Aug 10 - Sep 3, 2000
Short Version
25 days, 8000 kilometres, 4 people, 0 fights (well as Louise says, that's not quite true)! We drove from Toronto via Montreal (where we picked up Louise's parents; Brian & Jean) to Quebec city, Saguenay Fjord, NB's Acadian Coast, PEI, Newfoundland (from one side to the other), Halifax, Peggys Cove, Fundy park, Fredericton, Montreal (dropped of the inlaws) then Ottawa! The highlight was watching a whale 2 from our boat for half an hour. The lowlight was needing to drive for 4 hours most days. We had great weather, the B&B's were cheap & easily booked with the travel info we had + the sites were very nice!
Long Version
Day 1 (Thurs Aug 10): Drive 100k from Waterloo to TO, use the 407 since it never gets traffic jams (wrong), drive 500k from TO to Montreal, pick up Lou's parents (woop's Mirabel is very far from downtown!!), arrive 1 hour late, no problem they're on Air Transat so the flight was delayed 2 hours, drive 260k to Quebec city, relax in our 2 bedroom apt, sitesee for 30 minutes, then crash.
Day 2: A leisurely day in Quebec, walking the old city, the Citadel & the Plains of Abraham. We end the day with a ferry ride across the St Lawrence to watch the sunset over the old City!
Day 3: On to Ile d'Orleans (nice ice cream), Montmorency falls (impressive), Ste-Anne-de-Beaupre (where pilgrims get cured & leave behind items they no longer need like crutches & artificial limbs!!) & Baie St Paul (a lovely artists community).
Day 4: A drive around the Saguenay Fjord, which was not quite as spectacular as we were expecting.
Day 5: Whale watching in Tadoussac, then a relaxing drive up the coast to our super fast catamaran ferry (50 knots!) across the St Lawrence. Nice sunset!
Day 6: We drive the Acadian (east) coast of New Brunswick & happen to land in the cultural centre (Caraquet) for their once a year French heritage celebration. It's a lot of fun to watch & we feel a lot safer then we would in Quebec city on St Jean Baptiste day!
Day 7: Over the bride to PEI. Stop on the bridge for construction (you can't leave the car to take pictures). Leave the car to take pictures, but get blocked by the dozens of other people doing the same thing. Drive a deserted highway across the Island to Anne of Green Gables house & Cavendish beach, where we lie in the sun for an hour (who knew Canada had decent beaches!).
Day 8: After a lovely walking tour of Charlottetown (man what a lot of history) we drive to the western most point of PEI stopping at scenic parks & English tea rooms that don't have scones (apparently that's very important!). At our last stop a young porpoise has managed to beach itself & some kids valiantly try to carry him out to sea. After 3 attempts they carry him to a nearby saltwater creek where he frantically swims in circles while we go thru a roll of film. The nearby Blue Heron barely merits a glance. We just miss a beautiful sunset picture of Charlottetown on our return.
Day 9: Drive to the PEI ferry, ferry to Nova Scotia, drive to North Sydney, ferry to Newfoundland (whew). Along the way we manage to see Antigonish (where the most scenic picnic spot is in the information booth parking lot along the highway!) & the Alexander Graham Bell museum (man that guy did a lot of stuff).
Day 10: A few hours to Cornerbrook where a delicous buffet lunch with a wide desert selection sets us back $6.95! Then up to Gros Morne National Park where we peruse the Tablelands, a unique geological formation where the earth's crust was literally pushed to the surface for all to see. To this day nothing grows on it.
Day 11: A nice hike then a beautiful boat ride into Western Brook Pond past huge cliffs with stacks of lava rock & dripping water falls. Note: Newfoundlanders (can I say Newfies without annoying anyone?) call any body of water a pond. Then a 400k+ drive to Twillingate the Iceberg capital of Newfoundland. We see the biggest thunder storm they've had in 40 years but no icebergs. The storm even knocked the power out (we later learn that any thunderstorm knocks the power out in Newfoundland).
Day 12: After a few hikes (reached by a road that was not meant for 2 wheel drive vehicles) we head to St John's. We arrive in time to relax in our 2 bedroom apartment before madly chasing around town trying to get a nice sunset picture).
Day 13: We tour downtown St John's (yet another piddling little city that has more history & character than Toronto), then hike down from Signal Hill past whales and houses from the 1700's.
Day 14: A tour of Witless bay (only in Newfoundland!) which houses 1 million plus birds including tons of beautiful puffins and then whales; including a juvenile Humpback which swam around our boat for half hour checking us out & spraying us with his blowhole! On to Ferryland ; an English settlement from the 1600's currently being excavated. We continue on the beautiful barren coastline past a huge caribou herd (we saw over 20 from the road) and on to Cape St Mary's bird reserve. There's a huge rock 100' high & only 30' wide just 20' from shore that attracts thousands of Gannetts. They literally cover every free inch of rock. We watched them lift off the rock & soar in the updrafts created by the cliffs. I could have watched all day but it was now dark (after a beautiful sunset) & we had to call our B&B to tell them we'd be late (no easy task in this part of Newfoundland, nor was finding a bathroom at least for the ladies).
Day 15: 14 hour ferry ride back to Nova Scotia (no one got seasick!).
Day 16: A relaxing 5 hour drive to Halifax, and our lobster dinner (which we had to cook ourselves since it was out of season & the restaurant prices were extortionate). A tour of the public gardens then Pier 21 (where immigrants landed when boat travel was common) with it's fascinating stories of WWII.
Day 17: Halifax was Louise's favourite city (mine was St Johns). Highlights include the amphibious tour, the Halifax Explosion exhibit at the museum & the Citadel (plus I won $30 at the Casino!).
Day 18: Peggy's Cove (nice), Lunenberg (nice, got to board Blue Nose II), etc. then on to Moncton.
Day 19: Today's Fundy tide was 40'. We got to the Hopewell rocks just at high tide & I joined a kayak tour while the gang watched the tide fall. It was wild kayaking thru holes in the rocks then coming back 40 minutes later & seeing that the hole is now 4' above the beach! A bowl of chowder at Cape Enrage then on to Fredericton (after a beautiful sunset).
Day 20: Fredericton is lovely but doesn't quite merit a full day. We relax at our spacious B&B.
Day 21: 820km drive to Montreal, via Grand Falls (not so grand since they built the dam) & the longest covered bridge in the world (& much longer than the other 5 we had stopped at this trip!). We drop the in-laws in plenty of time for the flight (Mirabel had 5 departures that day!!!). Then on to our friends (Anne & Jeff ex of PruCan) for 3 free nites accommodation!
Day 22: Walk thru downtown Montreal, lunch with ex work clients at the Peel Pub!, and then a nite with Anne & Jeff.
Day 23: Mont Royal & the grandiose Oratorie St Joseph (the signs say he was Jesus's "foster" father). Oratorie means it's not a church but you can still leave money.
Day 24: The awesome Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, a lovely dinner (can you say coupon), then two IMAX movies! We leave at 10pm for Toronto and just pass Kingston before we pull into a rest stop to sleep for the nite. (No not just to save money, we always wanted to try sleeping in the car, luckily it was my parents Ford Taurus wagon, not our Honda Civic).
Day 25 (Sun Sep 3): Visit friends in Toronto (thanks for lunch Michele & Jeff) then on to Waterloo!