Bay of Islands Yacht Club

Corner Brook and the Bay of Islands

Corner Brook, Newfoundland’s second largest city is a bit farther north and is at the head of the beautiful “Bay of Islands’ also named and charted by Capt. James Cook in the 1760ies. We paid a visit to the Bay of Islands Yacht Club and were given a map of the ‘Bay’ by the author of all the wrecks in the area since Cooks time, a very special memento.

Newfoundland, West Coast

On the night of our arrival in Newfoundland we camped within 10 kms of the ferry terminal and the next morning headed north on the Trans Canada Highway (TCH) up the west coast. The west coast was fished for centuries by French fishermen and much of their culture remains. A coastal loop road, Port au Port Peninsula, out of Stephenville has a number of small villages with beautifully maintained houses, many of them are now being used as recreational property. Stephenville has a huge WW 2 airfield and we were able to camp overnight, right on the ocean, on the ramp where they would have launched flying boats some 60 plus years ago.

Cape Breton Island

We have spent several days in the Bras d'or Lakes and Baddeck area on Cape Breton, waiting for our scheduled departure from North Sydney to Newfoundland. The weather has been on the cold and very wet side, with our camp ground just oozing in water. Our couple of days passed quickly with a good wireless connection and having the option to watch the opening of the Beijing Olympics on the 8th of August. The Lief Erickson left at 1700, and was a very calm crossing with our arrival in Port aux Basques. We took Dutchess and Granny onto the ferry separately, and on desembarking we missed each out, but finally met up an hour or so later at the J T Cheeseman Provincial Park, our stop for the night.

Newfoundland

We were able to stay on for the afternoon, at our Cape Breton camp site to watch the opening ceremonies for the Olympics before packing up our ‘wagon train’ and heading to North Sydney to catch the 5 PM ferry to Port Aux Basques Newfoundland. It’s was a 6 hour crossing and a very calm one.

Moncton and entering Nova Scotia

Before leaving the Moncton area we checked out several businesses to get service work done on our return in mid September. It always takes a lot longer to get these day to day things done when one is not familiar where the required business are located or which ones you should be dealing with. We decided to have Sirius Satellite Radio installed here so that we could be sure all was working well before leaving Canada. It's a great system with 140 or so stations all commercial free and offering everything from CBC, BBC, CNN, to any format of music, sports, and the weather channel. It never disappears or fades out and will give us lots of options as we travel in the U.S.

The picture shows the welcome sign into Nova Scotia with a very well organized reception area. The other photo of a VW Westfalia Van, similar to Adolph is towing an ultra light plane with the wings disconnected and carried on the roof.

Shediac New Brunswick

Shediac is a seaside resort town about 20 kms north of Moncton. It is known for its excellent beaches and the warmest water north of Virginia. Shediac claims to be the lobster capital of the world, and having the huge statue of a lobster when entering town may help to prove this point. This is the first place we have actually had trouble finding a campsite. But find one we did and went out for a wonderful lobster dinner to celebrate our 37th wedding aniversary.