Clean Bin Tour: The End - Newfoundland!

Here it is - admitedly a bit late - the final installment of our cross Canada film tour!

In Newfoundland we were treated to the true local experience since Grant's cousin lives in Gander. We spent 3 nights with Paul and Nancy and their family before a great screening at the local arts and culture center. They took us around to little fishing villages and secret campfire spots, and they fed us authentic Newfie dishes like cod and moose and gave us a taste of local blueberries and bakeapples.

And then it was time to hit the road for the final few days of riding. Newfoundland is gorgeous.  Had it been the heat of August instead of the middle of September, we would have been swimming every half hour in the 'ponds' along the side of the highway, but as it was, we kept our rain gear on and focused on the hilly and windswept terrain. We camped at a lovely sheltered campsite, surrounded by trees and right on a babbling brook for our last night in the tent. Our ride in to the Saint John's region started off hilly and rainy, but ended, thankfully, flat(ish) and super sunny.

For our final screening, three government and non-profit organizations got together to host us; MMSB, NLEN, and NAACAP. The MMSB was one of our very first supporters, and they had been using our trailer as part of their educational programs for over a year, so it was pretty exciting to finish up with them. Their staff is so dedicated that one of them even let us stay at her house for two nights (thanks Ashley)! We had a great crowd and met some really passionate and inspiring people after the show who stayed to chat and share their own sustainability stories. We could hardly believe it was our 30th community screening across Canada!

You can listen to our CBC radio interview here - we were on with a bunch of sixth graders on a live call in show for a full hour!

We still had one last trip to make on our bikes. The first was out to Cape Spear, the Eastern most tip of North America (where we popped a bottle of champagne that Grant had thoughtfully snuck into his pannier).  For a grand finale, Grant's aunt put up up in a super fancy suite in the Delta for our last night - thanks Marion!

I know we always say 'it's the people', 'the people are what made this trip so great', and I wanted to share this story as an illustration of that. In Saint John's a woman working at a gift store was so impressed that we can cycled Canada that she insisted we pick out a gift for ourselves.

I tried to decline; "hundreds of people do it," I said. 

"But I met you", she insisted,"and you don't say no to a gift". We picked a colourful little house painted onto a rock by a local artist. Now that we're home, I'm glad we have it. It's our reminder that we actually did it, and it's our reminder of the kindness of strangers we met along the way.