Newfoundland Journey: Van Camping and Adventures with Craig Constantine

Moving Along talks with podcaster/blogger Craig Constantine during the final week of his and wife Tracy’s five-week Ford Transit van (“Panda”) trip across Newfoundland. Craig shares how childhood camping and Caribbean sailing—with heavy navigation and planning—shaped his approach to travel, watching his mom plan trips with paper and pencil, and why Newfoundland appealed as a place to “depressurize,” despite being more developed than expected. He explains balancing “non-negotiables” (especially prebooked ferry dates) with flexibility, using Crown land, campgrounds and the iOverlander app for overnight spots, and coping with variable terrain and weather.    Craig describes year-long preparation after buying the van, outfitting it with fold-down bed/table systems, organized crates, Starlink and a cellular booster for remote work, and on-trip improvements built from a local hardware store run. To avoid constant status updates, he built a microblog with AI that became travelog.place, and reflects on tight-space communication, driving too much and planning next year’s journey to Tuolumne Meadows near Yosemite.    00:00 Introduction to Craig Constantine 02:21 No Lighthouse 03:59 Growing Up in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania 09:59 Boondocking in Newfoundland 11:39 It's a Big Van But... 12:55 Finding the Nuts 13:25 Finding Places to Sleep 15:57 Not Much Grows Here 17:09 Planning the Trip 19:50 This Is Like a Sabbatical 20:54 The Van Named Panda 21:49 Jerry-rigging the Van  25:14 Clever Solutions: Crafting a Wall of Storage 28:20 Make It Better, Have Fun, That's the Whole Point 29:59 Pecking Order at the Campground 32:09 What You Do Defines Who You Are 34:14 You Have to Make the Ferry 35:58 Type A List Maker 39:03 From the Paper Tablet to the Travel Microblog 41:58 Builder 43:05 You Can Do This 44:38 Newfoundland Is an Hour and a Half... 45:07 Where to Next? 47:14 Any Oops? 48:31 Planning All the Problems Out of the Trip 49:06 It's Birds 50:57 Shorthand: A Different Kind of Mindfulness 53:02 Books I Didn't Touch 53:52 That's Not How the Id Works   Links https://constantine.name https://travelog.place https://temenos.place/ https://ioverlander.com/   CREDITSHost and creator: Christi CassidyContact: [email protected] by Phyllis BusellMusic by Eve’s Blue. Post-production help from Auphonic.com.Show notes written with assistance from Descript and Claude.ai. LINKS:More information and to listen to past episodes: https://movingalongpodcast.comPast episodes are here too: https://moving-along.simplecast.com/Tag and like Moving Along episodes on Facebook and Instagram