Today was a travel day… we moved from the busy city of Halifax to the northern part of Cape Breton Island to a town called Bras D’or (gold arm) named after the inlet near us. The address of the campground says we are in North Sydney, but the map shows that town a little farther away. We had a pretty uneventful drive. We are getting the hang of kilometers and litres, and after watching these 40+ foot motorhomes trying to navigate small town gas stations, I’m really happy we are in a smaller RV. I’m sure Steve would disagree, but I guess that opposites DO attract!
While we were getting fuels this morning, I ran next door to a Tim Hortons. They have these everywhere in Canada, and I think they are like Dunkin Donuts… good coffee and donuts. I grabbed us each an apple fritter and coffee for the road. Not bad!
The campground is in a wide open grassy field next to the water which is actually quite nice. When we pulled in, our wagon master told us he needed us to unhook our tow vehicle because he was putting us in a tight space since we are small. So, as we were starting to unhook, we discovered that the battery in our truck had gone dead (the cause yet to be solved.) We couldn’t move the truck, and more RVs continued to pull in… we managed to create quite a backup. Steve has a portable charger, so after about 15 minutes or so, we could move. Our site IS narrow, and initially our wagon master had us facing the wrong direction so our hookups would have to be run under the vehicle to the other side. I informed him of that, and he said we could point the other way. Whew! So, we are tucked in between a small electrical hut and an absolutely huge motorhome. At least our slide didn’t hit the power post or the giant RV. Steve is out driving the truck as I write this trying to charge it back up. Since it’s a hybrid, we aren’t exactly sure what happened or how to be sure it won’t happen again. After Steve returned from his adventure (below) we had a world’s best burger at a little joint on the property to let Steve recover his sanity.
(Steve) well, the dead car was my doing. This new truck is a hybrid and it has no engine noise - turn it on:silence. I had to set it up for towing this morning which requires turning it on. Apparently I failed to turn it off so we dragged a dead car around for half the day. When we arrived at the campground we discovered that an electric car can do nothing without electricity - including let us unlock the doors. Thankfully there was a physical key we could use to open one door. I was able to get in and crawl in back to open the back door which let me access the battery under the back seat - after opening the hood to look for the damned thing. Who puts a battery under the back seat? FLAT! Really FLAT. Fortunately I had a charger in the RV and was able to get it started, unhook it from the RV and move it out of the way. Now what? Figured I had to get the battery charged so I’d take it for a ride. Nice way to dispel my frustration. RIGHT!
And what a ride that was. Two miles down the road I made a wrong turn and ended up on the loading ramp for the ferry to Newfoundland. Just me in four lanes of loading cars and the only way out was blocked by an RV waiting to drive onto the ferry. What luck, the ferry was loading. If not I could have been sitting in that line for several hours. So I exited - and got lost in North Sydney and drove around in circles for a while till I found the road out of town. I still needed to drive and charge the car. Off I went down the highway only to discover that the master control computer doesn’t like it when the battery goes dead. None of the interior controls - entertainment, AC, fan, etc. worked - the display was dead. But at least the car ran. So I drove along with the AC stuck on max and the fan stuck on max and the windows unable to open. It was cold! No, it was freezing! I drove about 20 miles to charge the batteries with goose bumps the size of goose eggs all over my body. My hair had goose bumps. Made it home to the RV park. Not the end of the story! Got out and proceeded to walk through a large spider web that enveloped my entire head and convinced me I had eight legged little creatures crawling all over me. So…. How was your day today?