Travelblips

A bit late… I know. But I wrote up my adventures as I was travelling across from the East Coast to the West Coast of the 2nd largest country in the world Canada – and then didn’t post them very promptly… So here is my journal as I drove across Canada.

Today, I escaped the rock

I began punctually – but got delayed by the B&B guy asking for payment. Silly me… I assumed that because I’d booked it online with a well known travel website, it was prepaid…

Then because I’d been up late the night before I’d missed breakfast so I went to get a hot chocolate but couldn’t park close to The Coffee Company (the coffee shop I decided would be my last hot chocolate stop here.. It was either there or Coffee Matters…).

Then I had to do the grand loop to really start this trek across Canada at Kilometer Zero. Sadly, even though you’d think Newfoundland would clear half a forest and put in a large park around an enormous stake emblazened with “TRANSCANADA HIGHWAY: KILOMETER ZERO.” there is nothing but a sign pointing to the local rubbish tip to the right and the Transcanada to the left. Yes, yes… Some might like to point out there is a peg near the railway museum representing Mile Zero when Newfoundland had a train line… BUt that is not the start of the Transcanada Highway.

And in typical fashion, it was about another 20km before I remembered to reset the odometer…

Anyway. Voyage underway, I had to pull off almost immediately to take a detour to run an errand at the mall – and say goodbye to my former collegues since they were close to the location of the errand. That was sad – they were really, sadly, the only friends I made here – and one of them was leaving the province as well and the other had resigned for a different job. Times are achanging…

So detour aside, I retraced my path back along the Gushue Highway to the Transcanada and truly began the drive!

For the first couple of hours until Clarenville, I had already driven it previously on a trip to Bonavista. So I just enjoyed listening to Sirius radio – love the fact I am no longer restricted to gospel and country music – which inevitably meant me playing my own CDs, when driving long distance! But now… now I can drive along in my own private discoteque!

However, once past Clarenville, ironically at exactly 1pm, just under 2 hours after hugging my former collegues goodbye, I began a conversation with my car, pointing out that from here until somewhere east of Thunder Bay, this was virgin territory for both of us, and after that, virgin only to my car as I had previously driven the Transcanada from Quebec back in 1996. My car reacted stoically by maintaining the 105km/hr I’d set it at. I love cruise control…. I think this is my first truly long distance drive with cruise control…

Initially, the countryside looked remarkably unchanged from the land I was already familiar with – spruce trees, lakes, and denuded brown spindly limbs of some desciduous tree. Spring has not arrived! As we trekked every north (far be it for the Transcanada to go straight across Newfoundland to Port-Aux-Basque, my stepping stone off the island. No… it followed a large northwards arc. Something to do with a larger bog inbetween…

And so the hours rolled on by and the kilometers clicked over and my car steadily consumed fuel… Its an estimated 9 hours to drive from St JOhn’s to Port-Aux-Basque…

The next milestone after entering virgin driving territory after Clarenville was passing through Gander, apparently one of Canada’s top 10 places to live. Grand Falls-Windsor. Couldnt’ work out why myself… Nothing special there either – just a bit bigger than Gander.

I also pointed out to the car our northern most point on our trek across Newfoundland at Springdale, telling it it will never ever be so far north in Newfoundland again – I might, but I didn’t think it would be in this car! My car responded by drinking up a bit of extra fuel and my mileage dropped for a few kilometers…

Then more long empty miles, occasionally passing by frozen lakes and patchy snow amongst endless spruce and occasionally birch trees before finally starting to see some topographic relief as I approached Deer Lake. Lets not call it mountains… but defintely hills which were a bit more tightly clustered than the low gentle mounds I’d been driving past for 5 hours… One area north of Deer Lake, near Sandy Lake I believe, looked like it might even be lush and green come spring! But the blue smears across the grey ice of the lake today didn’t suggest that was going to be in the next couple of weeks.

