Leaving Newfoundland, Arriving back in Nova Scotia

On Saturday, we left Pippy Park near St. John's, Newfoundland, on our way to the Marine Atlantic Ferry port at Argentia.

On our way, we saw a few "Potholes Ahead" signs (the fellow who makes those signs is ensured of full employment in Newfoundland) or "rough road" pictures...

...it may not be clear in the pictures, but the roads were often *very* rough. Just requires slowing down a lot especially when your household goods are bouncing around with you!

I had made separate reservations for Gracie and the Jee-rage (and for Carl and me) on the ferry. It is slightly cheaper for a motorhome at 41' and a regular vehicle, than for motorhome+regular vehicle at 60' or so, whatever the total length is when Gracie and the Jee-rage are hooked together (I knew at the time I was making the booking). Also, Gracie is more maneuverable without the Jeep attached (we cannot back up when the Jeep is attached) - and when we took the ferry from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland 3.5 weeks ago, the folks directing parking on the ferry had asked Carl to back up, so it was good for that crossing that we were separate.

We stopped at the Argentia Visitor's Center to have lunch and while there, disconnected the Jeep from Gracie -- so I was driving behind Gracie -- not a common view for me!

We were hoping that we could tell the ferry folks that we were caravanning together and that they would then let the Jeep park on the same deck as Gracie, but they didn't want to do that as cars would be parked on a different deck.

When leaving Newfoundland, there is an agricultural check station where they question you about what you're carrying. You're not allowed to bring back root vegetables from Newfoundland to the other parts of Canada as there is some root pest or issue in the soil that they don't want to be transported. I guess Gracie was super dirty, because they sprayed her down as she went through the agriculture check -- so any dirt that she was carrying wouldn't end up in other parts of Canada. Carl was hoping for a good wash, but it just pretty much smeared the dirt.

The Jeep and I were placed in a car line -- we happened to be right behind a Tesla SUV. I had never seen their doors open. The driver's and passenger's doors open "normally" (like other cars), but the back doors open like bat wings.

We had arrived a couple of hours early so walked around...

... the Atlantic Vision was the ferry on which we would be traveling.

We checked out the ferry terminal...

... we had already gotten our printed tickets when we drove into the terminal area, but there was a ticket counter for walk-on customers and to get changes done to the tickets. While we were sitting there using the free WiFi for a little while, my phone rang, and the ticket counter person wanted to talk with Carl -- they needed to make a change to his room card keys -- so we were able to do that right across from where we were sitting. You may not be able to read it, but there are two clocks - one on Newfoundland time and one on Atlantic time. We would be leaving Newfoundland time and arriving in Nova Scotia on Atlantic time.

"Driver's, start your engines!" (Doesn't it look like we're about to start a race?)

Motorcycles boarded first, then cars for folks who had booked as handicapped (I think they parked near the elevators), and then the rest of the regular vehicles, so the Jeep and I were soon heading onto the boat. We boarded on deck 3, but used an internal ramp to go up to deck 5. It was odd though -- we boarded from the back of the boat and were heading to the front, but, I guess because the ramp is just on one side of the garage deck, they took us around the center partition and the first half of the cars parked facing backwards from the way we would eventually need to get off. I figured that meant I would be one of the last cars getting off the boat.

I went up to a top outer deck and watched until Gracie started leaving the staging area before heading down to deck 3 to catch back up with Carl, Gracie, and Miss Kitty.

This was Carl's view as he took pictures entering the ferry. You may be able to see that it was getting very foggy.

Carl was heading straight down by the center partition...

... ending up pretty near the front of deck 3.

We fed Miss Kitty, told her we'd be back as soon as we could, and then headed to our cabin. Since this is an overnight ferry, and scheduled to be 16 hours long, we figured we'd be in better shape if we had a cabin for sleeping rather than trying to get sleep in chairs.

We went back onto the deck to watch the casting off...

... this boat came out to release the front line -- the line was on what looked like a tethering ball. The other lines were to the docking area and released by people on the dock.

