Moving West

Tuesday morning, we left Doyles and headed for Port aux Basques and the ferry terminal.  It’s a painless process to check in here.  But one of the things they do is ask if we have any potatoes, and things like that.  I guess they don’t want the dirt leaving the island for the mainland.  Bugs?  I don’t know.  Anyway, they would randomly ask people what they had, and were also randomly searching cars.  The other thing they did was randomly wash the cars, including right underneath!  We wanted our truck and RV washed, but no such luck :J

This shows the place we ate the night before (the deck below the “Harbour Restaurant”) and where we wandered along the harbour.

This is from the window in the lounge.  The windows weren’t very clean.  But it gives you some idea of the length of the ferry.  They’re loading some trucks here.

When we leave Port aux Basques, we are very close to the land.  I guess they know what they’re doing :o

It was a pretty smooth, uneventful crossing (just the way I like them).  When we arrived in the North Sydney harbour, there was another ferry just heading out to Newfoundland.  This boat is quite a bit smaller than ours.

So we stayed at the same place we had stayed before crossing to the island, Arm of Gold RV Park.  They had the chip wagon going again - fish and chips and poutine.  So we indulged.  It was about 7 or so until we got there, so most of us were hungry.

Over the course of the last 2 days, I have taken 1 picture, and that was on Cape Breton Island - of a sign, of course.  We laugh because they call their lookouts “lookoffs”.  We just found it humourous.

So that’s it for now.  We stayed near Moncton, NB, last night, and are staying near Edmundston, NB, tonight.  Tomorrow we head for St.-Hyacinthe, QC, just east of Montreal.

By the way, the Hollingers decided to do a bit more touring around and went to Halifax from N Sydney yesterday morning.  They’ll spend a few days there, then start making their way home.  They also plan on doing some visiting in eastern Ontario where John has family, and perhaps visit Judy’s brother on the way as well.  I think he’s around Oshawa/Whitby somewhere.

Doyles Part Deux

We left Stephenville Monday morning, not too early, and arrived back in Doyles around noon or so.  This is our last stop on the island.

When we got to the RV park, a gaggle of geese led us in.

Thanks for the help!

After we were set up and had some lunch, we thought we would check out just ONE MORE lighthouse.  So we drove out to Cape Anguilla, the most westerly point of Newfoundland.

And here we are, near the end of our trip here.





After we were back at our RVs we took a bit of time, but then saw another iceberg!

I guess John’s drink was done.

We decided to go into Port aux Basques (pronounced port-o-baskwez by our gps - idiot) for dinner as it was our last night on the island.  Great spot I found online called 1 Ton Pub.  Love the signs here!

And especially like this one.

We watched the 6:30 ferry come in from N Sydney.

BIG boat.

They had some entertainment nearby we sa as we walked around a bit.  Good evening.

Great trip.  We’re leaving the island tomorrow:(  But it will be good to be getting home.

Stephenville

We left Grand Falls-Windsor Saturday morning and travelled to Stephenville, on the west coast of the island.  We decided to spend one more day looking around the coast.  After parking the RVs for Saturday night, we took the day Sunday to break free of them and see what was around.

Bunch of travellers.  You’d think we’d be sick of this by now.  But we travelled out to Cape St. George because someone told me (I can’t remember who at the moment) told me we must go to Cape St. George.  It’s beautiful.  We thought, sure...another lighthouse.

And just when you think we’ve seen the most beautiful spots, another one pops up!  Wow!

I guess the person who told me about this wasn’t lying.  It really was gorgeous.

Right at that cape, there was a student baking bread in an outdoor “oven”, and you can taste the bread for a donation.  Why not?  It was lunch time and we were getting hungry.  Proper ting to do.

We drove around to the north side of the cape in a little place called Mainland.  Colourful little houses and stuff on the lawn.

We stopped at this place called Tea by the Sea for some lunch.  Beautiful spot in a heritage building.  And EVERYwhere has turkey soup, pea soup, and seafood chowder.

We tried to go out the spit of land to the north, but we came to nothing but gravel road for about 15-20 km, so decided to turn around and go back.  Fun day though.

Grand Falls-Windsor

Friday morning we left the Trinity area as we were making our way west in order to catch that ferry back to the mainland on July 10th.  It was not a long drive, and we arrived at Grand Falls-Windsor, our destination, around 2 pm.  A very nice day.  We’re finally getting some consistent warm weather.

Grand Falls and Windsor used to be 2 separate towns, but they amalgamated as one, not that long ago, and kept both names.

The main attraction here is the Salmonid Interpretation Centre on the Exploits River.  They have been doing good work to restock the salmon after it had been depleted.  The person at the centre had an excellent knowledge of salmon on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and what was going on with them.  Without getting into all of that, they have built the fish ladder here as this river is one of the best salmon-producing rivers in the province.  Of course the ladder is needed because there is a dam on the river (exploits?).

In the interpretation centre, you can see the salmon swimming along.

You can then go out and see some of the ladders built in the river.  Such a beautiful area.

And the namesake “Grand Falls”, with the dam in the background.

Looking downstream.

This is a one-nighter here in Grand Falls-Windsor.  We’re continuing west on Saturday.

Bonavista Peninsula

We had another glorious day yesterday as we explored various parts of the Bonavista Peninsula.

We headed off in the morning to the Skerwink Trail which runs off East Trinity - about a 5 km loop.  What an amazing trail - probably the nicest trail we’ve ever been on.  Every time you look out at the cape, there’s another beautiful view.  And, Gerard and John got to see WHALES!  Not as close up as Judy and I had seen, but whales nevertheless.

This is a map of the trail.

And here is the gang starting down the path.

The views are just amazing and it was such a calm morning on Trinity Bay.  Here are a few shots.

Ahoy mateys!

Not a very clear shot, but this is of the lighthouse on Fort Point we were at, as well as the town of Trinity in the background.

And I’m always looking for whales.

We thoroughly enjoyed the hike and it took us about 3 hours to do it because of the stopping and staring, and checking out the sea every time someone said, “there’s a whale!”, no it’s just a boat, no it’s just rocks, no it’s just a bird.  But in fairness, we did see whales from up there.

Our next order of business for the day was to go up to Cape Bonavista.  Of course, there’s a lighthouse there.

And we saw an iceberg way out floating by.  My camera focused on the landscape, not the iceberg.  My bad.

And this dude was there, taking a look, and saying BONA VISTA!

Yes, the dude who started it all in Canada...John Cabot.

After we left the cape, we headed down to Elliston on Trinity Bay.  We heard you could see puffins there, and since we didn’t bother to do the Witless Bay tour south of St. John’s, we wanted to see if there were some puffins here.

This comfy? chair was on our way out to the “puffin grounds”.

And again, such beautiful views.  Lots of other birds here too.

And here are a couple of shots of puffins!  Most of them were out on the sea fishing, I guess.  You could see flocks of them just sitting on the water.  But a few came to greet us.  We were on one rock, the puffins were on another, and the sea in between.  I used my telephoto lens to get some up close.

Funny looking birds, for sure.

These were there sitting on the edge of the rock.  Probably protecting a nest.

And the landscape around here is no exception in the beauty department.

On the way back, we stopped at a gas station.  Beer necessities indeed.

This is probably one of the most beautiful areas of Newfoundland, if you like seascapes, whales and puffins.

Off to points west.