As of this post date, I am thirteen days out from leaving Calgary on my cross-Canada road trip. What an appropriate number for this topic. Dealing with setbacks or in other words rolling with the bad luck of planning for a road trip. While my experiences are pretty unique to me perhaps you’ll find some nuggets of wisdom here.

Trouble on the Atlantic

The Problem

From the very start of my planning phase, I knew that I wanted to drive to St. John’s. Even though I wasn’t going all the way to the west coast I got it in my head to go all the way to the east coast. Somehow it didn’t feel complete without seeing the Atlantic Ocean. Plus I thought the idea of taking my car on a boat was super neat. I had never been on anything bigger than a small ferry before before and so I added “Check Ferry Schedule” to my list of to-do’s. Especially since I saw a YouTuber express anxiety when they poorly planned their ticket purchase and almost didn’t make it on.

Bay Bulls, Newfoundland (2010)

I need to preface that I had no clue how long it took to get from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland, how much it cost, and I cannot emphasize this enough: how much in advance I needed to book it.

Here’s what I discovered.

Marine Atlantic has two routes leaving from North Sydney, Novia Scotia a few times per day. Destination one is Port Aux Basques, NFLD and takes around seven hours to complete. Destination two takes sixteen hours and arrives on the eastern part of NFLD near St. John’s in Argentia.

You need to pay for yourself, your car, and if you want that extra comfort: a cabin. Due to reasons I have mentioned in a previous blog, I more or less need a cabin if I want to be able to sleep, for medical reasons. If I take destination one, I have another nine to ten hour drive (without stopping) to get to St. John’s, so it’s a case of six to one, half a dozen to another.

I made up my mind that I would take the long route and get a cabin. The issue that came up though was there were no cabins available. Spending sixteen hours on a min cruise with nothing but a recliner for sleep was not an option and neither was taking the seven hour trip and driving across NFLD twice.

The Solution

As much as I hate to sat this, I may end up turning around in Nova Scotia. Don’t get me wrong, I love Newfoundland. My wife’s family is from there and when I visited years ago, I had an amazing time, including winning the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk competition for St. John’s.

The boat ride alone, assuming I take the shorter trip and drive across province both ways, plus accommodations is going to set me back a minimum $1300 for a five or six day stay. That is not even accounting for entertainment or food. That’s just the gas, the boat and the bed. By taking that leg out of my itinerary, I enrich every other day on the trip, by allowing myself more flexibility with my time and money. It’s the age old quality versus quantity.

Deep Impact

The Problem

If there is one thing that has set this trip back, it’s unforeseen and unplanned expenses. It was death by a thousand cuts, but also a couple swift, calculated swings of the axe. I could list at least twenty but I’ll just talk about the biggest one.

Shortly after I got my all-terrain tires, I was driving and decided to take a detour along a dirt road. In the past I’d spent a lot of time on unpaved highways in a 2012 Subaru Impreza with all-weathers and sometimes it felt like I was sliding around like a shuffle puck. In my new-to-me 2020 Subaru Forester Sport and A/T’s I knew the difference would be significant.

A van started coming my way and I slowed down. What I would see later on dash cam is they drove half over a rock the size of a grapefruit, causing it to lunch upward and down onto my windshield. I’m lucky it hit the top as the force likely would have sent it crashing through anywhere else. Still, I’d find bits of glass inside the car a few days later.

The long and the short of it is that after the windshield replacement, realignment of Subaru’s EyeSight System and a couple other things the dealership found (of course) I was out over $1400 CAD. This pushed back my launch date significantly.

The Lesson

Getting on the road as soon as possible was so much in the forefront of my motivations that I didn’t consider my everyday expenses, nor did I think too much of unexpected acts of god. As a photographer I tend to double up on cameras, memory cards, and backups just in case. I continue to do this even though it has been over fifteen years since I’d had a card failure. I forgot to think of my budget the same way. Even though I made painstakingly accurate calculations of my food, gas and accommodations.

Conclusion

Planning for a road trip isn’t just making an itinerary for everything you’ll do during the adventure but everything leading up to it. I spent more time figuring out what was going into my camera bag than other things that mattered more, like how I was going to get to Newfoundland. To be fair on myself if I may have come to the same conclusion no matter when I checked the schedule but because I wasn’t prepared for it, my expectations were shot. I still might go, just like even though I have sworn off travel to the US I still plan to carry my passport.

Concerning the windshield, I also had a malfunction of some kind of chim-cham-wooby-whistle that luckily was covered under warranty. If it had happened mid trip I would have panicked as half my cars functions disabled. I talk more about this on my dress rehearsal blog.

You can follow my whole process of Trans-Canada ’25 here.