Would the 12 days planned allow enough time to do all the routes you wanted if the weather cooperated?
Canadian FJR
Depends entirely on how much stopping vs how much riding. On a solo trip, I tend to stay on the bike most of the time so 12 days is enough to ride all of the routes. On the other hand, if you want to stop and explore, eat at various restaurants, take a lot of photos etc., then this really isn't enough time to cover all of it. (I am including some stuff that I am sure you know but might be of interest to others). Wouldn't be hard to spend three weeks instead of one and a half. It is a big place!
Camping vs motelling vs B&B? Doing walks/hikes? Tours (whale watching etc.)? Visiting historical sites (especially St. John's)? Museums? Talking to people?
The next time I go, I intend to only visit a couple of regions and plan to stay in just a couple of campgrounds for a few days each in order to do day trips and get a better flavor of these places. I have seen pretty much everything with at least a once-over and realize that I am missing a lot, at least in some locations. I found myself at a small village at the end of a long out-and-back from the highway and realized that there were three or four side roads that I would like to have explored if I had the time. This might be a suitable "get acquainted" tour to see what you really wanted to do for a return trip at a later time.
For someone doing a first trip, I would suggest that they might want to cover several regions but don't attempt to cover what I did this trip. Impossible to do it justice in less than 3-4 weeks, especially if it is all new to you and especially if you are not likely to get back again. It is a fairly big deal to get there for those who are not familiar with the area. North Sydney is 400 km from the Nova Scotia border via the quickest route and I would recommend a couple of alternatives that are far more interesting. I take the overnight ferry from N. Sydney to Port aux Basques on the southwest coast. Coast to coast in the province is 900 km and you won't see anything if you do it that way. Everything is a ride off the highway and back and there is only one major highway across the province. There is another ferry that runs on a less frequent schedule to the eastern side of Newfoundland (Argentia) but this is a much longer run and quite a bit more expensive. (Some people take one ferry going over and the other one coming back - I usually do Port aux Basques in both directions)
Over the next few days, I am going to try to put together a bit of a ride report for this trip but I don't have a lot of pictures besides the ones that are embedded in the Spotwalla link.
