SUNDAY 31 July

“Wake up” time for me was around 6 AM, and “get up” time was closer to 6:30 AM.  Linda has been getting up fairly regularly around 7 AM, and feels she is sleeping better at night.  Here on the western edge of the Newfoundland time zone, and well past the summer solstice, first light and sunrise are at a later hour than we had experienced along the coasts of the Gaspe Peninsula and New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and the Cape Breton Island portion of Nova Scotia.  The time for those solar events will move earlier by the time we reach St. John’s, but not like we have experienced previously.

I made coffee (of course) and worked on the blog posts for the last several days.  We had the other two muffins for breakfast and then I went over to take a shower around 9 AM.  Just as I was getting ready to turn the water on, the lights and fan went out.  I put my clothes back on and stopped at the office to what was what.  It was also dark, and the staff indicated that the outage was triggered by something that happened in Rocky Harbor, and was affecting the entire area.  I returned to our rig and took my shower there instead.

The power outage was not going to be a problem unless it lasted a long time.  The refrigerator was running on propane, the house batteries were fully charged, and there was enough sunlight for the solar panels to keep them fully charged.  What was a problem was that Juniper-the-cat had started peeing over the edge of her litter tray, on the litter mat just in front of it.  Paul and Nancy had given us their stainless-steel tray after they lost their cat, Nala, while we were all in New Brunswick.  Our old plastic tray had become difficult to clean and we thought the stainless steel one would be better.  It was, for that purpose, but cats are funny and don’t always react well to changes in their environment.

The tray had a lower height than her old one, so Linda tried to modify the entry lip to make it higher, but that didn’t work.  When Juniper didn’t even bother to get in the litter tray, Linda thought perhaps the litter mat had acquired an odor, which signaled Juniper that is the place to do her business.  Tired of cleaning the litter mat, we stopped at the drug store in Rocky Harbor yesterday and bought leak proof absorbent pads to put on the floor in front of the tray.  That seemed to be working, but Linda had already decided that we needed a new litter tray.

An online search last night indicated that one might be available at the Value Pet store in Corner Brook.  Corner Brook is a 1-1/2 hour drive down Hwy-430 and Hwy-1/T-CH, but it’s the only city of any size in western NL.  As long as we were driving that far, we figured we would go to Sobeys and stock up a bit more on groceries, and buy some wine as Don and Sun were supposed to come to our patio tonight.

We left at 10 AM.  This was the first time we had driven this route in the opposite direction from our arrival.  Same mountains and lakes, but different views in different weather.  This is a grand landscape.

As we were getting closer to Corner Brook Linda looked up the RV park where we will spend our last two nights in Newfoundland (Aug 24 and 25).  The required exit was the first of four for Corner Brook, and was the exit we would be taking as we approached from this direction on the T-CH.  We decided to check it out, and see if we could arrange a delayed departure on the same site, or an additional night, if necessary.

The park was a kilometer or so from the highway and would be easy to get to with the trailer.  The staff at the registration booth found our reservation and indicated that no one was schedule to come in on the 25^th.  They offered to add the night of the 25^th to our reservation and work out the details when we arrived.  I indicated that we would probably leave between 4 and 4:30 PM in order to be at the Marine Atlantic terminal in Channel-Port-aux-Basques by 7 PM.  They suggested that there might not be any extra charge in that case.

Rather than return to the T-CH, we continued on to the Value Pet store on city streets.  We told the GPS to take the “shortest” route and ended up driving through a neighborhood of very narrow streets that reminded me of San Francisco.  Seriously, many of the roads ran straight down the hillside at what I took to be a 25% grade.  And there were cross streets, and there were stop signs at the intersections.  Etc.  It was all fine in the F-150, of course, but it reminded us that “shortest” route to a GPS is just that; not fastest, not easiest, just the least number of miles, even if only by a tenth.  Still, it made for an interesting and unexpected tour of a slice of the city most tourists probably never see.

The Value Pet store was in the shopping complex that included the Walmart we drove past on Friday, as well as a large Canadian Tire store and a Dominion store, so we might have been able to do all of our shopping there.  The Value Pet store had a good selection of litter trays and we found one that we thought would work.  It’s a tapered tray with a tapered lid with a swinging door.  By putting the lid on backwards, the lip at the bottom of the entry hole is very high.  We bought a couple of boxes of Dr, Elsey’s litter.  It’s what we use at home but rarely find in supermarkets.  Changing the brand/type of litter can also be a trigger for a cat.