The ferry schedule indicated that we were to leave at 5pm,

... but it was past 5:30pm when the engines kicked in and the lines were released. Maybe we were scheduled to leave at 5pm Atlantic time?

Once we got going, the damp foggy air was too chilly to stay outside, so we wandered around inside...

This was the "Panoramic Lounge" at the front of the ship...

... a lot of people there -- I guess some stayed there overnight. Glad we didn't have to, the chairs did not look comfortable for sleeping.

A schematic of the ship. There were 2 full decks of "garage" and then two half decks below deck 3 of garage space too. I don't honestly know whether there was anyone parked there or not.

We packed sandwiches for our supper, so we headed to our cabin and ate, then watched some videos that Carl had downloaded to his iPad. On the other crossing, I think WiFi was available on the ferry, but there wasn't any available on this crossing.

Although the schedule indicated that the crossing would be 16 hours, we were notified at about 7:40am (Newfoundland time) that we would be arriving in an hour (about 15 hours crossing time). We were up and ready, and headed out on deck a little bit before the arrival time...

... we were studying the port area, trying to find a spot where we thought we could meet up with Gracie and the Jeep and hook them back up. We decided on a potential location on the exit road. We were pretty sure that Carl and Gracie would get off first based on where each of us were parked.

Thankfully, our phones were working and we were able to be in touch with each other as we were waiting on our separate decks for the go-ahead to leave. The occupants of the pickup that was the only thing in front of Carl's ability to get off were late to get back to their vehicle, so he was stuck for a longer than expected, but eventually got off and got stopped on the exit road where we had planned.

This is on deck 5 -- I was waiting for other vehicles that had already been released before I proceeded to loop around the center barrier and head out.

We wanted to get fuel, and had planned a stop at the Petro Canada station about 4 miles from the ferry terminal. We drove separately to the station, and then I ran inside to see if we could fuel at the "Petro Card" pumps (card locked) as retail customers. We could not and there was no diesel at the front pumps, so we decided to hook up the Jeep to Gracie, and proceed onwards toward our campground. We still had about 1/2 a tank in Gracie, so it wasn't "urgent".

While our phones were working for phone calls, data on our phones was not working, so I used the Garmin and routed us to an Irving Oil station near our campground on Cape Breton Island. I didn't know for sure that it had diesel, but I was hoping. Although I had downloaded the map for this portion of Nova Scotia from Google Maps, the downloaded view does not provide details about stops (like whether the Irving Oil station had diesel), and, in general, the Google satellite views are not very good where we've been in Canada, and particularly not good on a downloaded map, so I didn't have good information about whether we would be able to fill up there.

The road (Cabot Trail) was VERY rough -- the edges are in particularly poor shape and a lot of times, Carl would need to use part of the opposite lane to try to avoid dropping off the road surface on curves. Thankfully, the traffic was not heavy. Eventually, we got to the Irving Oil station, it *did* have diesel and pumps that we could get to with Gracie, and got Gracie filled up with diesel...

...CAN$325.00 for 216.669 liters at CAN$1.50 per liter -- translated to a total charge on our credit card of US$247.31, for 57.23 gallons, or US$4.321/gallon.

At this Irving Oil, diesel is CAN$1.500/liter, and regular is CAN$1.585/liter (US$4.321/gallon diesel and US$4.571/gallon regular).

We were paying CAN$1.61-CAN$1.64/liter in Newfoundland for diesel (US$4.64-US$4.73/gallon). We use a fleet card in the US, and just recently -- since we have been in Canada -- Irving Oil (in the US) has been added to the program. I just checked the prices near Calais, Maine (where we'll be in about 3 weeks when we drop back down into the US) and it lists the pump price as US$4.349 and our fleet card price as US$3.425. So... the prices we're seeing are not horrible compared to retail prices in the US... it sure would be nice if our fleet card expanded to this part of Canada!

We'll be exploring Cape Breton Highlands the next few days.