Port aux Basques to Wolfville - 3

It is about 2:30 AM and we are about a half hour away from docking. This is exactly what we didn't want - a middle of the night landing. I guess we wil see what we do when we land. Hopefully we can find something to do for a little while so that we don't have as much night driving.

Port aux Basques to Wolfville - 2

We are now safely on the Blue Puttees and awaiting our departure. Though we are to leave two hours early it seems that we may only arrive a little early. Anyway, I guess that the arrival and departure times will both be highly dependant on the upcoming weather/hurricane situation.

We have all popped our Gravol and are now getting ready for bed. Hopefully we will get some sleep before we arrive.

Port aux Basques to Wolfville - 1

Maybe an hour or two ago we arrived in sunny Port aux Basques (though since then it has become gray and foggy). We made sure to arrive early to make sure that we would catch our ferry which has now been scheduled to depart an hour and a half early. The down side of our early arrival is that we now have a few hours to go before we head out.

Anyway, I guess we have internet and cards to help us pass the time, though time also means more time to think about taking a ferry in a hurricane.

St. John's to Ramea - 7

We are now post-Ramea. We are now in Stephenville.

At the moment we are in a fast food restaurant eating lunch and checking the Internet.

We will soon be heading across the street to visit a pharmacy to pick up some ferry meds for our second ferry of the day.

St. John's to Ramea - 6

Well, our time in Ramea is just about over. The wedding went very well last night, but we are now up for an early ferry back to Burgeo. Because of the expected rush we have to arrive an hour and a half before the scheduled departure. Yay!

Anyway, Ramea is beautiful. Give it a shot if you have a chance.

St. John's to Ramea - 4

In Clarenville.

St. John's to Ramea - 3

OMG, it's just after 5:00 AM and I've already been awake for over 20 minutes, but I guess such sacrifices are necessary if one wants to make it all the way from St. John's to Ramea in a single day.

At the moment I am consuming some pre-trip breakfast (after just taking my pre-trip shower). In a few minutes I will try to help with the pre-trip car load. Then, after final pre-trip good-byes we will likely be on our way.

I am currently curious to know where our first stop will be. My gut says Clarenville, but Goobies is another possibility. I guess our stoping schedule will just depend on our assessment of our needs as our trip progresses.

Anyway, this will likely be the last post until Ramea or the Marine Atlantic. I hope it all works out.

Oh, and based on the it's current predicted path I am not sure if Hurricane Irene will be too likely to impact our crossing on Sunday/Monday.

St. John's to Ramea - 2

Oh, and to make things better one of the first hurricanes of the season is to hit near the Maritimes on Monday morning (which is when our ferry is to be arriving).

This should make the ferry ride fun. Well, I guess it will only be 'fun' if we are even lucky enough to have a ferry ride at the currently schedule time.

I guess we will have to try to keep an eye on the progress of this storm.

St. John's to Ramea - 1

Early tomorrow morning Neil, Rebecca, Jeannette, our friend Steven, and I will be making our way across the island of Newfoundland to Ramea for a friend's wedding. As some of you may know, Ramea is a remote island off the south coast of the island. We will be getting there by ferry from Burgeo, a community is also relatively remote.

At the moment the plan is for the five of us to pile into the car and start the journey early tomorrow morning. As we expect the trip to take close to 12 hours we won't be able to see much along the way. That being said, I don't expect we will be so rushed that we won't be able to stop a few times for refreshment, bathroom, and gas breaks.

Assuming all goes well we will then try to catch the 8:00 PM ferry. I am hoping that the timing of the ferry will mean that we will get to see the sun set over Burgeo and the island in the distance. The other consequence of the timing of the ferry is that our first real view of the island will be the next day when we make our way out of our respective accommodations.

Sadly, we will only have a few hours to explore Ramea (though I am not sure if one really needs more than a few hours given the relatively limited size of the island). Anyway, I hope to get up early enough in the day to see a reasonable portion of the island before we need to return to prepare for the wedding.

