Blast From The Past — On the Road To Newfoundland

We are excited to share these posts of a long-ago trip with you.  Every Monday, over the next few weeks, we will share with you our trip to the maritime provinces of Canada.  These posts were written in 2010, but are still relevant and the photos still tell the tale.  The text is mostly snippets of observations along the way and we just left it as is despite its evident crudeness…We hope that you will enjoy this trip to a beautiful part of Canada as much as we did!  It gets progressively more interesting, so stay with us. 
We left home on June 12th, 2010 heading to the tip of the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. I have my laptop and internet stick with me and the idea was to post as we go.  We are already behind, so we’ll see if we we’ll be able to keep this up.

This trip is our 30th Anniversary road trip gift to ourselves. We had minimal plans; only midpoint destination and a vague return date…

Excuse typos — it is bumpy to type while the car is going and the font is a little small for these old eyes…


First and second day. driving through Ontario and Quebec as quickly as possible. Quebec is full of saints, the province smells like cigarettes, coffee is expensive and once you turn onto the 132 and start heading towards New Brunswick there are lots of beaver lodges.
Leaving Montreal through the tunnel was creepy: entering in daylight and emerging on the other side to darkness in a few seconds.

We stopped at a motel just outside of Quebec City.

Today heading towards the Bay of Fundy. Made a quick stop to look at the ocean-meet-St. Lawrence River, where we ‘bonjoured’ several cyclists.

As I am typing this we are passing a place called Ha! Ha!.  Too funny.

New Brunswick is scenic and moose conscious at the same time. Most of the highway is fenced on both sides and has special one way moose gates as in the picture below.

It looks like moose are a big problem judging by the size of the signs and the expense that the NB government went into to protect both moose and drivers.

We were driving along the TransCanada Highway in New Brunswick when I spotted a pony on the side of the road. Tony thought it was a statue, but I was pretty sure that it moved.  We turned around to see if this horse was loose — we always have some lead ropes with us just in case — it was a real horse grazing on the front lawn of this house on about a square metre of grass. The second picture is a better perspective of the proximity to the road.

We spoil our animals…

Stopped briefly in Grand Falls for lunch and a peak at the falls.

The Falls were grand, but had no water at the time.  We escaped town without eating lunch before a “Firefighters Parade” started and all roads were blocked.

Lupines everywhere. Love it.

32 thoughts on “Blast From The Past — On the Road To Newfoundland”

  3. robert fisher says:
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    Can’t wait to read the next segment.
    We usually go to NB once a year to visit family and have travelled Nova Scotia and the Cabot Trail and quite a bit of Pei although we would like to go back to Pei. But we haven’t done the Newfoundland trip yet so I’m quite interested to hear about your adventures.

  4. kagould17 says:
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    We had the same experience at Grand Falls when we stopped there in 2018. I think they can turn it on and off like a tap. Then the problem was to find a washroom. Thank goodness for Canadian Tire. Have a great week. Allan

  7. petespringerauthor says:
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    When we went to Alaska, I saw similar high fences and moose/bear signs. I’m impressed that you had the forethought to record your memories back in 2010.

    • backroadsandotherstories says:
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      It’s great that they take the extra step to protect animals and people! We started that blog so that our daughters will be able to follow our trip. We had one follower and I don’t think I can access this blog anymore which is one of the reasons I wanted to move it over to WordPress. It’s kind of funny to read it since it’s a bit rough…

  9. Rebecca says:
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    I enjoyed reading this “Blast from the Past!” It’s great to reflect on adventures done long ago, especially before blogging was a thing. Your road trip through Canada looks to be quite the voyage, and I can’t wait to read more!

  10. Ab says:
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    Newfoundland is on our bucket list to visit one day. New Brunswick is a Roadtrip we do almost every year as we have family there. We’ve done some Nova Scotia, hoping to do Cabot Trail one day, and explored PEI. Newfoundland is the last one to go. Look forward to your recap of it!

  11. kayak2016blog says:
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    Gee, 2010 was the year of my first real Maritimes trip – up to cross the border into Quebec from New Hampshire, around the Gaspe, into New Brunswick, across to PEI and around it, back to NB and over to Nova Scotia, around the Cabot Trail, ferry to Newfoundland and up the west coast to the north end and back to the ferry and back to NS, down the coast to Lunenburg, a couple of days in Kejimkujik, on to Digby and across on the ferry to St John NB, along the coast to Maine and home to Vermont. Lots of places to return to – until Covid I’d been to PEI every year (which means driving NB), and NS a few times.

  15. Lookoom says:
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    Oh nice to see your take from the past. Canada has changed so fast in the last few years in some places that we forget easily what it was like 10 years ago.

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