Post by luvmyjeep on Aug 11, 2012 16:52:11 GMT -4
Hi everyone:
I did up this post for another forum called Fordification, which is a board for '67 to '72 F-Series truck owners, so that's why there are a lot of camper pics in it. Also, the camper is what really made this trip for us, so it's a really big part of the great memories. There are regular scenery pics thrown in there too though.
A couple of weeks ago we just returned from a 5-day, 1400-km trip to Cape Breton with our '71 bump RV. We visited some friends and relatives in Judique, and drove around the Cabot Trail. Jeff has never been to Cape Breton in his life so this was a whole new experience for him.
We were supposed to have a tune-up and electronic ignition installed before the trip, but we ended up getting Malcolm to do a brake job instead so he didn't have time for the tune-up. There were only two instances that the truck "hiccuped" so to speak. It started hesitating/losing power, and sounded like it backfired through the carb. It only happened twice, and lasted for a couple of seconds each time, then seemed to fix itself. That was the first and second day. Then for the next three days, it never did it again and worked flawlessly. We only averaged 8.5 mpg, but we were driving through mountains 50% of the time and hauling a full tank of water, and like I said we never had our tune-up and electronic ignition done before we left. Gas was the only thing we spent money on for the next five days. We didn't stay in campgrounds - we "boondocked" at beautiful seaside spots we found, and cooked all of our food in the camper.
We had a great system for the fridge. We didn't want to run the propane fridge while driving (could be dangerous if an accident happened) and we'd have to shut it off every time we got gas. So we got some of those gel freezer packs. We started the RV fridge the night before the trip so it was nice and cold by morning. Then when we departed, we shut the propane off and put the frozen gel packs in the main fridge. When we got to our first boondocking spot, 8 or so hours later, the freezer packs were still frozen and the fridge nice and cold. We'd then start up the fridge, and put the gel packs back in the freezer, and repeated the process when we hit the road every day. It was a great system.
We filled our 20-gallon water tank before we left home, and we just started to run out of water on Day #5 on the way home. For any who might be wondering, the dry weight of the entire rig is 7220 lbs.
People were worried about us going on a trip like this in a 41-year-old rig. They were worried if the truck would have enough power to climb the mountains....they were worried if the brakes were powerful enough to slow it down coming down the mountains. We were concerned about power too at first, as we originally thought the truck had a 360 in it (the air cleaner lid said 360). The VIN said it was supposed to have a 390. By using the info on Fordification, I found that the engine could be ID'd by a metal tag on the coil bracket. I found it, cleaned it off, and sure enough it said 390. So now we felt a bit better about it having enough power to climb the mountains. About the brakes, I contacted a fellow '70 Scamper owner in Alberta and asked him about the brakes. He said these rigs have really big brakes on them, and as long as the pads were good we should have no problems going though the mountains. He's had his through the Rocky Mountains without any issues. The truck has the optional front disk brakes too, and we replaced the calipers and pads before the trip. We dropped to lower gears on the hills and had plenty of power climbing and good engine braking on descending, and the brakes worked great - no brake fade whatsoever. The truck has a 3-speed C6 auto transmission with a transmission cooler. Just for extra peace of mind, we purchased CAA RV before the trip.
I thought you all might enjoy seeing some pics of our trip.
This first pic is at Auld's Cove, just before we cross the causeway to Cape Breton. We got to see pilot whales breaching here and chasing baitfish as well as Northern Gannets diving for mackerel.
Look at Jeff - he's so excited! lol
Jeff and I:
This was a fly-fishing trip too. Fly rods and fly boxes stowed perfectly above the dinette area.
Waders and fly vests hung from the bathroom door:
The beautiful Margaree River, but too low to fish:
Visited the Salmon Museum in Margaree:
Found a fly reel in the museum that is exactly the same as my grandfather's reel that I currently fish with. Here's a combo pic showing the museum reel on the top and my grandfather's reel on the bottom.
These next four pics are on Cheticamp Island:
Black Guillemot with a Rock Gunnel (taken by Jeff):
Heading down off the hill of Cheticamp Island:
This is the little shed and lobster traps at the bottom of the hill you can see in the previous pic.
Various pics from on the Cabot Trail:
One of our boondock sites. This one was in Pleasant Bay:
Next morning. Nothing like fresh perked coffee!
Back on the trail:
The Lone Shieling:
We stopped at bridge over the North Aspy River.
We had a peek over the bridge, and saw these guys:
So a'fishin' we will go!
And they were bitin'! We each caught three good sized brookies.
We usually practice catch and release, but we were getting low on supper food so we decided to keep a couple and fry them up for supper.
We didn't have a creel. lol
This is a little further up the Bay St. Lawrence Road.
