OMG what a day, due to a calamity of navigation errors, which weren’t helped by the fact Andy wasn’t in the “pink of condition” or “fine fettle”, since he was suffering from a touch of food poisoning from the lousy lunch yesterday. In fairness to Judi, she did suggest holding off for a day, but Andy with typical stiff upper lip, damn the torpedoes, onward into battle, “I can make it, it’s only a short hop”. His one concession being nor completing his usual hoovering and dusting before bringing the slides in.

Friday 5th September 2014

Borden/Carelton, PEI to Havre Boucher, Nova Scotia

Temps – maximum of mid 20’s

Weather – Clear and sunny

Wind – light airs

Cloxs – no change (Z-3)

Distance today – 208 miles

Total Distance – 4,752 miles

Navigation

Google wanted to take us way South on the motorways, but we were looking for options on lesser routes that were more direct. Would they be appropriate for our rig and could we find them ?

Departure Prince Edward Island

This was an easy start to the day, easy departure, short drive, paid the $60 toll and within a few minutes we were crossing the Confederation Bridge heading to the mainland.

Detailed Voyage to Nova Scotia

As the crow flies, this should have been a short hop, as we could almost see where we are headed, but both Google and the GPS want to take us on the circuitous route. Andy had found a local road along the coast that looked good, having reviewed it on Google Streetview. He checked the departure from the main road, but couldn’t read the signpost on Streetview, but he had a visual picture of the intersection.

The plan was therefore, cross the bridge and head down Hwy # 16, turning off onto Hwy 970, which heads North before turning right onto the coast road. Everything is going swell, cross the bridge and moving nicely down Hwy #16, when we see the sign for Hwy # 970 and it looks similar to the view Andy saw on street view. From this point it goes sideways, first the direction isn’t right and we hit a couple of bridges with 12 ton limits, which we are OK, just barely. We don’t see the coast road and next thing we know is we’re back on Hwy # 16. Basically Hwy 970 was a loop and we rejoined Hwy 16 at the exit I had planned to take up to the coast road.

Oh well, we threw out that plan, so Judi the Ace Navigator gets her trusty map and finds Hwy #6 will take us in the general direction we want to go. We continued down to Hwy # 2 and headed East until the next exit, signed Amherst and Hwy # 6. At this point the GPS advises the next road is Hwy # 6, so we figured it’s taking us along that route. Well we all know the alternate definition of the word “Assume”. Entering Amherst we either missed a sign for Hwy #6, or there wasn’t one, but regardless following the GPS took us back to Hwy # 2, heading South. By this point Judi was getting frustrated and Andy was just numb, having lost his usual exemplary sense of direction. When checking the truck compass he was nearly always wrong in the direction he thought we were headed, and that rarely, or never happens. Anyway, from now no more fancy navigation, we just follow the stupid GPS.

It was only 208 miles, but today it felt like 400 or 500 miles. Finally we arrived at the entrance and made the tight turn into the driveway, which is a long, narrow gravel road heading to the office. We stopped and went to check-in, but it is closed, Fall hours they close from 11:00 to 16:00. Simply brilliant and a fine end to a not so perfect day of RV’ing. Oh well, we decide to drive in anyway to look for an employee. The first section is well treed with small roads off the entrance – definitely no access for us in this area, so we continue further into the campground, where we find a clearing. This is a loop road with back-in sites off 1 side and pull throughs in the middle. We  drive around and pull over at the edge as we spotted and employee running around in a Golf Cart. He suggested driving back up to the office, at which time I pointed out the obvious, there ain’t nowhere to turn this rig around again at the office, at which point he took me up in the golf cart. Another treat of a day, when the clerk couldn’t find our reservation, fortunately they had space, so we got a site in the clearing where we parked.

We actually have a great location overlooking a secluded bay off the Gulf of St Lawrence. Once set up we had planned to go shopping for a few essentials, but since the closest shopping is about 20 miles, we decided a quiet afternoon and evening was in order. After a quick dinner we took the dogs down to the water for a run, while we enjoyed the sunset and chatted to a couple from Quebec.