Although the shopping complex was very convenient, we pressed on to the Sobeys.  This time we parked on the upper lot at the main entrance, sans trailer.  We picked up a few fresh items, a few refrigerated items and a few frozen items, along with non-perishables.  We want to make sure we are well-stocked before heading north to St. Barbe on Wednesday as we do expect to find much in the way of food markets.

The only thing we couldn’t buy at Sobeys was wine as it is only available in the Provincial liquor stores.  Fortunately, there was one just around the corner from the Sobeys.  We put the address in the GPS and headed that way.  When we got to the address there was nothing but houses.  This is the second time this has happened in Newfoundland.  The first time was in Rocky Harbor.  Linda checked on her phone, and could clearly see that we were on the correct road, but the GPS had taken us in the wrong direction.  I headed back the other way and we were there in no time.  The NLC was in the same building as a Colemans supermarket, so this might have been another grocery option.  We bought three bottles of wine and were on our way.

Although close to the Sobeys the GPS took us back to a different entrance on Hwy-1 via a different route.  We probably selected “shortest” route again.  You would think we might learn better after a while.  Soon enough, we were back on the Trans-Canada Highway headed north.  The weather was much better than it had been on Friday, and we had a very nice drive back to our KOA.

Back at camp we unloaded all of our purchases and Linda restocked all of the food items while I restocked the beverages.  I assembled the new litter tray while Linda removed the old one and cleaned it.  She suggested that I go to the office and get some wood for a campfire while she set up the new litter tray with litter.  We did have any kindling, or fire starter, or a lighter (or even matches), so I had to get those along with the wood.

In the camp office/store I asked when the power had been restored.  “About an hour ago.”  We had been in camp for at least 30 minutes, perhaps longer, so the power had been restored just before we got back to the RV park.

We had a telephone call scheduled with our son and his family at 5 PM EDT, 6:30 PM NDT.  They are leaving in the morning for a three-week vacation trip to Banff, Alberta in Paul and Nancy’s Winnebago BOLDT.  Madeline wanted to know where we were and what it was like.  Someplace special, and it was wonderful.  We assured her that she was about to also visit a lot of special places, and that it would be a wonderful experience.  We wished them safe and happy travels.

I arranged some of the wood in the firepit but didn’t light it.  We expected Don and Sun sometime between 7 and 8 PM, after they had eaten dinner.  Linda was outside reading and I was inside working at my computer when I heard voices.  It was Don and Sun.  They had parked their F-350 next to our truck and were sitting on our patio bench chatting with Linda.  They had just gotten back to camp from a shopping trip to Corner Brook.  They hadn’t eaten dinner yet, and were leaving tomorrow morning to head up The Viking Trail, so they waved off on the campfire and wine.

Linda by the campfire at our lovely patio site (61) in the Gros Morne – Norris Point KOA. The first wood campfire we have made on this trip. (Paul took care of the campfires while we were traveling togther.)

We only have an RV on one side of us and finally met one of the owners (the wife) and had a wonderful chat.  They were from Ontario, northeast of Toronto, and it was also their first time in Newfoundland.  They were leaving the KOA tomorrow and moving to their next location.  Once we concluded our chat, I lit our campfire and poured a couple glasses of wine (Bodacious Smooth White).  While sitting around the fire, several campers stopped to chat.  One was from the rig parked behind us (on the other side of some trees).  It turned out it was his rig that we followed onto the ferry late Thursday night.  Another couple were from Paradise here on the island.  We described our travel plans and they gave us lots of tips about things to see and do.  Local knowledge is hard to beat.  As the fire faded it got cool and we retired to the rig for the night.

I was still trying to get caught up on blog posts, but wanted to at least upload the ones having to do with taking the ferry from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland.  They still needed some writing and editing, as well as photo selection and processing, so I worked on that.  By 10 PM, I finally had a couple of them ready to go and started trying to create them in WordPress, but the Wi-Fi was slow and kept disconnecting.  Arrgh.  I even tried connecting to my phone’s hotspot, but that was also unusable.  The Wi-Fi has been pretty good at this KOA early in the morning (before 8 AM) and late in the evening (after 11 PM), but not this evening.  As midnight approached, it was obvious that I was not going to get it done.  I had to call it quits and get to bed, as we had an 8 AM departure planned to visit the Gros Morne National Park Visitor Center in Woody Point and then drive to the trailhead for the 10 AM guided trail hike of the Tablelands Trail.  Google Maps said it would take about 90 minutes to get there.

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