July 15

We took a long ferry ride from Nova Scotia to New Foundland.  The ferry was huge and it carried all our motor homes as well as cars and 18 wheel trucks!!

  It was a 7 hour trip.  We played a lot  of card with Nita and Phil and read our books. Here is a picture of grandmom and you can see a little bit of Nita.

 Grandmom and Grandpop out on the deck of the ferry:

Adults:

Today we traveled to New Foundland, via a 7 hour ferry ride! We left camp at 10:00am, and arrived at the ferry in North Sydney, NS around noon. Some of the people in the caravan did some sight seeing, pulling their rigs with them, but that can be problematic when it comes to parking, so we opted to go straight to the ferry terminal, eat lunch and just wait for the ferry. We were scheduled to board the ferry at 4:30 for a 6:30 launch.

Boarding the ferry was quite interesting! Most of the motor home people (like us) unhitched our cars as it was cheaper to pay for the two separately. The cars went on first and were loaded on deck 5, at the very bottom of the ship, then a metal floor was pulled over where they entered, and trucks loaded on top of them. We were loaded on deck 3, and crammed in so tightly it was hard to squeeze in between the rigs to get to the elevator to go up to the passenger decks. We had to leave the cats in the rig, or put them in the kennel up stairs, so we opted to leave them in the rig, we opened the windows and it was cool in the bowels of the ship. We had pre-packed sandwiches, water, snacks, books, and a deck of cards. Thought that would keep us busy for what we thought was to be a 5 hour cruise. Turns out, it was a 7 hour cruise because the captain is mandated to have 6 hours of rest on a night time crossing between ports, and he is the only one authorized to put into port.

Everyone we have talked to about New Foundland has told us NOT to drive at night, as that is when the moose are out, and they like to be on the road. When we arrived at the dock it was 1:30am, and by the time we got off of the ship it was 2:00am. We then drove north a short way to the Visitor’s Center where the owner of our campground for the night met us to lead us in. By the time we got everyone to the center, and were organized to go on, it was about 2:45am. The campground was about 30miles north, getting us into the campground around 3:30am. By the time we got parked it was close to 4:00am. Fortunately, we didn’t see any moose along that very dark road where the only light was from our own headlights! Felt sorry for the campers that were sleeping soundly when we arrived, but probably very awake before all was said and done, as most of us are diesel, and not terribly quiet by any means! Did not get to bed until 5:30am.  Due to this, it was decided that the group would stay in the campground another night rather move immediately to the next stop.