I’ll now continue where I finished on the last post. At the end I’ve stayed in Halifax two weeks and meet with pretty much everyone I wanted and who wanted to meet with me. It felt good to be back for a bit as I still consider the city as one of my hometowns. The main reason, I stayed so long was a tent I ordered online and it took a bit longer for it to arrive.
Halifax Waterfront
For Monday 30th I managed to get a rideshare on Pop a ride which will take me up to Montreal, then I got another one from there to Ottawa and since there I was able to hitchhike across Ontario and get up to Thunder Bay. Here I stayed in The Heaven Hostel and I have to say I liked the city as well as this new hostel which is super nice place to stay.
To get here I got ride by 11 people and I think that hitchhiking is not so difficult here. Sometimes I walk for some time but overall, it’s positive experience and most of the times I didn’t need to wait long. In front of me there is about another 4,000 kilometers and if I could keep it this way I’d like to get at least for some time to Yukon.
I want to mention that around Lake Superior there are many great spots for camping and I found amazing place in Carden Cove close to Marathon and even though I needed to walk some six kilometers it was definitely worth the effort. Also, I spotted a moose after many days when seeing only a sign to be alert that they live in the area.
After a long time, I’m on a longer trip and there are some people which are interested to know about it and how I’m doing. Thus, I’m going to write a little bit again something here and maybe add some notes from previous trips which I wanted to write but didn’t feel for it yet.
Now to the current adventure. I’ve managed to get a longer vacation from a work and on July I went to Prague to catch a direct flight to Montreal. Here at the airport I got picked up by my friend who will accompanied me for this part of the trip.
First of all, we looked a bit around Montreal but since he had also a vacation we booked a small pickup for trip north. In the morning once we got to the rental company we’ve learned that we got a Nissan Titan which is much bigger then what we expected but I always wanted to try to drive one of these and now I got the chance. We were heading towards a Mount Tremblant where we had checked it around and had accommodation by Airbnb next to a beautiful lake. We though that we might kemp in the provincial park there but since it wasn’t something we planned at the beginning and didn’t bring any food along we realized it won’t be possible since park stores did not really have anything to eat what we could use.
So, we returned to Montreal and next day went east towards Sherbrooke, where it is also really nice and in Bromont we hiked the local hill to see more around. I have to say the view from the top was not worth the effort, but in the area, they have really nice single treks and also an aquapark. Both looked pretty good.
Then we returned to the city to work a little bit and go to another trip to Ottawa, where we checked surroundings and the city and met with friends which lives there now. We stayed the night with them and then went to check another provincial park on a way to Toronto. I wanted to meet with other friends living there. On a way we went to Petroglyph park where they should have the highest number of petroglyphs on a single place in Canada. We both enjoyed this park and the beautiful places which offers as much as mosquitoes enjoyed our blood 😊
However, now I’m on my own as I took a train to Halifax to visit friends and all these beautiful places I got to know when I lived here.
So after a while, I’m going to write here something new. This time about a trip to Iceland, where I get with friends, which planned it for a while, so I was happy they offered me to join them. We drove around on a road with distinctive name – Ring Road. We had great time and did our best to see as much as possible.
For this trip we rented compact cars, so we couldn’t go inland, those roads require all-wheel-drive and also much more time. We had about nine days and even though it seems quite a lot, there are so many places to see and things to do that you can easily spend a month and not get bored. We had probably pretty common weather as there is saying on Iceland, that if you don’t like current weather, you need to wait five minutes and it will change :-). Anyway, we didn’t complained about it at all as there were great and sunny days and all uf us had a great time.
Below this article is a video and photos from this trip so you can get idea, how it looks over there. Now, I’m going to highlight what I consider as the best of what we saw and did and I wouldn’t miss those on visit.
I really liked Gullfos, one of the most famous waterfalls at Iceland since it is close to Reykjavik. On way there we also saw Geysir, which gave name to all the geysers around the world, but it’s not active any more. There are still several active like Strokkur which is impressive, but like his colleagues at Yellowstone, I wound’t need to see it again.
Next place definitely worth recommendation is smoking valley at Hveragerdi. There you can walk through many places with geothermal activities and bath in warm mountain stream for free.
I wouldn’t skip another waterfall called Seljalandsfoss. It’s specific for it’s walkway behind it and even though it does not have the mightiness of others, it is a spectacular view. Nearby is way bigger Skogafoss fall with lovely surroundings.
Also, I liked hike up to summit of mount Kristinartindar and view from the top to glaciers and park Skaftafell. Further north is then the mightiest waterfall on Iceland, Dettifoss. The only way to it is by dirt-road but this one is also made for standard car. There from height of 44 meters fall between 200 to 500 m3 of water per second (this depends on season and especially in summer it has the most thanks to melting glacier upstream).
