Newfoundland Road Trip: Day 2

Day 2

I wake with the sun as the light streams through my van’s mesh windows surrounding the “upstairs” bed. I had a delicious night of sleep. The air was cool, but not cold, and it was as silent as a stone. I take my time getting ready, with no schedule to keep except to get to Maine and my next Harvest Host location before 8:00 p.m. when they close.

I fry two of my farm fresh eggs for breakfast, adding some cottage cheese and a homemade strawberry oat compote that I made at home to the meal. A cup of coffee in our Nespresso machine completes the meal.

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ModVan Moment

ModVans are a great choice for “dry camping” since they have battery options that don’t require you to plug in at a campground. It’s probably obvious I don’t know anything about batteries and electrical terminology, and I’m not going to try and learn it for this post. Click here if you want to learn more about ModVans come equipped with. 🙃

What I can l tell you with confidence is that I can dry camp (on my battery power) comfortably on 99% of our trips. And with that battery power, I can brew a good cup of coffee with our Nespresso and use our milk frother, too. We also have an Aeropress, but it takes more time and is messier. Nespresso for the win on long travel days!

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After breakfast, I hit the road and the miles tick by at a reasonable pace until I reach Connecticut where I start seeing warning signs for “trucks” and upcoming low bridges. The signs don’t say how low the bridges, so I assume they mean tractor trailer type trucks. 

I finally arrive at the first bridge, and to my relief it’s plenty high for my Modvan. But then the signs change….now they say that vehicles taller than eight feet will not fit under them. Eight feet? That sounds awfully low. Maybe I misread the sign and it said eighteen feet.

I pass by an exit. Is this the only one to avoid the bridges? In the near distance after the exit I see an arched stone bridge with two signs. It looks higher than eight feet though. I can’t read the bridge’s signs until I’m too close to do anything except forge ahead. The one hanging over the middle says 13’4” and the one hanging over the right lane, which is the lane I’m driving in, says 9’1”. I curl my toes and clench my teeth, because there’s no time (or space) to change lanes as I drive under it. I clear it—whew!

I call Larry, explaining that I urgently need to know the ModVan’s height. “I don’t know, but there’s a measuring tape in the toolbox. Just measure it the best you can,” he says, distracted. I can tell he’s busy at work.

“I’m on a highway that has absolutely no shoulder, and I passed a sign that said I have eight foot bridges ahead. I’m not sure if I have another exit to escape them.” I can’t imagine getting to this bridge and stopping two lanes of busy traffic to figure out what the hell to do. A quick search and he informs me that our model is nine feet, one inch tall. I must’ve barely fit under the last bridge! But I’m definitely over eight feet for the one(s) ahead. Shit.

I see another exit in the distance and another warning sign about eight-foot bridges. I’ve never been so grateful to get off a highway. I hang up with Larry so I can pull over after I exit and map out a new driving route. But there’s nowhere to pull over.

I drive through miles and miles of a very high-income area near Greenwich, Connecticut. I can’t remember where Martha Stewart calls home in New England, but I’m convinced this must be her neighborhood. The houses are that grand and the yards are manicured to match. Maybe Snoop lives close to Martha now, seeing as how they’re good friends and all. I look for both of them to no avail.  Over a twenty-minute time span, the only place I could have turned into was a swanky plant nursery, but its lot was covered up with Bentleys and Jaguars. 

Finally (finally!) I reach Greenwich and have a chance to pull over. Instead of finding a new route, Google Maps has incessantly told me to make a U turn. No bueno, Google.

I remember an app, Truck Map, I learned about on a fun RV’ing YouTube channel (Keep Your Daydream). The app’s purpose is to help truckers find suitable routes, but you can plug in the parameters of whatever rig you’re driving and let it do its routing magic. I can only pick a minimum of ten foot height for my van. Close enough. The route it creates adds over two hours to my day, and I’ve already wasted at least thirty minutes with this detour. WTF?

I realize I can tweak the settings further in the app. Nope, I don’t mind tolls. I’m not driving a commercial vehicle. The app now instantly reduces the time to something far more manageable, only adding about an hour extra. I can handle that.

As I’m leaving town, I have to go under another arched bridge with the 13’4” and 9’1” signs. Well, at least I know I can clear these, especially since I have a little wiggle room to veer toward the center of the road as I drive under it.

The rest of the drive is mercifully uneventful. I listen to an excellent Peter Attia podcast about skin care. It helps the time pass quickly and I realize I’ve done nothing right to take care of my aging skin. I make a mental note to text my dermatologist/friend and ask him if he’ll prescribe me some retinoin when I return home. Did you know that plain ol’ drugstore Retinol does not cut it after 50+ years of skin abuse? And that’s all I use…if I remember to use it at all.

I also marvel at the lengths some people will go to defy aging. Fillers, Botox, face lifts…the list is endless (and exorbitantly expensive). I guess if I was that pretty, I’d want to keep up those looks too. But my face is not my fortune, and I’m content with mostly benign neglect and sticking with the bare minimum.

I pass into Maine and smile, thinking of my daughter, Paige, and how much she loves the Vacation State. She wants to live in Maine one day, preferably working her dream job in The Lost Kitchen before setting out to open her own establishment.

I love Maine equally, but I’m not sure either of us would love it in winter. What I do know is that she is going to love the surprise I have planned for the end of this trip while we’re driving to Portland, where she and Larry will fly home. Keep following along with the adventure if you want to know where we went. 🙂

After 8-1/2 hours of driving, I arrive at my next Harvest Host location—Schooner’s Mini Golf. For real—I’m camping at a mini golf! They have a designated area behind the parking area for guests, and I pull in beside a white Sprinter van. There’s a seafood restaurant across the street, so I walk over and stand in the long line to order clam cakes, a New England specialty I’ve never tried.

The meal is okay, but the beer and ice cream I buy from Schooner’s to support them for my stay is better. I want so badly to play a round of putt putt, but playing by myself seems lame and lonely. So I call Larry and fill him in on the rest of my day while listening to awesome 80s music playing from the putt putt speakers.

Before I know it, it’s 10 p.m. The sun sets so late in these northern latitudes! The putt putt place has long since closed, but they’ve turned off the music and left the bathrooms open for Harvest Hosts guests (so kind!). I crawl into bed around 11 p.m. and can barely keep my eyes open to glance at the next day’s driving route and where I’ll cross the border into Canada! 🇨🇦