Cape Breton Island and a Ferry Ride

After our chassis battery replacement and seeing the high tides in the Bay of Fundy one last time, it was time to move on. Next destination? Cape Breton Island. Cape Breton Island is indeed an island and part of Nova Scotia. We headed to a campground on the western shore.

The Wave’s End Campground was a terraced campground on the shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There wasn’t a bad view from any campsite.

Unfortunately, the beautiful weather did not stick around. When we woke the next morning, we had strong winds coming out of the east. At 5:00 a.m., we saw tent campers scrambling to break camp because their tents were being flattened.

The next day wasn’t as windy, so we decided to drive the Cabot Trail. That is a loop drive around the perimeter of Cape Breton Island.

But things improved as the day went on.

The shoreline was beautiful!

I had purchased an audio tour for the Cabot Trail from https://www.tripvia.tours/. It was pretty cool. The tour was GPS location triggered, so as we neared a place, my phone immediately started playing the audio to go with that area. No starting and stopping the audio on my part was necessary. It was educational and fun to listen to.

And as it approached noon, the audio tour told us, coincidentally, “And there is a great seafood restaurant up ahead called The Chowder House.” I wonder how much the restaurant had to be paid to be mentioned in the tour? Hmm. Regardless, we took the bait and pulled up at 11:55 a.m. for a noon opening, along with 20 others. A quick scramble and we were first in line.

After a couple of days exploring Cape Breton Island, it was time to take advantage of the ferry reservation I made back in February. Our next destination, Newfoundland is an island…with no connecting bridge. The only way to get to it is by ferry. We had a choice of a 7 hour ferry to Port Aux Basques or a 16 hour ferry to Argentia. Both left from North Sydney, Nova Scotia.

At this point we were crossing paths with the friends who were at the RV Rally (that we missed) in Maine the month before. They were all returning from Newfoundland and were were just heading over. We arranged to all stay at the same campground.

While in North Sydney, we took time to stock up on groceries, did some laundry, etc. We basically got ourselves all set to for the upcoming ferry boat ride. We had opted for a 7 hour afternoon sail to Port aux Basques.

You would think it would be super expensive to take a 40 foot motor home and a Ford F-15 pickup truck on a ferry. But we felt it was very reasonable. $196 for two large vehicles and two people. That was not too bad at all! I shot a “hyper-lapse” video of us driving on the ship. If the video below doesn’t work for you, click on this link…..https://youtube.com/shorts/1vqoUrhT4ns

It was a pretty tight squeeze down in the hold. You had to walk sideways between some vehicles and you could not stay in your vehicle while underway. So we gathered up our stuff (books, electronics, snacks) and headed to the upper decks. Pets could stay in your vehicle, but you could not access your pets during the crossing. The ship offered kennels on the upper decks that people could utilize.

A short 7 hours later we drove off the ferry. I didn’t think to capture a video of that. It was hard enough just to find our RV and truck on the deck where we had parked it. You would think with our size, it would have been easy to find. But there were a lot of semi-trucks between us and the RV. It was hidden! We were about to resort to hitting the panic alarm on the truck key fob when we finally spotted the RV. Phew. Off we drove.

Welcome to Newfoundland!

Our friends that we met up with in North Sydney had given us the lowdown on a perfect boondocking spot just 10 miles up the Trans Canada Highway (TCH) from the ferry dock. That was all we needed for the night.

The evening sky treated us to a sunset over the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We had finally arrived in Newfoundland.