Then in Husavik we went for sailing and saw a few whales and puffins, again something I would recommend to do once you are there. Husavik is the world best place to watch whales and get close to them. Nearby lake Mytvatn and surrounding area is full of geothermal activities and its remains, you can see it referred as all of Iceland in one place. Also, there can be a lot of black flies and mosquitoes but we had windy weather and no trouble :-).
Another amazing place is waterfall Godafoss where we had dramatic weather, but I wasn’t able to get it on my pictures, you have to see it yourself.
A few last places were Snaefellsens peninsula and waterfalls Glymur and Hraunfossar. I don’t think I need to describe exactly what to see and do as there are many other and better sources of that on the Internet.
In last days we checked the Iceland capital and only big city Reykjavik, where a third of the population of the island live.
I’ve finally finished subtitles for short movie from the trip and published it. You can see it below.
Also to fill the gap from my last port I’m going to write a bit what happened once I stopped traveling. I had a flight home on December 13th so I still had over a month in Canada and I filled it up with meetings with friends and visiting places in Nova Scotia which I liked a lot. Also I sold my stuff which I didn’t plan to bring back to Europe and my roomies didn’t need. One of them was my car and that I sold for only $ 1,500 as that was the best offer I got. It served me well and took me everywhere where I wanted. I hope it will do a good service to new owner as well.
To sum up the whole trip I have to say I liked the most Yukon and Alaska because of the wonderful wilderness and nature there. The biggest disappointment is for me Yellowstone, probably I expected too much and we had bad weather once we were there as well. I’m saying that seeing it once was enough for me :-). The car was amazing that it stayed together without big issues whole time.
Now I’m back in Europe so my next posts are probably going to be from the good old continent.
So as I said in previous article we had visited the last planned park and now we were heading to Florida. First we stopped at Durango where they had Octoberfest and it had a great atmosphere and good local craft beers and local bands were playing. Then we stopped at Santa Fe to see it a bit and Cadillac Ranch near to Amarillo in Texas. In Amarillo then we went to famous Big Texan Stake Restaurant but haven’t challenged the 72 oz steak which you can eat for free if you will be able to eat it under one hour. Current best time is under five mites but we rather tried other smaller steaks and they were delicious. Then we visited also a French Quarter of New Orleans with its beautiful architecture and went on.
French Quarter
We drove around a coast up to Pensacola where we entered Florida state and go to the camp we found near city at Grassy Point. On the way there we used Google navigation but once it tried to navigate us through some 4×4 park were we didn’t stand chances we rather took normal road. Following day then we visited Pensacola Naval Base where is National Naval Aviation Museum and their display were great. It was similar to one in Seattle just smaller and more focused on Marine and this one has free entrance. Also we went to see remaining of Fort Pickens which used to protect the port and base and played a part in the Civil War.
Then we drove around coast to east to reach Atlantic coast but weather wasn’t so great and we just saw a bit of Daytona Beach and then went in direction to Orlando.
In Orlando we wanted to visit a theme park as there are several options and as we wanted one with roller coasters we choose Universal Studios where we had a great time and were sorry we didn’t get up earlier to enjoy more attractions. Then we finished great day at movie Bridge of Spies which we liked as well.
And on following day we headed towards city of Naples where we checked their beaches and then drove through Everglades where National Park Services are taking care of original Florida swaps where are living also American Alligators and we finally saw some. Later we drove through Florida Keys to the southernmost point of continental US and swam at Key West beach.
Alligator
From here it started the journey north, first night we spent at Homestead and then we spent two days near Miami at Miami Beach, Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale and then we split. My friend stayed there for several more days before flying to Hawaii and I continued north to Halifax.
Drive from Florida to Halifax took me only four days as it was raining most of the time and I haven’t enjoyed alone so much anyway. So I circled Washington, DC, then saw a bit of Philadelphia and then drove through Manhattan and cursed myself for not going around as I couldn’t see much anyway and there were so many cars everywhere. Then I continued on Interstate 95 up to New London where I turned to 395 to circle wide Bosto which I saw last year with my parents.
Once I joined the 95 again later I drove without any problem up to Portland where on a way to car parts shop where I wanted to buy part to fix my car shifter. Here I went over some glass on a road which cut through my front left tire about 7 centimetres hole and I had to buy a new tire to finish my trip. Unfortunately they didn’t had the same I have on my car and as I found later in Canadian Tire they are not being made for a few month. At least due to protection plan I get when I bought them last year I get original price for that tire back.