Bay St. Lawrence:
Mary-Ann's Falls. The road to Mary-Ann's Falls was where Jeff got to see his first moose. After we were leaving the falls, I started feeling sick after eating a Joe Louis. I decided to crawl up into the bunk and lay down for a bit before we hit the road again, hoping my stomach would settle down. The sun was going down and Jeff was concerned about finding a boondock site before dark, so I told him to drive and I'd just stay up in the bunk. BAD IDEA!!!! As soon as the RV started to shake rattle and roll, my stomach couldn't take it and I yelled for him to pull over and I ran outside and puked my guts up. I immediately felt better afterwards. Right after we started to roll again, a big female moose runs out onto the road in front of us. She quickly ran back in though, no time for pics. If I never had of gotten sick, we probably would have missed the moose so maybe everything happens for a reason! lol
Stopped at Jigging Cove Lake in the hopes of finding some moose, but none were to be found. I have had good luck in the past at this lake for moose.
Next boondocking site was right on a beach in Ingonish.
Woke up to this:
There was an insane amount of purple jellyfish though, so not a good beach for swimming at!
The wharf and Cape Smokey Ski Hill in the background:
Lots of cool sea life off the wharf:
North Bay Ingonish Beach. This is on the opposite side of the Bay to where we boondocked last night.
Stopped at the Ingonish Beach park for an ice cream, and parked behind another Class C RV. The two rigs are probably 40 years apart!
Keltic Lodge:
Gas station in Ingonish:
Back on the trail. Cape Smokey Provincial Park:
Heading down Cape Smokey:
This is where you want good brakes!
We got a tip that there were some salmon in a pool about a 45-min walk down the North River trail. We decided to go for it. First, we pulled over to make some lunch and tie up some streamer leaders:
The North River:
This is Jeff excitedly walking to the salmon pool:
Good thing we ran into a couple of guys who explained exactly where the pool was, or we would have gone the wrong way no doubt. There are ruins of an old farm back there, the MacLean Farm. When you get to the sign you're supposed to go left. If you go to the right, it leads to North River Falls. But that's a 6km hike.
Another guy decided to tag along with us. This is Jeff with his new fishing buddy:
Here are some of the salmon in the pool. After fishing for awhile and no action from the fish, I decided to try and get a pic of them. They were probably spooked. It was a fairly small pool, and the guy with us may have spooked them with a splashy lure - he had first cast (he was First Nations so he was allowed to fish with spinning gear).
Couple of more shots of the river:
Bear scratches along the trail:
Last day, back on the mainland now at Cape George, Nova Scotia:
The lighthouse at Cape George:
Arisag Lighthouse:
Rock Gunnels at Arisag:
Melmerby Beach, New Glasgow:
We had such a fantastic time on our trip, we're doing it again next week. This will be mainly a fishing trip though more so than sight-seeing. The tune-up has been done now so we're hoping we might get 10mpg. lol We love our old RV so much we wouldn't trade it even if someone offered to trade it for a new one!
Cindy
I did up this post for another forum called Fordification, which is a board for '67 to '72 F-Series truck owners, so that's why there are a lot of camper pics in it. Also, the camper is what really made this trip for us, so it's a really big part of the great memories. There are regular scenery pics thrown in there too though.
A couple of weeks ago we just returned from a 5-day, 1400-km trip to Cape Breton with our '71 bump RV. We visited some friends and relatives in Judique, and drove around the Cabot Trail. Jeff has never been to Cape Breton in his life so this was a whole new experience for him.
We were supposed to have a tune-up and electronic ignition installed before the trip, but we ended up getting Malcolm to do a brake job instead so he didn't have time for the tune-up. There were only two instances that the truck "hiccuped" so to speak. It started hesitating/losing power, and sounded like it backfired through the carb. It only happened twice, and lasted for a couple of seconds each time, then seemed to fix itself. That was the first and second day. Then for the next three days, it never did it again and worked flawlessly. We only averaged 8.5 mpg, but we were driving through mountains 50% of the time and hauling a full tank of water, and like I said we never had our tune-up and electronic ignition done before we left. Gas was the only thing we spent money on for the next five days. We didn't stay in campgrounds - we "boondocked" at beautiful seaside spots we found, and cooked all of our food in the camper.
We had a great system for the fridge. We didn't want to run the propane fridge while driving (could be dangerous if an accident happened) and we'd have to shut it off every time we got gas. So we got some of those gel freezer packs. We started the RV fridge the night before the trip so it was nice and cold by morning. Then when we departed, we shut the propane off and put the frozen gel packs in the main fridge. When we got to our first boondocking spot, 8 or so hours later, the freezer packs were still frozen and the fridge nice and cold. We'd then start up the fridge, and put the gel packs back in the freezer, and repeated the process when we hit the road every day. It was a great system.
We filled our 20-gallon water tank before we left home, and we just started to run out of water on Day #5 on the way home. For any who might be wondering, the dry weight of the entire rig is 7220 lbs.