The wedding itself should be rather interesting as most of the guests will be in Ramea for the sole purpose of attending the wedding (making it a destination wedding of sorts). I am assuming that this will mean a more robust celebration than if we were all just attending a wedding in our normal places of residence.

Then early on Sunday we will be taking the ferry back to Burgeo and heading up to Port aux Basques to catch the overnight ferry to North Sydney.

Given the number of hours we are to spend travelling, the next three days are likely to be something of a blur. I just hope that we have enough energy to take in a least a few of the sights and enjoy our few hours of down time.

If possible I will try to post while we are in transit, though given our rather full schedule I am not sure if this will be possible. At least after the fact I should have a few photos or comments about what is sure to be an experience heavy trip.

Back to Newfoundland - 4

About two hours ago we answered the breakfast buffet question with a resounding 'yes.' All three of us then made our way to the restaurant where we did our best to get $16.95 worth of breakfast. Of course, as none of us are complete pigs I don't think that we really succeeded in getting our money's worth, but that being said I think it was probably the right call given the circumstances.

The most interesting thing about the breakfast buffet was perhaps the menu. In addition to standard issue breakfast items like hash browns, sausages, eggs, and bacon, this buffet also had steamed vegetables, roast beef, fish and brewis, mashed potatoes, and a number of dishes that weren't the least bit breakfasty.

In other news, Rebecca just alerted me to the fact that we can now see land from the ferry. I guess this means that we are getting closer. The other nice development is that the fog doesn't seem to be as dense as it was just a few minutes ago. And even nice is that there seems to be blue sky above the land that we can see.

A few minutes ago Kirsten and I made a trip outside. As expected, it was pretty windy.



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Oh, and as far as I can tell these clips are representative (with the notable exception of the level of light) of the whole crossing).

Back to Newfoundland - 3

We have now been on the ferry for close to 10 hours and only just been able to obtain an internet connection. Hopefully none of you waited up for my update.

Though the captain warned us of rough seas and we were about 45 minutes late leaving North Sydney, the trip has not been unpleasantly rough.

Right now the big question of the morning is whether or not we will go to the $16.95 per person breakfast buffet. My thought is that if we do decide to make the purchase that we should try to drag the experience out so that we can get a few hours of time out of the experience.

Whatever we decide to do I am sure food will be in all of our futures.

Back to Newfoundland - 2

We are now a few hours into the trip and we have already made it to North Sydney. Instead of checking in as soon as we arrived we decided to head to a local fast food restaurant to get some food and take advantage of their free WiFi.

The trip so far has been largely uneventful. It seems likely that the most exciting aspect of the trip thus far has been some of the Cape Breton coastal scenery or the time when we were driving behind a truck carrying log that was shedding bark clumps as it drove.

And as you can see, we were welcomed to Cape Breton.

As we won't likely have WiFi access in the line to board the ferry I suspect that my next update will be from the ferry. Hopefully nothing particularly exciting will have happened between now than then.

Back to Newfoundland - 1

Neil, Kirsten, Rebecca, and I are currently in Halifax, though in just a few minutes we will be on our way to to North Sydney, Cape Breton and then the ferry to Argentia.

While the skies aren't particularly bright today, the weather doesn't look so bad that driving will be treacherous or unpleasant. Though, as always, we won't really know about these things until we hit the road. And it is also possible that conditions will change as we cross the province.

For a number of reasons I am looking forward to this trip. One of the first reasons is that I haven't been on the Halifax to Cape Breton route since about 1995 and I think it will be nice to see this part of the province. Another reason that I am looking forward to this trip is that I am looking forward to seeing the new ferry (and I haven't been on this crossing since about 1995). Thirdly, I am looking forward to seeing Newfoundland in the summer, something I haven't seen since 2008.

Anyway, I should probably pack up my computer so that we can start loading up the car.

My hope is that the ferry has WiFi/internet access and that I will be able to provide updates while we are in transit (because I know that you all love my live coverage of relatively mundane events).

