Nine weeks and counting

Today it has been nine weeks since we left home. I find it hard to believe that it's been so long already. I think we are changing a bit but I can't really say how. I know that at first I allways felt like I had to be getting somewhere and I was really stressed by not knowing what to do next. It's still like that a bit but not as much as then. It's become easier ( but not that easy ) just to see where we end up tonight. It's harder when I'm tired and that happens a lot. Living in such cramped close proximity in the van can make us a bit testy with eachother at times. That takes some getting used to also. In the last 63 days we have spent 55 living in the van. We have met a lot of people. Been to numerous RV parks, usually for about $25.00 per night. It's nice to be able to plug into hydro there. They also have showers and flush toilets. Spent an equal number of nights sleeping in parking lots or dock areas for free. That's called "boondocking " in RV language. There are whole websites out there dedicated to it. I'm not always comfortable sleeping in parking lots at night. We've to date taken 1979 pictures, and driven 9079 kilometers. We've taken seven ferries, the longest ones being 6 hours in length and the shortest only ten minutes.

On Saturday we will be leaving "The Rock" for Port Sydney Nova Scotia again. This time we leave from the town of Argentia close to St Johns on the east side of Newfounland. It will be a much longer ride then when we arrived in Channel-Port aux Basques. It's 15 hours long. We leave at 4:00 PM in the afternoon and arrive at seven the next morning. We have reserved bunkbeds on the boat to sleep in over night. Another new experience.

I think one of the more profound things I've discovered are the national parks, and national heritage sites of Canada. They are extremely well organized and very beautifull, always established in a meaningful way to reflect their part of the greatness of our country. Some are even world heritage sites. I was never really familiar with them before.

Tonight we are parked in a little RV place in Clarke's Beach just over from Brigus on the West side of Conception Bay. It's blowing hard outside, (it's always blowing hard) the temperature is dropping to only 10C overnight, and they are forcasting rain for tommorrow. It is nice and cozy in the van however. We have lots of lights on, a candle on the table, music playing, and a heater going. Grace is reading and I've just spent a few satisfying hours blogging and reading news.It's 11:00 PM and time for bed. Tommorow we head to St John's for our last two days on the island. Here is one last pic for the night that someone took and the E-mailed us of a boat trip we made about five weeks ago on Cote Norde when we were there.