Let's Just Go Somewhere: West to East Newfoundland

We got up Thursday morning and we still had not made up our mind whether to drive the 500 miles to the east side of Newfoundland or not.

We finally decided about 11 am that we better go east because we didn’t know when we might get back to Newfoundland again. There is just so much to see.

Plus, we noticed that the engine made a kind of squeaky sound when we shut it off last night and there was a Cummins service center on the east side of the island. At least if we had a problem, we would be driving closer and closer to it. (Fortunately, it stopped making the noise by the time we go to our stop for the night at Holyrood, Newfoundland.)

I put my last load of laundry that I had just finished washing on a drying rack back in the bedroom and we were ready to go.

Many of the people we had talked to said that the drive from across to the east was boring. But we disagree. It was not boring at all. I didn’t even get sleepy and I normally always get sleepy on a long drive like that.

Here are some of the pictures I took along TCH 1, the main highway through Newfoundland:

We came across this rock "snowman" along the side of the road that had to have been put together with a backhoe as big as those boulders were. (On the way back, we noticed it had a smiley face on it on the other side.)

We didn't think it was a boring drive at all.

Chuck drove almost 8 straight hours only stopping once towards the end. While we stopped, I walked back to the car to start the car and run it through the gears again since we had been driving for so long and guess what….the battery was dead.

We had heard of people with Honda CRVs having trouble with their batteries going dead but we had never had problems before. I pulled out the manual and read that it was recommended to pull the radio fuse when you were going to be towing for long periods of time (I guess because the clock stays on and drains the battery).

The 5 hours we had driven the day before and the 8 hours we drove today without not letting the car run for a longer period of time plus not pulling the fuse must have caused the battery to go dead.

Since we were still under 8 hours towing, we drove on to the RV park without running through the gears because it was only about another 30 to 45 minutes away.

We could have had a problem when we disconnected the car with the battery being dead. Chuck figured he would have to turn on the generator, plug in his battery charger, and get the car started with the battery charger's quick start. But, the owner of the campground (who also happened to be a tow truck driver) gave us a jump and we got the car started.

Chuck let it run for about an hour or so to charge the battery. We didn’t have any more problems except the radio doesn’t work now because we think the fuse blew when the battery was jumped off. This is the same fuse you are supposed to remove according to the Honda manual and it is one of the hardest fuses to get to.

Chuck got his fuse puller out to try to pull out the fuse and dropped the fuse puller behind the plastic sheild all the way down to the bottom. So now that's gone. :) Oh well… now we don’t have to stand on our heads to pull the fuse out before towing next time.

One more thing to get fixed when we get back to the states.

We had hoped to get into Pippy Park in St. Johns but it was full so I started looking for other campgrounds where we could stay for the weekend and found Blue Fin RV Park in Holyrood.