Motoring to St. John's

Today was a motoring day back to the TCH and on to Saint John's. With it being the Labour Day long weekend and leaving it so late, we were unable to get a site at our first choice of campground but did at a newer campground in Mount Pearl, about a 1/2 hour drive from St. John's. 

We stopped in Clarenville at a Tourist Information Centre. The three staff were so helpful providing brochures and making several suggestions on how to approach our visit to St. John's. They loved our dashboard fixture..... you know who!😏

We also stopped for groceries at Walmart and Sobeys. (Walmart in  Newfoundland does not sell produce.) Really.

We ate lunch at a very busy  Irving Travel Centre on the TCH near Goobies Station. We drove 236 km to  the campground, Waterford River Valley and checked in  at 2:30 (our earliest stop this trip)  for two nights. It's very nice. We have Wi-fi AND t.v. reception...two channels.  Another RVing first: the laundromat is free. We were both already planning on doing laundry so a nice bonus. It was nice to have an easy afternoon to plan our visit to Saint John's.

Farewell to Jean

 The rain  ended overnight. The winds had eased somewhat  to  35 km/h but it was clear.  

We  were up at 6:00 and  at the Puffin Viewing Site in Elliston just after sunrise. There were already a few people there but we chose an area on the cliffs all to ourselves, no one else in sight. Very private. 

It was all I had hoped and envisioned it could have been. It was perfect. To quote Kathy: “Couldn’t have been any better.”  Maybe a few more puffins. I held Jean and Hunter close to my heart one last time. I heard Jean in my head saying one last time: "Don't get so close to the edge. You'll fall!!" The wind was blowing in the right direction to  send Jean and Hunter airborne off the cliff and down to the sea. Farewell dear friend. Kathy did a great job recording on my video camera. 

We walked farther out in search of the puffins. We were told there   was only about 5% of the colony still here at this time of year and those still here  were being terrorized by very aggressive  sea gulls. There were more puffins in flight than on the ground. As soon as one landed, it would duck into its burrow to escape a seagull.

 Elliston is known as the" Root Cellar Capital of the World." There are 135 in existence in the community, many still in use. 
                                          

We returned to the parking lot, ate our breakfast with the help of the generator and drove back to Bonavista to visit the Ryan Premises National Historic Site. The site is  a collection of 19th and early 20th century  heritage buildings in clapboard. The museum, housed in three buildings depicts the history of the cod fishery and story of the Ryan family and their large scale merchant operation.  The staff gave a brief introduction .The exhibits  were excellent. We learned so much  ... information overload after two hours taking it all in. Bonavista  was historically a prolific fishing community.

Kathy did some souvenir shopping in the Heritage Shop there.

We left Bonavista by Route 230 down the other side of the peninsula as far as Port Rexton, a small town where the popular Skerwink Trail is located. It is rated "One of the top 35 walks in North America" by the publication  Travel & Leisure.  Parking was at a premium along the roads  when we arrived shortly before 2:00.The 5.3 km trail is mostly coastal, moderate to difficult and features sea stacks. It was indeed very challenging and took us over two hours to do with lots of photo ops. The coastline was stunning.

 

It was almost 5:00 when we continued our drive off the peninsula and in search of a campground. We found one, Princehaven Campground,  in the small community of  Princeton. We got their last available site. The campground is on a body of water. When I asked what the name of it was, I was told it was "a pond", nameless. Well, their pond is bigger than Forest Lake. We were exhausted after a very early start and full day. We managed 90 km.

Bonavista Peninsula and Elliston

 It was only 12º when we left the park at 9:30 and continued east along the TCH to the Bonavista Peninsula.. We were soon back in a steady rain which lasted most of the day. We left the TCH and took Routes 233, 230 and 235, together known as the Discovery Trail. It follows much of the rugged coastline with stunning scenery and passes through numerous small towns and villages. The wind became an issue again.

In one small town, surprisingly we came upon an Esso station and topped up the gas tank @ $1.67.9 before arriving in the town of |Bonavista.  There we did some grocery shopping  and parked at the Cape overlooking the ocean to have lunch.  We drove to  the Cape Bonavista Lighthouse, a provincial historic site. It was built in 1843 and operated until 1962. The drive there along the  narrow winding coastal  road in the wicked wind was  as exhilarating as the scenery. 😵

It was too wet,  cold and windy to visit Ryan Premises National Historic Site so we continued to Elliston, checked out the Puffin Viewing Site. By then winds were gusting to 68 km/h , really miserable. We stopped and souvenir shopped at Home From the Ice Floes Craft Shop where I bought, among other items, my puffin whirly-gig. 

We checked in at the Elliston Municipal Park Campground in the wind driven rain, wind gusting to 78 km/h.  It was the first time ever camping that we brought in the slide out in the main room because the wind was rocking and buffeting the motorhome so much. It remained 12º all day. Not sure how much sleep I'll get.           

                                                                                    

Terra Nova National Park

 It was a warm 18º but not really pleasant due to the winds gusting to 62 km/h  when we left the campground at 8:45. It was a hold on tight to the steering wheel as we were broadsided  driving south on Route 320, the Road to the Shore. It wasn't any better on the TCH but fortunately we drove only 91 km to Terra Nova National Park.

 

As we passed the city of Gambo, we stopped at "Joey's Look-Out". He was the former premier and "father of Confederation" when Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949. Smallwood was born in Gambo. The lookout gives a view of the city.

                                                        We stopped at the Visitor Centre in Terra Nova National Park

 and bought our annual  National Parks Pass at the senior rate of $64.50 each. 

The park is Canada's most easterly national park, established in 1957 and was the first national park in Newfoundland. It is mostly boreal forest with  bogs. There are many hiking trails and one biking trail.

