News and Views

I’ve posted several times about the trip, but here are a few more tidbits.

First, here’s a map showing our route and stops along the way.

We started and finished on the far right at St. John’s, Newfoundland (not to be confused with Saint John, New Brunswick). Our direction of travel is generally counter-clockwise, starting north and west across Newfoundland. The line shows our travels, and the red circles show nights. I drew small arrows in a couple of places showing direction of travel.

You can see that we covered much of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, but only a slice of Newfoundland and just a corner of New Brunswick. It’s difficult to travel in southern Newfoundland. There are no highways along the southern edge; to get to any settlements there you generally have to drive down from the main highway in the north, then back up and down again to get to another settlement. This map doesn’t show it very well, but Newfoundland (and Nova Scotia to a lesser extent) has an extremely scalloped shoreline, with long arms separated by deep straits.

I have two favorite places: The Bay of Fundy for the scientific and natural wonder of the tides, and the beautiful, peaceful Ocean View Park where we spent two nights in Leading Tickles, Newfoundland right on the beach.

Our favorite campground at the Ocean View Park in Newfoundland.

The Bay of Fundy at low tide. All these people would be covered, and more, at high tide.

Geography and Ecology
In general, Newfoundland has much more wilderness and forests, mostly evergreen. Prince Edward Island is almost the opposite, being mostly farmland with scattered deciduous woods. It reminds me a lot of western New York State. Nova Scotia is in between; more settled than Newfoundland, but more wilderness and forests than PEI.

All these provinces have long coastlines, and fishing is big business in Maritime Canada. We had some of the best lobster we have ever had, and I ate “Fish and Chips” almost every other day. Most of it was excellent, though some, of course, was only good. Gisele said she had the best mussels she has ever eaten at a restaurant on Prince Edward Island. I took her word for it.

Canadian Money
Canadian money is very similar to US money with two major differences:

– The smallest bill we saw was $5. There are $1 and $2 dollar coins, called respectively “Looneys” and “Twoneys”. It took a little getting used to the idea that there could be dollars in my coin pocket, but it’s not a bad idea and I think it saves the mint some money replacing worn bills.

– We never saw a penny in Canada. The smallest coin is a nickel, and cash payments were all rounded up or down to the nearest nickel. (Credit card bills, however, retained the cents.) Another good idea. Pennies are a nuisance, and another waste of money to mint.

Languages
French and English are both official languages in Canada, and most things are printed and generally announced in both. However, in parts of Nova Scotia, Gaelic is (apparently) still used, and we found some signs in both English and Gaelic. Here’s an example:

Internet, Phones, etc.
Just before leaving I switched my phone service to Google Project Fi. This gives me voice, text and data services in 140 countries, including of course Canada. It was seamless and worked well. When we arrived in Toronto Airport to change planes, I immediately had a connection, and was able to connect almost anywhere throughout our trip. A couple of exceptions were national parks far from any cities.

Gisele brought her cell phone too, but it’s not eligible for the same Project Fi, and we were unable to get a Canadian SIM for her phone, though we tried. Phone stores were rare and confined to major cities, and the one phone store we tried sounded very confused about the idea of putting their SIM into our phone, which we often have done in Taiwan, Vietnam, and other countries. They’re a little behind the times up there, communication-wise.

Most RV parks had WiFi, but with a few exceptions it was weak and slow, often unusable.

Gas Prices
In Newfoundland gasoline sold for about US$3.25/gallon. In Nova Scotia it was about US$2.90/gallon.

Credit Cards
I made a mistake and used my Chase credit card to pay for the motor home rental. I was shocked when they added a $109 foreign transaction fee to a $3500 charge. I learned my lesson and from then on used my Schwab card for everything. Schwab waives all such fees, and even reimburses ATM charges that may be charged by other banks. A card like that is the only way to go when traveling internationally.

Timmy’s
There seem to be more Tim Horton coffee shops in Canada than Starbucks in America. Affectionately referred to as “Timmy’s” their coffee is cheaper and not quite as fancy as Starbuck’s, but they make a good cup. We only saw one Starbuck’s in all of Canada, in St. John’s, but there seem to be Tim Hortons on every corner and every stop on the highway.

Did I forget anything? Probably…