WEDNESDAY 10 August
Today begins our 9th week on the road. We have been in Newfoundland for 12 nights and, in spite of being ill for at least half of them, we have loved every day here.
Goodyear’s Cove (South Brook, NL) at the south end of Hall’s Bay, with “calm winds and flat seas.” (Photo by Linda.)
It rained overnight, which this area certainly needed. (Major forest fires have been burning south of here, but pose no threat to our location.) The rain had ended by sun up, and the bay was very calm, so … photos (of course). We were both up by 7:30 AM and each had one cup of coffee, half regular half decaf, but skipped breakfast.
A closer look at the west side of Goodyear’s Cove at the south end of Hall’s Bay.
Goodyear’s Cove Campground was quiet, with nice neighbors and a good view of Hall’s Bay. It was only a 2-night stop, but turned out to be a great place to shelter from the rain, isolate, and just rest. Admittedly, it’s easier to stay put when the whether is less amenable to being outside. We wish we’d had more chance to interact with our neighbors, but we kept to ourselves for their sake.
Our next RV park was in Gander, just over 100 miles to the east. The entire trip would be on the Trans-Canada Highway, so approximately a 2-hour drive. Linda checked with the park yesterday about check-in time. They weren’t specific, but suggested “lunch time.” We had requested a “pull-through 3-services” site, but did not have a confirmation. In fact, it wasn’t clear that we had been assigned to any specific site yet, so we wanted to get there before noon to increase the chances that we would get such a site. We settled on an 9:30 AM departure and started “making ready” around 8:30 AM.
Our site at Goodyear’s Cove was water and electric only, with no dump station on the premises. We did not hook up the shore water and used our fresh water tank instead, so we did not add weight to the trailer, merely redistributed it. But that meant we would be traveling with some contents in the black and gray waste tanks. Not a big deal, but added incentive for us to get a site with a sewer connection.
As I said, our route was the T-CH and it was in very good condition, with a 100 km/hr. maximum speed limit most of the way. Part way into the drive, we started seeing Adventure Caravans stickers in the windows of mostly larger Class A motorhomes. We also started seeing oncoming Airstream travel trailers, plural. We exchanged headlight/highbeam flashes with the first one, and then the second one, and then several in a row, and then then just kept coming. We were not counting, but would estimate as many as three dozen in total over our remaining distance to Gander. Almost all of them had their “Big Red Numbers,” and we felt bad that we did not have ours on our trailer, as we had been unable to find them at home when I was finally ready to put them on.
Linda searched online and eventually determined that it was an Airstream Club International (ACI) group; The Viking Trail Caravan 2022. The caravan started on June 23rd at the Marine Atlantic Ferry Terminal in North Sydney, Nova Scotia (déjà vu). They are spending 55 nights in Newfoundland across 18 different camping locations before returning to the North Sydney terminal (déjà vu, again). They will see/experience some of the same things we did, plus many more, including Labrador, a whale-watching boat tour, and lots of local food culture. The caravan description was clear that this was not a “glamping” trip and that all participants needed to be able/willing/prepared to handle maintenance and repairs on their rigs.
The view looking south from our site at the Country Inn Motel & RV Park. (Old, faded signs still say “Trailer Park” but newer signs say “RV Park.”)
Our destination in Gander was the Country Inn Motel & RV Park. Only a couple of miles off of the T-CH, it was easy to find and access, even though the address we had was wrong. Upon arrival, it was immediately obvious that this is not a “destination” RV park, but that was fine with us. We selected it as a base of operations to explore the area, and it turned out to also be convenient to any shopping we might need to do.
I took care of the registration this time. We got site 28 (W3W =thundering.percussion.reinvest), a south-facing pull-through with water/electric/sewer. It turned out that there are 12 such sites, one of which appeared to be permanent, all in a row, facing a woodland with a pond. No complaints.
Lunch was sausage, egg, and cheese bagel sandwiches. All vegan, of course. It was a bit more substantial than our recent meals, and a good, tasty choice.
After lunch, we went on a grocery run to the Dominion store. We’ve seen these before, but it was our first time shopping in one. It was a decent grocery store, but also had a lot of isle space devoted to non-food items. The NL liquor store was adjacent to, and had an entrance from, the Dominion.
I worked on photos and the blog for bit, but was relieved of those tasks when Bill called and we had a long chat. Although this was the first I had heard about it, he “did a Bruce” about a month ago. That’s apparently what we now call the act of falling in a service pit. He got badly bruised on one side, but nothing broken and no concussion. I guess that means he did a “mini Bruce.”
We spent some time looking at the weather forecast for the next two days and thinking about what we wanted to visit and when. Terra Nova National Park (Parks Canada) was top of our list, but we also had great access to the coastal areas north of Gander. Indeed, there are multiple peninsulas that project up into the North Atlantic Ocean with out-and-back highways that lead to places like Twillingate, where you can see icebergs and whales at the right times of year.
Somewhere in there I think we both took naps. I also updated my laptop computer, as yesterday was “patch Tuesday” for Windows (10) and related programs (.NET Framework, Office, Threat Intelligence, Malicious Software Removal Tool, etc.). Keeping this stuff up-to-date is the first line of defense in keeping the system safe and operating smoothly.
For dinner, we finished the chickpea salad, served on lettuce with toast on the side. After dinner was more puzzles (me) and reading (L). I was too tired to maintain the focus needed to select and process photos or write blog text.
Bedtime came early for both of us.
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