MONDAY 08 August – IT’S A MOOSE!!!
The sunset last night was nothing special until it was sudden, but briefly, dramatic. I grabbed a quick shot, did not include it in the last blog post, so here it is.
I also did not include a photo of our site (#78) at the Gros Morne – Norris Point KOA near Rocky Harbor, NL in the previous blog post. This was our second time at this KOA in just over a week. (Photo by Linda.)
I was up early enough to create the blog post for August 7 and 8. Even at this early hour, the Wi-Fi / Internet was not as responsive as I expected. Two families, obviously together, had pulled into the two sites to our right yesterday with lots of children and lots of tech toys, so I wondered if folks were also up early and working/playing online. No matter, I got done what I needed to do.
Today was another repositioning day, so we had our usual departure routine to follow. Our next destination was the Goodyear’s Cove Campground near South Brook, Newfoundland. It would be a short drive (distance/time) and was just an intermediate stop on our way to Gander. Linda was checking stuff online and saw several reviews that indicated this campground had NO services. She was certain we had booked a 30A water and electric site, but it was all done on the phone with no printed confirmation. That left us wondering if we should try to make alternate arrangements at the last minute.
We were only going to be there for two nights, and could survive with no services as along as we pulled in with sufficient fresh water on board, but we wanted to know for sure. She called the phone number she had but got a recorded message with the office hours. Goodyear’s Cove is a municipal campground, so she called a phone number for the city of South Brook. A very nice lady gave her the direct number for the campground, but she could not call until 9 AM. It was not yet 9 AM, which is also when the KOA office opened, so we here on hold until then.
We started discussing options, but check-out time was 11 AM, so we did not have a lot of time to make phone calls and decisions. As a rule, we do not like changing reservations, but will when we have to. The three most obvious options were: 1) See if we could find another RV park in the area; 2)see if we could extend our stay in our present location (and site) for one or two nights, and/or; 3) Check-in to our Gander location one or two nights early. Or some combination of the three. Ugh. Waiting is the worst when you need information to make decisions.
Linda was finally able to reach someone at the campground and they confirmed that we had requested a 30A pull-through 3-way site. What they actually had was a back-in 30A water-electric site and there was no dump station on the premises. I had already dumped our waste tanks and had a half tank of fresh water, so that would work. Still, it turned out not to be the relaxed start to our day that we had anticipated.
We pulled out of our site at the Gros Morne – Norris Point KOA at 10:45 AM. Our destination was only ~200 km (~124 mi) and ~2-1/2 hours drivetime The route was easy, Hwy-430 (The Viking Trail) back down to its starting point at the Trans-Canada Highway in Deer Lake, and then the T-CH to the campground, right on the north side of the highway. The drive was largely uneventful, with nice weather and lovely scenery. The roads were the usual mixed bag, mostly good but occasionally not. They place markers for bad potholes, which is helpful, but not as helpful as actually patching them. It’s a big province with a harsh climate and, on balance, they seem to do a very good job with the major roads.
As we were nearing Deer Lake, Linda shouted “It’s a Moose!” I looked to the right just in time to see a moose head up out of the drainage ditch and disappear into the forest. We’ve been seeing caution signs for moose since we got to the Gaspe peninsula and were starting to think we would never see one. Now we had! And it was very exciting.
We arrived at Goodyear’s Cove Campground around 1:15 PM. Linda went to the office/window to check us in and then came back to the car. What now? Cash only, no credit cards. Not a problem, we are traveling with a certain amount of Canadian currency but, once again, it would have been nice to know this ahead of time.
The steep entrance road is to the right of the RVs. We had to back our trailer in front of this row of rigs and then angle it around into the 2nd to last site (at the far end of this row). The guy to our left was kind enough to move his truck and car, although perhaps it was for his own self-preservation. (W3W=”clumsy.horn.stocky”)
All of the sites are down a steep driveway from highway level to the water level of Halls, Bay. Most of the sites here did not, in fact, have any services. The no-services (boondocking) sites are on a barachois, a narrow stretch of land that separates the salt water Halls, Bay from a fresh water pond. There are only about eight water-electric sites, all together at the east end of campground and backed up to a steep hill with the office and bathhouse on top, but they did have one reserved for us. The site, however, gave new meaning to the idea of a “back in” RV site.
Our travel trailer in its site at Goodyear’s Cove CG, South Brook, NL.
All of the sites were angled slightly towards the west, facing the Bay, and our site was 2nd from the far/east end. Linda suggested, and I agreed, that the only way I was going to back into the site was to first back the trailer down the road in front of them for at least 100 feet before turning into the site.
This was the view from our site. Not bad, even in cloudy weather.
I am the first to admit that I am not that good at backing up the trailer. I’ve gotten better at both pulling and backing into a site and getting it straightened out relative to the truck, but I have had almost no experience backing it straight for a long distance. I’d like to say it was an “interesting and enjoyable learning experience” but the truth is, I just wasn’t feeling the love at that moment.
The south end of Hall’s Bay, a deep, and deep water, bay on the north coast of Newfoundland (The Whale Coast). Land to the left is the Green Bay (Baie Verté) Peninsula.
