We’ve been wanting to explore the Maritime provinces, Canada’s east coast, for a while. As we started checking out maps, two fun thoughts popped into our heads…
On our very first summer-long RV trip back in 2016, we set out to explore the Great Lakes. An eye-opening realization at the time was how the Great Lakes connected the Midwest via water commerce to the rest of the world. We’re now coming to see that we’ve only explored half of this story. That connection to the rest of the world is made complete by the St. Lawrence River and Seaway.
The next thought was OMG, there’s lots more Canada and the St. Lawrence to the east! Said another way, our home in Vermont (the blue dot) is aligned with the center of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway! As a point of reference, our easternmost planned destination point this summer will be as far from our home as Omaha, Nebraska, in exactly the opposite direction.
Our overall plans remain a little bit loose, much like previous trips. We’ll start with a few visits with friends and family in Quebec City, then take in a music festival on the north shore of the St Lawrence. From there, we’ll head into Labrador to see what there is to see, then take a ferry across the St Lawrence to do the same in Newfoundland. Towards the end of the trip we’ve got plans to attend scheduled music events in Toronto and Grand Rapids, Michigan, both in late September. In between, potential adventures in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and eastern Quebec await.
Before leaving for Alaska in 2019, we’d made a few reinforcements and modifications to our RV in anticipation of some rugged travel to remote locations. Knowing that parts of Labrador will also be far off grid, we’ve not reverted any of those changes. Also, after our nail-biting stretch of sub-freezing weather with dying batteries and a non-functioning generator in Great Smoky Mountains National Park last fall, this spring we replaced the aging house batteries and got the generator running again. Other new items on the packing list are an updated PA system and a 61-key digital piano, both of which can run on batteries, giving us some expanded musical capabilities.
If all goes well, we’ll be on the road in less than a week. Stay tuned…