we should get our van done over eh

Cathie starting her Christmas shopping

AAAHHHH, camped at Quechee Gorge

Before the campfire. Nice dry hardwood here.

Today's twisty drive, mostly in Vermont:

Bayfield to Troy NY

Yep, another scenic Walmart

We took the easier (and likely more expensive, we won't know until the bill arrives in the mail) way today after getting in to the US, trundling across toll road I90 from Buffalo to Albany NY. Much like the 401 highway in eastern Ontario. Not too exciting, but it gave us a good jump on where we want to be.

The day started with very pleasant back road from Bayfield to Tillsonburg, and on to hwy 3 all the way to Fort Erie Ont. Along the way, especially from Tillsonburg to Simcoe, we saw large ginseng farms. This wasn't the best picture we could have taken, just a little slow with the cameras today:

 

The fields are all staked and then covered with shade cloth, some were likely 10-20 acres in size.

We also crossed a lift bridge over an old section of the Welland canal along the way:

Coming up on the border crossing, we've never seen so many trucks lined up to cross. This was about noon. Quite a few cars too.

Including a group of 4 Teslas from New Jersey

In spite of the volume, it just took about 1/2 hr total to clear customs and be on our way. The officer that checked us out looked pretty intimidating, with his dark uniform, bulky ballistic vest, and serious manner. Only a couple of questions though and a peek into the van, and we were through.

It was the end of a long hot day when we pulled into a Troy NY Walmart about 7pm, and it looked good to us for a night. No hassle, no fee, simple.

 
 

 

 

*Start* of trip to Newfoundland

Waiting for the NL ferry, June 2013

We're getting on the road again, heading east for Newfoundland tomorrow (Tuesday May 30). We have been there once before, in June 2013, with our car and trailer. A few months after we returned from that trip we sold our car and trailer, and ordered our 2014 Sprinter van. We're looking forward to a somewhat different trip when compared to towing a trailer.

We're going via the northeastern US this time, quite different than the Canadian route across Ontario and Quebec etc. We likely won't be doing daily blogs, but we'll see how it goes. Yes we're getting excited!