Past Deer Lake, the countryside continued to be potentially attractive and ‘hilly’ and the sky continued to vascilate between threatening and not threatening (yesterday the news had issued a severe wind warning for the Port-Aux-basque area which didn’t bode well for my crossing this evening!). I got to Corner Brook about 6ish and decided to pull over for dinner. Corner Brook looked quite nice! And it also made me wonder about town pairing in Newfoundland – St John’s and Conception Bay South, Gander and Grand Falls-Windsor, Deer Lake and Cornerbrook… Even had its own, what looked to be little but steep ski resort of Marble Mountain…

After dinner, it was a lonely desolate stretch to Port-Aux-Basque, still a good 235km or so southish. The sky gradually darkened – a combination of setting sun and slowly sinking cloud cover. A sign warned me that the next 20km was subjected to gusty winds – and my car was certainly blown around! It also occurred about the time I began passing a never ending stream of trucks going in the opposite direction – I wondered if they were off the ferry… I think they were! And at the end of the 20km stretch, the road curved gently to the SE and suddenly, it was dead calm and no more gusts. And fog came down. Actually, I’d been pretty lucky to have a clear drive all the way across the island, even if it wasn’t particularly clear right now!

I got to Port-Aux-Basque around 9.15pm. The only significant delay was at the fruit stop (I guess…) – asking if I had any vegetables. I said no, just some banana’s (and kicking myself for buying breakfast fruit just as I was about to leave an island). No, they didn’t care if I had any banana’s – did I have any vegetables? No??!! Well, go right on through and you’ll be directed to where to wait.

So within 10 minutes of arriving at Port-Aux-Basque, my car was parked behind and beside a few lines of cars all ready to get on on of Canada’s largets, ferries, The Caribou. I heard someone say they were going to start loading the ferry in the next 15 minutes or so! Cool… Got here just at the right time! Was a bit worried getting there 2-3 hours before the ferry left was too early, but guess I forgot about the fact it takes time to load car ferries…. And for all the empty deserted road before me when I drove from Corner Brook to Port-Aux-Basque, there were a lot of cars there!

At 9.45pm exactly, they asked all car drivers to return to their car. I was in mine having refreshed myself in the terminal before deciding I felt rather out of place amongst people who were chain smoking and as wide as they were tall… That and the fact it was a souless place with no reason to encourage loitering!

But it was to be another 50 minutes before I finally turned my engine on and went up the ramp and inch by inch, drove onto the ferry where a veritable army of men in orange suits were trying to get us all parked and tucked away… Once slotted in, I grabbed my backpack and bag and went up to find my dorm – my ticket just said Dormitory 1 – turned out I had the first bunk number and there were 2 dorms! Still. $16 bucks for a bed on a crossing which can be 4-8 hours is pretty good value, albeit, you are surrounded by many other people. But it was dark and quiet and I was given a blanket and pillow…

I then asked the dorm manager to please look after my backpack so I could watch us leave. It was only 11.05pm by the time I found the observation deck – and it was just POURING with rain. So even though there was a bigger observation deck up above… I wasn’t going up there as there was no shelter!

I watched them squeeze in a few more trailers and then trucks (one parked next to my car – better not have a rough crossing!) and then they closed the deck to anymore traffic. It was 11.20pm. I took pictures of the car ramp coming up. There was not a single soul out there with me! One guy rushed out with his camera case, said hello, then ran back inside. Huh! I would have thought a few people would have wanted to watch the departure, but most were either sleeping already or eating or winding down in chairs. The rain deterred them… or they were all seasoned truck drivers and this crossing was just one of many many indistinguishable crossings!

At 11.33pm, the engines really kicked in and I got pretty excited – this ferry was much more powerful than the little icebreaker I’d been on a mere 3 days ago… At 11.40pm, we started to pull away from the dock!

I watched the foaming water appear as the ferry pulled away from its snug dock and sea now separated me from Newfounland – my last contact with the island was severed – I was now en route to mainland Canada and I didn’t know – dont’ know if or when I will ever be back to Newfoundland. I tried to compose some sort of mental farewell speech, but all I could think of really was I’d fulfilled my obligations when i ranted at St John’s on New Years eve – I’d made a couple of good friends, I had got good work experience, but the last 6 months of stress upon stress at work and the hardest summer in the field ever last summer had just left me tired of Newfoundland and Labrador. I was more excited at the widening gap then nostalgic and sad I was leaving.

At 11.48pm we rounded the lighthouse for Port-Aux-Basque, its fog horn blaring periodically and quite audible above the rain sloshing off the steps above and the engines. I watched it retreat for a few minutes into the rainy mist and as the orange lights of the port disappeared behind the headland as we turned SW and only a few house lights remained, I bid Newfoundland one more adieau and came inside and crawled back into dorm bed (very soft and comfy!)

Total kilometers driven: 904.3km

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