We have some friends living in Moncton New Brunswick (Norm and Berniece Anderson) and we always look them up when we are passing. We usually spend a few days with them. They have a condominium in Moncton and in the summertime they spend most of their time at a trailer park just outside of town where they have a trailer. Here is a picture of the trailer.
We took a trip to P.E.I with Norm and Bernice and we crossed the new Confederation Bridge. It is nine miles long and takes twelve minutes to cross to the island at highway speed. It was a novel experience. There was no charge to cross the bridge but it cost us $40 to get back to the mainland.
In New Brunswick we came across a strange sight. We saw a sign on the highway to `Andy's dummys'. We turned into the driveway and were met by a strange looking guy with a beard that turned out to be Andy. He gave us a tour of his property. The whole place was full of dummys that he had made. There was a school bus with every seat occupied....by dummys. There were dummys everywhere. Hanging from the trees, standing around and even a lake with a boat full of dummys. There was a lot of junk around besides the dummys such as old hub caps and signs that Andy had made. He even had four dummys on the roof of his car. It was an interesting collection. Andy made no charge for the tour but was open to donations towards his materials. We had a good laugh over it with Berniece who was with us.
When we went to Newfoundland we caught the ferry at North Sidney. We slept in the van on the dock and boarded the ferry early in the morning. That night the rain came down in buckets. I have never seen it rain so hard for so long.
The journey to Newfoundland on the Carabou took about five hours which surprised us. We drove up the East coast of Newfoundland to Parsons Pond and turned back to Stephenville where we visited relatives of one of our neighbours, who made us very welcome. Then we took the Trans-Canada Highway across to St Johns stopping at Cornerbrook and Gander. Near Cornerbrook we decided to have lunch on a beach. There was a small mound to cross to get to the beach but seeing car tracks I thought it would be safe to drive the van over it to the beach. The area was covered in loose shale and when I turned off the road and started up the mound I could feel the van bogging down in the shale. I gunned the van to get as far up the slope as I could before it bogged down. Since we were not going anywhere we decided to have lunch. After lunch Eva walked back to the road to watch for approaching traffic and on her signal I gunned the van in reverse. Having the slope to help the van started moving. The wheels were spinning and the stones were flying and the back of the van was chattering up and down but luckily I was able to coax it back onto the road. I thought it was a job for a tow truck. We were surprised at how deserted the Tran-Canada Highway was. There seemed to be nobody around except in the large centres. There were very few hotels, and motels were almost non existant. We stayed in provincial parks which were very reasonably priced at $7.95 a night for camping. There were no electrical and water hookups but that was no problem for us since our van is self sufficient. When got to St.Johns we found a really nice shopping mall and after browsing through that we made our way up Signal Hill which is where the first trans-atlantic radio signal was sent from. The wind off the Atlantic was so strong that we found it almost impossible to stay on our feet.
After leaving St.Johns we checked out a lot of small fishing villages. It was sad to see all the fishing boats pulled out of the water because of the ban on cod fishing brought about by the low cod stocks. Our next tour was around the Avelon Peninsular. It was very flat and lonely. There were no trees at all but we saw herds of antelope.
Before leaving the island we took a tour around the Port au Port Peninsular. Then it was time to join the line up for the ferry back to the mainland.
After leaving Nova Scotia we crossed the border into the United States and headed for Boston. We planned on going to visit my sister Marian who lived just outside Boston with her husband Joe and two children. First however we took a trip to Cape Cod and drove all the way to the end of the peninsular to Provincetown.
Our next port of call was Marian and Joe's house. Joe was keeping busy cutting grass.
We were fortunate enough to see Marian and Joe's daughter Dawn and son David. We stayed overnight and then we hit the trail for Toronto. We took all the back roads and stopped off at several flea markets which we found in the small towns we passed through
This concludes our East coast page. Hope you found it interesting.
That was then. This year 2003 our grandson Kyle sent us an invitation to his wedding in St John New Brunswick. It came as a complete surprise to us because Kyle is only 19 years old. Anyway we packed our van in 95 degree heat and headed East. Kyle had booked hotel rooms for all the out of town guests in a very nice hotel. We were there not only in time for the wedding but we went to the rehearsal as well. After the rehearsal the bride's parents put on a nice garden party for everyone. The wedding went off without a hitch except of course for the obvious one. Kyle's bride is a lovely girl and her family seem very nice too.
More to come. Please bear with me while I sort out some pictures.
I had forgotten about adding pictures of the wedding but I have them on a CD and will sort them out.
Well here I am back again with the pictures.
Well that is all I have for now but we have been invited to Adam and Cheryl's wedding in August 2005 so it looks as though we will be making another trip.
Bye for now!
