RVing To Newfoundland

For RVers, there are a few places left where, if you make the trip, you can truly say it was a unique destination. You could say, for example, Quartzsite, Arizona or Acadia National Park in Maine or Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada are unique destinations. While all are unique to some degree, I’m suggesting there are a few places for RVers to go that isn’t conveniently done in a car, take an extended length of time, and traveling by RV is the perfect method for getting to and visiting those destinations. Alaska is #1 among those.

Newfoundland is another. This easternmost Canadian province is remote, not easily accessed, and is the perfect RV trip. We did this and spent 35 days in Newfoundland.

The cliffs around the entrance to St. John's harbor are spectacular.

We had considered going to Newfoundland for several years and got close one time. We’ve had the good fortune to visit the Canadian Maritimes on four occasions. A few years ago—we tried to visit Newfoundland in our car and planned to stay a week. We parked our RV near North Sydney, Nova Scotia, had reservations to put our car on the ferry, but was cancelled due to extreme fog. We sat around for three days and never got on the ferry, so we cancelled and didn’t go.

Last year, on a Princess cruise from England to New York City, one of the ports was St. John’s, Newfoundland. We were there one day, toured the city, met some nice people, and I visited the local Visitor Information Centre where I got to ask lots of questions specifically about RVing up there. I got lots of good information, advice, and left there with all kinds of reading material. This information and help was the impetus that launched our trip-planning to Newfoundland by RV. My sincere thanks to them.

Late last year, a friend asked me if I was still interested in going. I was.

Our Trip and Our Group
A friend and I decided to do this trip together. As it turned out, six RVs made the trip together.

This became sort of a non-organized get-together that instantly created a caravan—but we weren’t a caravan in the formal or commercial sense. We were just traveling together for convenience, companionship, and could help each other if needed.

I am not suggesting that your trip must be or even should be a group effort. Initially, my wife and I were actually planning on doing it alone and would have done so if no one else had shown any interest. As we soon learned, there is a lot of interest in RVing to Newfoundland.

Our Plan
We planned to go from North Sydney, Nova Scotia over to Newfoundland on the long ferry (disembark at Argentia, NL) and return to the same port on the short ferry (board at Port aux Basques, NL). While these are different ports in Newfoundland, they both end up back in North Sydney, Nova Scotia. Routing in this manner through these two Newfoundland ports meant that we would be meandering predominately westbound in our RVs across the island of Newfoundland.

During the original planning, we came to the conclusion that we wanted to start our time on Newfoundland in its largest city. This would give us the opportunity to learn local driving habits, become acclimated to the customs, meet some locals, test our skill with the language (every place has its local idioms) and learn about local foods before we head out into the less populated areas. It would also provide some of our group an opportunity to say goodbye to Wal-Mart—at least for a couple of weeks.

On a more serious note, even if one our our RVs experienced some medium-serious problems during our time on the island, if drivable, we would be on the shortest return route back to Nova Scotia. We learned that this plan was opposite what many commercial caravans do but never found out why.

Note that our route is a bit different from the rest of the group. We drove the Kittiwake Coast (C to E) to experience some coastal driving. I believe this was definitely worthwhile.

The "direct" drive across the island between our two ports (A and O) is roughly 500 miles. Our planned route on the island indicated we would drive 1,383 miles from port-to-port since we would be meandering over much of the province—not taking a direct route. For our 35 days on the island, that is about a 40-mile-per-day average so we have plenty of time to stop and visit. That’s our goal—NOT to rush and see what we want.

Routes

Fishing is a way of life.

The short route is 4–6 hours and goes between North Sydney to Port aux Basques, Newfoundland. Port aux Basques is located on the southwest coast of the province.

The long route is approximately 15 hours and goes from North Sydney to Argentia, Newfoundland. Argentia is located near the southeast coast of the province. This area is littered with coastline villages due to numerous peninsulas so you will have to Google the map location.

Our decision was to go to Newfoundland via the long route, disembark at Argentia, immediately drive to St. John’s, and get a campground. This drive was about 80 miles on good highway. Our plan and thinking was to start our Newfoundland tour in St. John’s (the capital and it’s largest city). Our RVs would be parked and we we be in our cars for local touring.

We Did It
We completed this trip (all six RVs made it just fine) and had a wonderful time. The sights are spectacular, the icebergs are indescribable, moose are everywhere, and the people are among the finest I have ever had the pleasure to meet.

As a result, I put all that information—the full details on how you can plan and make this fantastic trip—in my latest book entitled, "RVing To Newfoundland"—on sale now... Click here! It's 140 pages of current information and pictures on how make this trip and where to go.

[Author Note…  I've had a few people ask why I just put in this Newfoundland "teaser" instead of a blog about the whole trip more like I did the Alaska trip. Easy answer…  I wrote the Alaskan blog before I wrote that book. It was actually a "test" for the book. I wrote the "RVing to Newfoundland" book first, then I created this blog page and wasn't trying to recreate the book here.]

The cliffs in Gros Morne National Park were great. Our boat tour took us in where we could view numerous waterfalls.

Thinking About RVing… 
Unfortunately, in many National Parks both in the US and Canada, their campgrounds were built years (decades) ago and campsites simply will not fit some of the large motorhomes and 5th wheels on the road today. We thoroughly enjoy those parks, have been to many of them over the years, and early on, we tried staying in several including major parks like Yellowstone NP and Jasper NP (north of Banff) in Alberta, Canada. We just didn't or couldn't fit in their spaces. The final "straw" was the time we were assured that the site would accommodate us but we had to pull in headed the wrong way, could only put out two of our slides, and had to have the camp host stop all traffic while I backed the rig out of that campsite and then back down a one-way lane (the wrong way) to be able to exit the campground (in Yellowstone). 

So, we have stopped camping IN the National Park campgrounds.

Now, we simply look for a commercial campground near one of the entrances to these parks. There are always plenty of choices. This has worked well and saved lots of anxiety and frustration.