St. John has got some nice features, but basically, it is an industrial shipping port, dominated by Irving Oil Company. Like other Canadian cities, much of the shopping area, including their City Market are all connected indoors. The market is nice, but not spectacular. There is no local produce (that may just be a seasonal thing since it is open year round), but there were two nice seafood markets. We enjoyed lunch at Billy’s Seafood, one of the markets. We were not in the mood for the New Brunswick Museum, but found out later, of course, that it is one of the highlights of the city….oh well. The Reversing Falls were on the itinerary – all part of the famous tidal phenomenon in this part of the country. They weren’t falls at all, but areas of swirling water that changed direction as the tide changed. I fully realize that I am probably not giving St. John its due since we spent so little time there, so don’t make any judgments based on this account.

We received an email from one of our Boomer/Jojobian friends, Fran Rayner, that they were crossing over to Newfoundland in 2 days with a group of 7 other rigs, and that we were welcome to join them. Sounded like fun, so we took off. The drive was beautiful – lots of pines – a very “up north” feel. We got to Sidney, Nova Scotia on Sunday night (their primary claim to fame seemed to be the world’s largest fiddle) and were at the ferry terminal at 4:45 a.m. on Monday, preparing for our 14 hour trip to Newfoundland. Fran and her group pulled in shortly thereafter. Due to some mistakes in parking by the attendants, two of the rigs in our group could not get on, although they had boarding passes. The next ferry didn’t leave for two days, but they made the best of it, and got free passage two days later (worth nearly $800) and joined us Thursday. The ferry was huge and comfortable with several different kinds of seating areas, some with tables, some with recliners, a cocktail lounge with entertainment, a buffet style restaurant (with predictably bad food), cabins with bunk beds and seating areas (extra, of course), free movies in one area, and a small movie theatre. It certainly beats a 14 hours flight, but we were still pretty restless by the time we got there.

We knew about an RV park, the entrance to which was supposed to be just 3 ship lengths from where we would disembark. It turns out the Dick was the first motorhome off (we had disconnected the Jeep before boarded), and the others in our group followed. Dick turned where he was supposed to (it was 11:00 pm and dark), but the further he went, the more it looked like a dead end road. We all had family radios, so I was still on the ship (I ended up in the last group off) listening to poor Dick, with no navigator (and remember that we had just met these folks on the ship – all of them in these huge beautiful Monaco diesel pushers) saying, “This doesn’t look right – we are on a dead end road”, and the rest, who had followed him in, discussing what to do, where everyone could turn around, etc. At one point I heard someone say, “This is chaos out here” – apparently other RVs had followed our group in as well. I felt so sorry for Dick! Eventually, they all got turned around and got back on the highway toward the main entrance of the park.