Glasses, Keys, Wallet and Phone?

In the morning, I ate my Kashi Go cereal and repacked the car. I drove to the restroom before leaving. There was a Planet Fitness in St. John’s and I decided to go take a shower. I was about to get directions for PF when I realized I didn’t have my phone. I had it when I woke but could not find it anywhere. I thought, it must be here somewhere, as I tore the car apart. I tried to use Find My iPhone with my MacBook, but there was still no service. At the front gate, the attendant offered to call the number. I could hear a faint ringing, in the car. It took 10 calls before I found the phone rolled up in my mattress. 

The campground was situated beside a small lake and park which I missed coming in last night. There seemed to be a free double-decker buses that provide shuttle services from somewhere.

I was now 45 minutes late getting to PF. I entered and scanned in. I was greeted by the General Manager. She was young, very energetic and looked like she worked out often. She said, “Welcome to St. John’s! Are you travelling through?” She wished me a good workout and told me to find her if I had any questions or issues. I took my shower and as I was leaving, a guy sat down on the bench near me and said, “I have all these muscles, but I can’t bend over.” He was a big guy and obviously spent a lot of time at the gym. I said to him, “I do yoga, it seems to help.” The guy at the other end of the dressing room came over and we got into a discussion about yoga. The body builder said he had this beginner’s yoga App that he was going to start using (maybe). They were making jokes about being inflexible. It was entertaining.

I came out and was about to get into my car when a guy, Robert, said to me, “You from Connecticut?” He had been to CT many years ago with his dad. They were camping and on their way to Florida. He had just dropped off his wife at Walmart. He told me, “She’ll be in there for three hours and then she’ll go to the other shops here. She doesn’t buy anything.” When she’s done, she calls me. We had been talking about 5 minutes when he pulled out a cigarette, settling in for a longer conversation. Apparently, this was the nicer part of town. He approved of all my planned stops in Nova Scotia. Surprisingly, he had never been to Newfoundland but said he wanted to go some day. He was very interested in the Subaru Outback. He thought this was the right car for my trip. I agreed. We talked for 30 minutes, and he wished me a wonderful trip. His parting words, “You will like the people up there, they are friendly. They’ll probably invite you into their homes.”

I bought a towel at Walmart and then set off for Costco again. I have a Charles Schwab checking accounting. One of the benefits is that they pay all ATM charges world-wide. I had reset the pin code last night but still wasn’t able to get cash from the ATM. Contacting Charles Schwab, they walked me through the reason the transaction failed. I left with cash in hand.

I went to the Starbucks up the street to get on the Wi-Fi to make reservations somewhere near Sydney NS. I found a site at Rockwood Park Campground, about 15 minutes from the ferry port I needed to be at the next morning.

It was now almost 1:00 pm and I had a six-hour drive in front of me.  Today, I was taking the highway and avoiding the dirt roads. I arrived a little before 7:00 pm. The trip was long but the Trans Canadian Highway has wide well paved roads. Near the end the views were spectacular.

Rockwood Park seems to be very popular. There was a food trailer right beside the campground. I stopped by, but they were sold out of everything but fries and poutine. I ordered a regular fries, which was massive.  I hate wasting food, but I couldn’t finish all of them. I setup the tent and did some more reorganization to consolidate things.

The campground has a nice games room which wasn’t being used. There were many outlets and I took the opportunity to charge all my devices. I wanted to make sure my CAT battery for charging the car, inflating my mattress, and charging USB devices was fully charged.

I made myself a cup of Nighttime tea to get a good night’s sleep. Regrettably, I chose a camping spot under a streetlight and about 50 feet from the street behind the campground. Additionally, the guy beside me called his girlfriend to tell her about his latest leg of his bike trip across Canada. He might as well have been in my tent. It was an interesting conversation as he explained the last few days of his trip. He had met some other cyclists that took him in and fed him and invited him to ride with them. The had a sag wagon to carry their gear and offered to carry his equipment while they rode.

Eventually, the Nighttime tea took over and I no longer heard the cars with reverberating mufflers. The SleepCycle App would wake me at 6:15 am and let me know that I didn’t really sleep so well.