Argentia ferry terminal → Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve
Argentia ferry terminal to Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve
- Drive time
- 1h 13m
- Distance
- 71.2 km
- Routes
- 100
Conservative model estimate, Argentia ferry terminal to Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve — no stops, dry roads. Many of Newfoundland's provincial routes carry no speed limit in the open map data, so the router assumes a slow default: a driver who knows the road will beat this. Source: OSRM driving profile, Argentia ferry terminal to Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve, checked 2026-09-21.
Drive it with your own nav:Organic Maps →OsmAnd →Apple →Google →Waze →The first two run on OpenStreetMap and don't track you — the same map this site is built from.
No one has sent a recording of this drive yet.Be the first — send the track →
This is the shortest drive on this site from any arrival point to Cape St. Mary’s, and it exists because of where the boat puts you. Route 100 leaves Argentia, runs through Placentia, and then follows the Cape Shore south with the water on your right for most of an hour.
What is at the end of it is the province’s to describe, and it does: in its own words, one of the most spectacular and easily viewed nesting seabird colonies in the world, where a footpath over coastal barrens reaches a cliff-top facing Bird Rock and the Northern gannets that nest on it, watched from land with no boat involved.
The reason the page is worth having is the comparison. Cape St. Mary’s is 2h47 from St. John’s airport, 4h52 from Gander and 8h40 from Deer Lake. From the ferry terminal it is 1h13 — less than half the nearest airport — and anyone who crossed on the boat has their own car already ashore. A door is not a label on a map; it is a different set of answers to the question of what you can reach today.
You arrive by ferry — North Sydney, Nova Scotia to Argentia
Argentia is one of two places a Marine Atlantic crossing lands on this island, and it is the one that puts you on the Avalon with your own car already ashore.
Operated by Marine Atlantic. The drive below starts where the boat lands.
Crossings & current schedule →Worth stopping for
Castle Hill National Historic SiteDetour
A Parks Canada site on the hill above Placentia, ten minutes into the drive. Parks Canada's own page describes the remnants of a stone fort, and invites visitors to imagine "cannons and muskets blazing as British and French forces battled on the shores of Newfoundland, vying for control of a lucrative fishery" in the 18th century — a chapter it says "determined the fate of a continent". What is open and when is Parks Canada's to publish, not this page's.
Stopping here adds about 7 min and 1.8 km to the drive.
navigate: Organic · OsmAnd · Apple · Google · WazeO'Reilly House Museum
A museum in Placentia itself, effectively on the road through town. OpenStreetMap records it as a museum and carries the Placentia Area Historical Society's own site as its link; what it holds and when it opens are theirs to say.
Stopping here adds about 2 min and 0.4 km to the drive.
navigate: Organic · OsmAnd · Apple · Google · WazeGooseberry Cove Provincial Park
A provincial park on the Cape Shore, about halfway down and barely off the road at all. The open map records the name and that it is a protected area, and nothing else — ParksNL publishes its season and what operates there.
Stopping here adds about 1 min and 0.1 km to the drive.
navigate: Organic · OsmAnd · Apple · Google · Waze
Doing it electric
- Fast chargers on this drive
- none
- Longest stretch without one
- 71 km
- the ARG door → Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve, of 71 km driven
- Nearest fast charger to Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve
- 111.9 km
- 1h 45m by road, at Whitbourne
Source: NL Hydro's published fast-charging network map, exported 2026-09-13 — sites within 3 km of this route's measured line, the km read along it, the drive to the nearest site priced by OSRM. NL Hydro lists these as 62.5 kW DC with CCS and CHAdeMO plugs on a ChargePoint account; whether one is free or working right now is the app's to say. Level 2 chargers in towns are not counted.
Paved or not, per the map
- Mapped as unpaved
- none
- Mapped as paved
- 100%
- 70.3 km of 71.2 km driven
- No surface tag on the map
- 0%
- 0.2 km the map does not describe either way
Why it matters: Hertz Canada’s published rental terms — the one set of Canadian rental terms we could read in full, quoted not recommended — list “use off paved roads or on roads which are not regularly maintained” as misconduct that voids the damage waiver. Read the agreement you sign before leaving the lot. The terms themselves. Source for these figures: OSRM driving profile, stored route query, with node annotations; OpenStreetMap surface tags from a local Geofabrik extract (Overpass unreachable), checked 2026-09-21. A road with no tag is unknown, not paved; what any road is like today is on 511.
Before you go
These change. We link the people who keep them current rather than copying numbers that go stale here.
Provincial parksSeasonal — typically late spring into the fall
Gooseberry Cove is a ParksNL site with dates that move year to year; ParksNL publishes them park by park.
Check it now →The reserveTypically the warmer months — the dates are the reserve's
Cape St. Mary's is a provincial ecological reserve with a staffed interpretive centre, and the season it keeps is published on its own page, which is where to read it — this page prints no date that moves. That page is also where the reserve tells visitors to check current weather and trail conditions before setting out, which matters here: it describes the cape as often foggy, windy and wet.
Check it now →MooseYear round, worst between dusk and dawn
The province states it plainly: the likelihood of injury in a moose collision is twice as high between dusk and dawn as in daytime. Route 100 down the Cape Shore is unlit two-lane road for nearly all of its length, and a boat that docks in the evening puts you on it in the dark.
Check it now →Road conditionsYear round, matters most November–April
This is a single coastal road with no alternative for most of its length. Check before you leave the terminal.
Check it now →
Questions people actually ask
How far is Cape St. Mary's from the Argentia ferry terminal?＋
About 71 km — roughly 1 hour 13 minutes, almost all of it Route 100 down the Cape Shore.
Which door is nearest to Cape St. Mary's?＋
Argentia, and it is not close. From the ferry terminal it is 1 hour 13 minutes. From St. John's airport it is 2 hours 47, from Gander 4 hours 52, and from Deer Lake 8 hours 40. If you are crossing on the boat anyway, this is the shortest run to Cape St. Mary's available from any arrival point on the island.
Is there anywhere worth stopping on the way?＋
Three, and two of them are in Placentia near the start: Castle Hill National Historic Site on the hill above the town, and the O'Reilly House Museum in it. Gooseberry Cove Provincial Park sits about halfway down the Cape Shore, barely off the road.
Is the drive from Argentia to Cape St. Mary's a hard one?＋
No. It is paved and it is a single road most of the way, which is its own kind of simplicity — Route 100 goes where you are going. It is unlit two-lane coastal road, so the hour you dock decides whether you drive it in daylight.
Put this map on your site
If you run a place to stay, a tour, or a town page along this drive, this map answers the question your guests already email you: how far are you from the airport? Free, no account, and the measured figures stay current because they are ours to maintain.
<iframe src="https://fromtheairport.xyz/embed/arg-cape-st-marys"
width="100%" height="420" style="border:0" loading="lazy"
title="Driving route: Argentia ferry terminal to Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve"></iframe>?lat=&lon=&label= to the URL to pin your own property on the map.Every distance, drive time and coordinate on this page was checked against its source on September 21, 2026. Origin: OpenStreetMap node/605220569 — Argentia. Destination: OpenStreetMap way/125454481 — Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve.