The Final Leg - Our Last Days on "The Rock"

8-13 to 8-27

8/13 – We left St. John’s, and hopefully the rainy weather, and headed to Bauline East which is about a 1/2 hour ride. Still cloudy and gloomy. It’s still amazing to us how many roads we drive on that have little or no traffic including the Trans Canada.

We arrived at Seabreeze RV Park to this amazing view. Prettiest view from our RV park we've had so far on this trip. The sun even came out for a few minutes.

8/14 – Today we headed out to Cape Race and Cape Freels, the most southern point on Newfoundland. One of the small towns we went through was Ferryland which was incorporated in 1621. Hard to imagine what it was like here in 1621 since it is still a very small town now.

There must have been something there because they had cannons to defend themselves from the French in the 1800’s and other attackers at various times.

Another cloudy day but the scenery is still amazing on the way to our next stop at the Cape Race Lighthouse.

This 21 km (13 mile +/_each way) drive on a gravel road along the coast is the only way to get there.

Cape Race and the Myrick Wireless station are where the 1^st signal was received from the Titanic. They had a wonderful display here about the Titanic including a timeline that depicted all the key events around the Titanic disaster. The ladies working the Interpretive Center were very informative and helpful during our visit.

St. Shotts on Cape Freels is the most southern point in Newfoundland. In this area caribou use to block traffic with the number of animals that herded here. Now there are many fewer. They were infected with a brain disease, similar to mad cow, by reindeer who came to Newfoundland over the winter ice years ago. Not much else to see along here, it's similar to tundra. We were hoping to see some Caribou but none appeared today.

Along the way back we saw some windmills as they appeared through the lifting fog. This place was the only one in Newfoundland where we saw windmills. We think there were a total of 8.

We rode through the old section of Ferryland and saw this grocery store. It's similar to what my sister Lynne saw 45 years ago in Nfld, a small store attached to the front of a home. Reubin went in to talk to the owner and spent 25 minutes discussing Newfoundland, Ferryland, and this store with the 87 year old woman. Reubin had a wonderful time and the owner was very happy he stopped in to chat. We have found all the people of Newfoundland to be very pleasant and always willing to stop to talk to us.

We stayed in Ferryland that evening to go to a dinner theater comedy about 'outport' Newfoundland life and 'outport' Newfoundlanders and it was great. Although we sometimes had trouble understanding some of the lines, we still left with sides that ached from laughing. Again we met some really nice folks that told us about some places to see along our route.

We also met a lovely young lady who was one of our waitresses and she told us about where she lived and her Newfoundland pony, Molly. (These ponies are becoming rare.) Reubin & Lynne took a side trip to see Molly and this area. 

8/16 – We moved to Charleston to our next stop for 4 nights. On the way to St. Bonavista we spotted these two handyman delights.

We also were lucky enough to see another moose. We did not keep an exact count but we think we've seen more than 2 dozen moose on this trip along with one black bear.

Our next stop was the Bonavista Lighthouse.

We were amazed to hear that the beacon went around on this lighthouse because the lighthouse keeper would go to the top of the lighthouse and, by hand, crank a 200 lb. weight all the way up to the top of the lighthouse. The weight is the rectangular object seen by the small open door.

It would take about 15-20 minutes to do this and then the weight would be released and would fall slowly (took about 2 hours to reach the 1^st floor) where it would have to be cranked back up to the top, by means of the gears in this next picture. This went on 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Not a fun job! (The interpreter suggested it might be why lighthouse keepers had larger families, to help share the job!)

It seemed we were often very fortunate, the sun came back out and we saw some more beautiful scenery on this day.

Our day ended with a visit to a site where we could see some puffins. This is a truly beautiful place.

It’s very hard to see the puffins because they are so small but if you look closely you can see a couple of them. We were at this spot for a while to see puffins but also to take in the beautiful coastline.

8/17 - We carried on to New Bonaventure where the TV series Random Passage was filmed. We did not visit the site since none of us watched the series (and it was a long walk downhill and back up hill ) but we did have a nice lunch in the tea room that at one time was the school for the peninsula.

8/20 - Although we did not expect to see any tigers in Newfoundland we did see this one while riding north of Gander. Newfoundlanders have a great sense of humor.

In Carmanville we saw a shrimp boat being unloaded. The Captain told us that they had gone out to sea for 4 days to get this load of shrimp.