People were worried about us going on a trip like this in a 41-year-old rig. They were worried if the truck would have enough power to climb the mountains....they were worried if the brakes were powerful enough to slow it down coming down the mountains. We were concerned about power too at first, as we originally thought the truck had a 360 in it (the air cleaner lid said 360). The VIN said it was supposed to have a 390. By using the info on Fordification, I found that the engine could be ID'd by a metal tag on the coil bracket. I found it, cleaned it off, and sure enough it said 390. So now we felt a bit better about it having enough power to climb the mountains. About the brakes, I contacted a fellow '70 Scamper owner in Alberta and asked him about the brakes. He said these rigs have really big brakes on them, and as long as the pads were good we should have no problems going though the mountains. He's had his through the Rocky Mountains without any issues. The truck has the optional front disk brakes too, and we replaced the calipers and pads before the trip. We dropped to lower gears on the hills and had plenty of power climbing and good engine braking on descending, and the brakes worked great - no brake fade whatsoever. The truck has a 3-speed C6 auto transmission with a transmission cooler. Just for extra peace of mind, we purchased CAA RV before the trip.
I thought you all might enjoy seeing some pics of our trip.
This first pic is at Auld's Cove, just before we cross the causeway to Cape Breton. We got to see pilot whales breaching here and chasing baitfish as well as Northern Gannets diving for mackerel.
Look at Jeff - he's so excited! lol
Jeff and I:
This was a fly-fishing trip too. Fly rods and fly boxes stowed perfectly above the dinette area.
Waders and fly vests hung from the bathroom door:
The beautiful Margaree River, but too low to fish:
Visited the Salmon Museum in Margaree:
Found a fly reel in the museum that is exactly the same as my grandfather's reel that I currently fish with. Here's a combo pic showing the museum reel on the top and my grandfather's reel on the bottom.
These next four pics are on Cheticamp Island:
Black Guillemot with a Rock Gunnel (taken by Jeff):
Heading down off the hill of Cheticamp Island:
This is the little shed and lobster traps at the bottom of the hill you can see in the previous pic.
Various pics from on the Cabot Trail:
One of our boondock sites. This one was in Pleasant Bay:
Next morning. Nothing like fresh perked coffee!
Back on the trail:
The Lone Shieling:
We stopped at bridge over the North Aspy River.
We had a peek over the bridge, and saw these guys:
So a'fishin' we will go!
And they were bitin'! We each caught three good sized brookies.
We usually practice catch and release, but we were getting low on supper food so we decided to keep a couple and fry them up for supper.
We didn't have a creel. lol
This is a little further up the Bay St. Lawrence Road.
Bay St. Lawrence:
Mary-Ann's Falls. The road to Mary-Ann's Falls was where Jeff got to see his first moose. After we were leaving the falls, I started feeling sick after eating a Joe Louis. I decided to crawl up into the bunk and lay down for a bit before we hit the road again, hoping my stomach would settle down. The sun was going down and Jeff was concerned about finding a boondock site before dark, so I told him to drive and I'd just stay up in the bunk. BAD IDEA!!!! As soon as the RV started to shake rattle and roll, my stomach couldn't take it and I yelled for him to pull over and I ran outside and puked my guts up. I immediately felt better afterwards. Right after we started to roll again, a big female moose runs out onto the road in front of us. She quickly ran back in though, no time for pics. If I never had of gotten sick, we probably would have missed the moose so maybe everything happens for a reason! lol
Stopped at Jigging Cove Lake in the hopes of finding some moose, but none were to be found. I have had good luck in the past at this lake for moose.
Next boondocking site was right on a beach in Ingonish.
Woke up to this:
There was an insane amount of purple jellyfish though, so not a good beach for swimming at!
The wharf and Cape Smokey Ski Hill in the background:
Lots of cool sea life off the wharf:
North Bay Ingonish Beach. This is on the opposite side of the Bay to where we boondocked last night.
Stopped at the Ingonish Beach park for an ice cream, and parked behind another Class C RV. The two rigs are probably 40 years apart!
Keltic Lodge:
Gas station in Ingonish:
Back on the trail. Cape Smokey Provincial Park:
Heading down Cape Smokey:
This is where you want good brakes!
We got a tip that there were some salmon in a pool about a 45-min walk down the North River trail. We decided to go for it. First, we pulled over to make some lunch and tie up some streamer leaders:
The North River:
This is Jeff excitedly walking to the salmon pool:
Good thing we ran into a couple of guys who explained exactly where the pool was, or we would have gone the wrong way no doubt. There are ruins of an old farm back there, the MacLean Farm. When you get to the sign you're supposed to go left. If you go to the right, it leads to North River Falls. But that's a 6km hike.
Another guy decided to tag along with us. This is Jeff with his new fishing buddy:
Here are some of the salmon in the pool. After fishing for awhile and no action from the fish, I decided to try and get a pic of them. They were probably spooked. It was a fairly small pool, and the guy with us may have spooked them with a splashy lure - he had first cast (he was First Nations so he was allowed to fish with spinning gear).
Couple of more shots of the river:
Bear scratches along the trail:
Last day, back on the mainland now at Cape George, Nova Scotia:
The lighthouse at Cape George:
Arisag Lighthouse:
Rock Gunnels at Arisag:
Melmerby Beach, New Glasgow:
We had such a fantastic time on our trip, we're doing it again next week. This will be mainly a fishing trip though more so than sight-seeing. The tune-up has been done now so we're hoping we might get 10mpg. lol We love our old RV so much we wouldn't trade it even if someone offered to trade it for a new one!
Cindy