We had a site with electricity in the Newman Sound Campground. The  large private site backed onto the water,

We discovered that the biking trail was actually a mountain biking trail of moderate difficulty, certainly not for us but we did bike around the campground on the paved roads.

We also took the trail down to Newman Sound and another trail which passed behind our campsite. We were lucky that the rain held off until after our BBQed dinner.
The rain ended overnight.

Another Day of Highlights

We woke to an overcast sky and a cooler morning for our next  adventure: hiking. The hiking trails around Twillingate have become much more organized, now called Rockcut Twillingate Trails. There are thirteen of them around Twillingate varying in length and degree of difficulty. We drove to Crow Head to  the Long Point Lighthouse  which was completed in 1876     and is still an active lighthouse. We hiked a VERY  careful, short distance (less than 1 km)  on two trails there: the   Lower Head Trail," moderate " difficulty and Horney Head Cove Trail, Hard

difficulty. Both followed the rugged coastline. The scenery was spectacular. We returned to Twillingate, bought  fresh scallops at the Waterside Fish Market and ate  a quick lunch before taking highways 340 and 331 to hwy 330 called the "Road to the Shore."

We stopped and checked in  at the Country Inn Motel and RV Park in Gander before going into the city to experience Gander's "9/11 Story.

I had emailed a Brian Williams to obtain a map of the "Come From Away"  sites which have special relevance to the 9/11 events. He answered my email suggesting we come directly to the town hall where he works. We did and are we ever glad we did, Brian came outside to greet us as soon as we pulled up. He explained to us in detail  how the Compassion Monument  located on the front lawn came about. (He had a major part in its creation.) The monument is composed of a steel beam from the New York Twin Towers  gifted to the town on September 11, 2011. It is mounted on a huge chunk of granite from a local quarry. He took us inside and showed us the  numerous 9/11 displays. He gave me a book

Flown Into the Arms of Angels signed by the local author relating the experiences of the people of Gander. Wow. He also directed us to a nearby book store where I bought The Day The World Came to Town. The store owner, Dolly was quite a character. We had trouble getting away she was so talkative and entertaining.

There are eleven "Come From Away"  sites, each with an interpretative sign with information and  a photo. We stopped at 3 of them. The sun was back and it was getting hot, 25º.

This is my third visit to Newfoundland but certainly is not a 'been there done that' visit as I continue to experience new adventures  with Kathy. 

And what a perfect way to end this invigorating and most interesting day: our delicious scallop dinner.

We drove 149 km today.

A Day in Twillingate

 

We spent a fabulous day in Twillingate under sunny skies, temperature  27º, felt like 32º.

We walked the 3.2 km from the campground down into the town to Pier 52 to take  the two hour Twillingate Whale Seabird and Coastal Tour.  The boat motored straight out into Twillingate Harbour before following the rugged rocky coastline past the Long Point Lighthouse. The scenery was spectacular. It didn't matter that it was too late in the summer for whales and ice bergs but there were some birds. We saw two bald eagles,  several kittiwakes and a few cormorants. The crew was  both knowledgeable and  entertaining, playing the Newfoundland Ugly Stick for us. The sea was calm, the air  pleasantly warm.

We ate lunch at Annie's Harbour Restaurant. I had shrimp, Kathy seafood chowder, very delicious. We browsed through a few gift shops before walking back to the campground in the mid-afternoon. It was a hot trek.

We had a  few hours to recover before we returned to town, this time driven by campground staff who accepted a $5 "donation" from each of us. We went to the Twillingate New World Island Dinner Theatre. We are a delicious meal of pan fried cod followed by a two hour show which included a variety of funny skits, lively local music performed by the same folks who prepared and served the dinner. The show was fantastic, worth the $57.50 each.  They perform the same show six nights a week.                                      We sat with six others also from Ontario. Kathy enjoyed a

Twillingate Sunrise  cocktail. 

We were back at the campground by 9:30 and not too late in going to bed. Hopefully we'd be able to sleep after such an uplifting evening.

Continuing East to Boyd's Cove & Twillingate

 It was 5:31 A.M. when the first jet took off from the Deer Lake Airport; at least I was awake already. Kathy wasn't and didn't hear it.....reminds me of Jean who could sleep through anything (trains, thunderstorms, etc, etc,)

We left the campground at 8:30 and continued east on the TCH across the top of the island. Traffic was heavier. No moose sightings or encounters.

                                                              

 We stopped in Grand Falls -Windsor for gas. It was our biggest fill-up this trip: $425.07 @ $1.75.4 / litre and we weren't even empty. We ate lunch parked in a shopping mall before continuing                                         east to hwy 340 called the "Road to the Isles." The highway wanders through several small communities across causeways and bridges from island to island. It was a very beautiful drive and the highway in remarkably good condition (translation: not too many POTHOLE warning signs!) . We stopped in Boyd's Cove where  to visit the Beothuk Interpretation Centre Provincial Historic Site. The centre had several interesting exhibits which a student  guide pointed out to us.  We took the 1.7  km trail (3.4 km round trip) to the village archeological site.

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The highlight of our visit was at the Spirit Garden where we were each given the materials to make  a  Spirit Catcher in memory of someone and hang it in the garden. Jean's spirit is with the Beothuk people.

We arrived in Twillingate at Peyton Woods RV Park (another campground we stayed at in 2006) around 4:30 and checked in for two nights. We motored 368 km under sunny skies, not a cloud all day. It reached a hot 27º. Shadow was fine in the RV with the generator running and air conditioner on. 
We made our reservation for the two hour Whale, Seabird and Coastal Boat Tour for 9:30 tomorrow... too late in the summer for icebergs.  

We drove 368 km under mainly sunny skies, another hot day @ 27º.