Each one of these small bags weighed 30 lbs. +/- and each one of these red containers would hold about 35-40 bags or around 1200 lbs. The ship's quota of shrimp was around 15,000 lbs per day and the Captain said that they had made their quota for the 4 days or around 60,000 lbs of shrimp.

We did find out that the land in Newfoundland is considered public land therefore you can park your motorhome, camper, tent, or whatever, pretty much anywhere you want along the road. (Newfoundlanders pay no property taxes.) Viagra Pointe was one of those areas where people just set up their motorhomes next to the ocean.

8/22 On the way to our next stop, Corner Brook, we stopped at the North Atlantic Aviation Museum. This gem is an example of how proud Newfoundlanders are of their island and their heritage. Wonderful little museums like this are found all over the province.

The airport at Gander was created at a time when aviators dreamed of crossing the North Atlantic with regularly scheduled flights. As a young man, Reubin's father worked at Gander when the forests were cut to make way for runways. Gander played a key role in pioneering aviation in Canada and then in WWII.

Most recently Gander and its people  played a most important role in the September 11, 2001 disaster when 42 flights were diverted to Gander. The population almost doubled when 6700 passengers and crew, were fed, housed, and cared for by the residents of Gander, who numbered 10,000 at the time. 

One of our longest drives brought us back to Corner Brook on the west coast of the island and quite close to where we started 5 weeks ago. 

While in Corner Brook we visited this train museum. Once again an example of how the people of Newfoundland are trying to save their history with one of these small museums.

This snow plow was put on the front of a train and used to clear the tracks during heavy snow storms.

Corner Brook is a pretty large city for Newfoundland and includes a pulp mill, Wal Mart, and a ski resort.

We went to the James Cook observation point. It honors Cook who charted Newfoundland from 1763 to 1767 with such detail that his charts were still in use hundreds of years later.

That night we cooked burgers and hot dogs over an open fire and finished the night by toasting some marshmallows. Great way to end a day.

8/23 Our next stop was Stephenville and the scenery along the way continues to be beautiful. Stephenville was the location of a fairly large military base that at one point had over 10,000 United States military personnel located there. It was part of the Dew Line. I believe this base closed in 1969 but as usual we left behind a lot of buildings, equipment, a golf course, and one of the longest runways on Newfoundland.

We drove up the coast to Cape St. George which was another one of those beautiful spots we just came upon.

One of our 'Newfies'

This picture is an example of how they keep you from driving over the cliff, piles of sand!

8/25 - Our next and last stop on this trip was Codroy Bay, which is only about 20 miles from the ferry back to Nova Scotia. Strangely enough this RV park was the nicest one we stayed in on our entire trip to Newfoundland. Good power, water, and Wi-Fi. Telephone service (Verizon) and wifi were issues throughout this trip but not at this park.

After setting up camp, we drove to Rose Blanche Lighthouse, East of Port Aux Basque. It is an amazing granite structure, rebuilt by the residents in the 1990's to preserve and commemorate their contribution to navigational safety. The road here was one of the worst paved roads we tackled, but the Ford and Reubin got us there and back.

8/26 - Our last day of touring Newfoundland was spent driving to Cape Anguille, another amazing and beautiful spot. By visiting Cape Anguille which is the westernmost point on Newfoundland we were at the eastern, western, northern, and southernmost points of Newfoundland on this trip. That's something most Newfoundlanders can't say.

Ray collecting some of the "rock" to help us  remember  NFLD

On the way back to the RV park we stopped at Chap’s Museum where Chap has collected a variety of old cars, tools, and assorted “stuff”. Chap also has a sense of humor as you can see from some of his cars.

Our last night on Newfoundland we spent cooking steak on the grill, potatoes in the wood fire, and topping the entire evening off by toasting some more marshmallows and taking our last “Newfie”(our name for a selfie!)

8/27 -The next morning we drove back to Port aux Basques for our ferry ride back to Nova Scotia.

The end of an amazing 5 ½ weeks on Newfoundland. Beautiful province and wonderful people who were always willing to talk to us and tell us of places to go and things to see so that we would be sure to enjoy their home, of which they are justifiably proud.

We had a great trip with Lynne and Reubin and will miss them a lot on our tour of Nova Scotia and New England.