Michigan +2

We are now part way through our second day in Michigan.

We crossed into Michigan in Marine City, a community across the river from Sombra, Ontario. We traversed the river in a ferry that was about to hold about 9 cars. All things considered, it was a pretty pleasant border crossing.

After visiting my Grandmother we made our way to a Big Boy for dinner. I think that we were all quite pleased with our meals (and I think that there is more that I wanted to say, but I don't have the time to outline these details right now).

I hope to have a little bit more time to detail a few things, but at the moment I am a little bit short on time and coherency.

A exciting assortment of purchases

For the past few days Neil, Rebecca, and I have been planning on taking a trip on the ferry over to Dartmouth to take advantage of the last few days of our transit passes and also to hit up a Dollarama. I am pretty sure that our trip was a great success, as we were able to also make quick stops at a library used book sale as well as a local game shop.

Actually, our purchasing started with the chain coffee shop in the ferry terminal. As is my practice, I went for an extra large black coffee. I was a little surprised that Neil and Rebecca joined me in making purchases, though they stuck with cold beverages.

Once in the ferry terminal in Dartmouth we learned that he local public library was having a used book sale. The upside of the book sale was that it gave me an excuse to head into a Halifax Public Library. Aside from the Dewey, I was pretty pleased with what I saw. The Alderney Gate branch looked like quite a pleasant, well-stocked library. If I lived in the area I am sure that I would visit it with some regularity.

Anyway, the downside of the book sale is that we had about an hour to kill before it started (it will also be going on tomorrow and Sunday for those of you in the area). We decided to head up to the local game store, where Neil picked up a copy of the Settlers of Catan Card Game Expansion Set. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but Neil and Rebecca seem to be enjoying at the moment. Hopefully I will get a chance to play it in the coming days.

We eventually made our way back to the library and saw that quite a line had developed for the book sale. Instead of standing in the line Neil decided to head to the lotto shack and trade in his winnings from his Easter scratch 'n' sniff for an Uno themed scratch 'n' sniff. Rebecca and I watched Neil as he scratched his way to victory. Unfortunately, his prize was only $3. Fortunately, he was next to a lotto shack so he was able to cash the card and re-invest the winnings in a new card. As he was completing this transaction Rebecca and I joined the book sale line. Soon after joining the line Neil started scratching his new card. Before we entered the sale it became apparent that Neil was also going to win on this card, and that it would be more than $3.

Once we eventually made our way into the book sale we each picked up a few books. In general our browsing and enjoyment was somewhat diminished by our general inability to make our way around the display tables. Somehow we ended up selecting a total of 10 books, which came to $8. I am particularly hopeful that my book on house plants will be of some use.



After the book sale we finally made our way to the Dollarama. Once we arrived we learned that Dollarma has change its pricing scheme and that some items are now more than $1. While this was a bit of a disappointment, it didn't stop us from shopping.

One of our goals was to pick up a few containers in which we could store beans. Neil and I selected three matching glass containers for the job. So far I am pretty pleased with our picks.



We also wanted a few containers for our couscous and cornmeal. I hope our purchases for this purpose be successful, I have every reason to believe that they will be.



Another shopping goal of mine was to pick up a few new pots for plants. In the end I ended up buy seven pots. The three smallest pots were 3/$1, which seemed like a good price to me.



All of us felt pretty satisfied after our rather exciting day of shopping. Hopefully, aside from groceries and toiletries, we won't need to do all that much shopping in the coming weeks, though such plans typically seem to fall apart.

I sure hope this boat doesn't sink

Earlier today Neil, Rebecca, and I took the ferry over to Dartmouth. While on the ferry we noticed a sign that none of us knew how to properly interpret. People within people, surrounded by people, and running people in arrows didn't immediately scream anything in particular to any of us. The only clue that it had anything to do with safety is that it was near the life boat structure. Hopefully the boat doesn't go down and force people to try to interpret the sign in an emergency.