But we got it in, and it was definitely a team effort. We executed our arrival routine, which went smoothly and then had ramen for lunch. In fact, I only hooked up the electric. We had sufficient fresh water onboard and I did not want to fuss with hooking up and unhooking the shore water system. We were both ready for nap by this time, but went for a short walk first to check out the campground and Hall’s, Bay. The view from our site is actually quite nice.
No doubt our (my) reaction to the events of the day was colored by the fact that we are still ill, so uncomfortable to a certain extent and definitely very tired. But once we were set up, we had no where we had to go and nothing we had to do except rest and get better.
After our naps we settled in to use our iPads. There was no campground Wi-Fi, but we able to hot-spot our phones as needed. Strangely enough, we are able to receive text messages that include photos, but we were not able to send them from here. Neither of us had used up or daily 500 MB data allowance, so perhaps it had something to do with the carrier we were roaming on. When confined to the trailer, it’s nice to have usable Internet access. Perhaps tomorrow our technology will work better.
We used our iPads, sans Internet, to play games, work puzzles, and read until we were tired enough to go to bed. The overnight low temperature was forecast to be 50 degrees F, so we closed up the trailer, but did not turn on the furnace or heat-pumps. We got several text messages from our son and daughter-in-law with photos of the family enjoying themselves at Banff National Park (Parks Canada). We were very pleased to see/hear that the grand-daughters appear to be having a great time and are very impressed with where they and what they are seeing.
TUESDAY 09 August
The clouds moved in overnight and the rain eventual came this morning. We both slept in. It was cool in the rig, and we turned on the furnace once we were both up and enjoying our coffee. We had some of Linda’s homemade granola for breakfast. I decided to read all of my blog posts for this trip, starting from the first one. I enjoyed revisiting all of the places we have been and the things we have seen and done. I found typos in every one of them, which was discouraging, but it’s not practical at this point to go back and edit them. We doodled on our iPads until we got a text message from our friend Kate, which resulted in a welcomed exchange that went on for a while.
Late in morning, I got my laptop computer out and set it up while Linda prepared chickpea salad for our dinner. I off-loaded the few new photos that we had taken and picked a few for this post, which I worked on for part of the afternoon. For lunch, we snacked on hummus using Fritos.
The four most surprising things about Easter Canada, so far, have been: 1) the persistent, strong winds; 2) how many people smoke; 3) the lack of recycling (at least at campgrounds and RV parks), and; 4) that Fritos have been almost impossible to find (we have not found the Scoops version at all.) Internet here is spotty, but that was not surprising. All first-world problems, I know, but still …
Around 1:30 Linda needed to change positions and moved from the dinette, where we spend most of our time in the rig (when no sleeping) and lay down in bed to read. A nap soon followed. I was ready for a nap by 2:30 PM. Juniper had already laid claim to my bed, so I used the couch, which is actually my preferred napping spot anyway.
After our naps Linda read and I worked a color Pic-a-Pix (picture) puzzle. The larger ones can be quite challenging, especially if they have a lot blank squares. (These puzzles provide counts for each row and column of the number of each color in the order in which they appear. Filling in squares is completely a matter of logic, as a square has to work for both its row and column.
Around 6 PM there was a knock on our door. It was our neighbor (husband) to the east, come over to check that we were OK. Since they had not seen us outside all day, even with the rain, they were concerned. We were touched; that has never happened to us before in any campground or RV park. We explained that we were normally quite sociable, but were both “under the weather” and trying to minimize contact with people, but let it go at that.
We finally had dinner around 7 PM. Chickpea salad on a slice of toast and apple sauce. Simple, easy, and tasty. Paper plates and plastic utensils minimized cleanup.
After dinner there was another knock on the door. This time it was our neighbor (wife) to the west, with whom Linda had a conversation when we first pulled in and were setting up. She had brought over some Newfoundland style squid. Again, we were touched, but Linda explained that we were vegan and would feel bad accepting it and not eating it. I’m not sure she really understood the whole vegan thing (neither did Sun back in the Gros Morne KOA) but she accepted that it wasn’t something we were going to eat. But we are used to used to that. People who are not vegan (or vegetarian) genuinely do not understand why we would choose to eat that way. If they are somewhat more aware, they will often ask “religion or health?” That’s what Don did back in Gros Morne, but he and Sun were world travelers and had come in contact with a lot of different cultures and practices over the years.
We had been told that the best thing about Newfoundland are the people, that they are caring and generous and willing to help strangers. While almost all of our interactions with people here have been friendly and helpful, this was the first time we had experienced this part of “Newfie” hospitality.
The rain resumed around 7:30 PM. It looked like it might continue for a while, was supposed to be out of here by morning. Linda continued to read a book (with actual paper pages) and worked on my picture puzzle. I finished the puzzle sometime after 8 PM and decided to try to upload this post to WordPress by hot spotting off of my phone, but no luck. I will try again once we are set up at our RV park in Gander. We are able to do certain things but not others. I’m not sure what cellular service we are connected to here, but perhaps it is one with a more limited Internet/data agreement (if any) with Verizon.
Tomorrow will be another repositioning day, so a bit a work on both ends, but should be an otherwise easy day with only ~177 km (~110 mi) to travel with a drive time of about 2 hours. We won’t be in a hurry to pull out, but would like to be at our next location around noon. We will be up early enough that all of our departure routine will take place in the morning and an easy pace and pull out around 10 AM.
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