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Today is the last day of our road trip. After spending the evening in Gander with Dominique’s family, we will finally return to our home in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The drive will take approximately 3.5 hours, the map is below:
It was a fantastic road trip, as was living in California for the past 2+ years. Nevertheless, it will be fantastic to get home!
After spending the night on the ferry, our day today will begin early in Port aux Basques on the southwest coast of Newfoundland. After getting off the ferry, we will drive approximately 7 hours to Gander, Newfoundland where we will spend the night visiting Dominique’s family.
Here is the driving route:
World War II Memorial. Each state and US territory are represented around the circle.
View of the Washington Monument (obelisk) from the WWII memorial.
Lincoln Memorial in the distance, looking from the WWII memorial.
The Atlantic end of the WWII memorial. The Pacific is represented 180 degrees around the circle.
Us outside the Lincoln Memorial and standing along the reflecting pool.
The (George) Washington Monument
View of the reflecting pool, gardens and the Washington Monument (obelisk) from the Lincoln Memorial
Abe Lincoln Statue - Amazing detail in the stone carving!
Us at the Lincoln Memorial
The Lincoln Memorial Building
Beautiful autumn colours in the trees around the Lincoln Memorial
The White House - Rear Garden view. I think this may be the oval office on the top floor, but I am not sure.
Garden at the rear of the White House.
The front of the White House - 1600 Pennsylvania Ave at dusk. You can't see him in the picture, but there was a secret service officer standing on the front steps.
One of the more amusing comments left by a visitor 
Today we have to drive from Moncton, New Brunswick, to North Sydney, Nova Scotia where we will catch an overnight ferry to Newfoundland. Today’s drive should be nice and easy, one of the shortest routes we’ve driven on the entire trip. In should only take about 5 hours of driving to get to the ferry, and we don’t need to be there until late tonight – the ferry leaves Nova Scotia at 11:30pm and takes anywhere from 6-8 hours to get to Newfoundland – so today should be a much more relaxed day. We will arrive on the island early tomorrow morning.
The driving route is as follows, note that I’ve included the ferry route as well, obviously we won’t be driving on the bottom of the ocean!
Today will be a bittersweet day, as we leave the USA and cross the border back into Canada. It will be a busy day, as we have a few errands to run before leaving the US, we have to stop at both USA and Canada customs to deal with exporting our car from the USA and then importing it into Canada, not to mention we have at least 8 hours of driving besides. We will be driving from Portland, Maine to Moncton, New Brunswick where we will stop for the night to visit with friends. It will be great to be back in Canada, but we will surely miss the USA.
Here’s our route for today:
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Today we are heading north for the Canadian border, in as direct a path as possible. We’re actually not sure where we will stop for the night, we had originally figured it would take another 2 nights in the USA before crossing the border, but are now thinking we may be able to cross Tuesday afternoon, depending on how well we do with the driving tomorrow. Our route tomorrow will take us through some heavy traffic areas, especially outside New York and the New Jersey turnpike. We’ll see how it goes!
Here is roughly the route we will follow to the border:
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Today we are heading to Washington, D.C. for what is likely to be our last significant sightseeing stop before we cross over the border back into Canada. Our stop in Harrisonburg, Virginia last night put us only 2.5 hours outside Washington, D.C. so we hope to make it into the city before lunch and spend the afternoon seeing a few of the major sights. It should be an interesting day seeing the nation’s capital city.
Here is our driving route for today:
We’re safe and sound in Virginia after driving just over 550 miles today. We were both feeling great today after our day of rest in Nashville and made it a little farther than originally planned, stopping for the night in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
The scenery today driving through Tennessee and Virginia was beautiful, breathtaking even. Right now, autumn is in full swing in the Tennessee hills and the trees are every shade of yellow, red and orange. The colours are even more striking than we are used to seeing in Canada, as here there are very few evergreen trees – nearly every tree has changed colour for the season. As we drove along, the leaves were steadily falling from the trees and drifting into the highway creating whirlwind leaf effects, not unlike driving through a snowstorm except much more colourful! As we moved further north, we passed many small farm towns, which were quite beautiful in their rustic charm.
Here are a few photos taken on our drive Northeast today, I hope they help you appreciate the beautiful scenery:
Downtown Nashville. The historic Ryman Auditorium is the brick a-framed building center-left.
Country Music Hall of Fame. The windows are like the black keys on a piano.
Union Station. A 100+ year old restored train station - now a hotel.
Nashville Music City
Downtown Nashville at Dusk
Hard Rock Cafe Nashville. Notice the acoustic guitar.
Jack's BBQ, where we had a fantastic southern meal
Cowgirl D
Inside the Ryman Auditorium, looking across the balcony. The building is more than 100 years old and a national historic site. The Grand Old Opry started in this building but now only broadcasts from here in the winter months, when tourism slows down so it was a great time to visit and see the show in the historic building.
Inside the Ryman Auditorium. We were seated near the front of the balcony - GREAT seats!!
Onstage at the Grand Ole Opry
Jimmy Dickens. 88 years old, quick with the music and the jokes!
Diamond Rio
Randy Owens (from the band Alabama)
Marty Stuart
Vince Gill performing his new song "Heaven"
After our lovely stop in Nashville, we’re back on the road again today, heading to Virgina with a steady day of driving ahead of us. We have a tenative stop point as Lexington, Virgina in mind but for no reason other than it sounds about the “right distance” to cover today and it’s right on the freeway. We may make it a little farther or perhaps not even quite that far depending on how the day goes. We lose another hour again today as we cross from central into the eastern time zone (1.5 hours behind Newfoundland, 3 ahead of California) so that may affect the distance we cover as well.
Here is the route we’ll be taking:
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