17,000 km 285 hours in the car together $834.23 in “fuel” cost
We can see why we were told to allow 3 weeks for this province - there is so much to do here!
Day 87 - Twillingate is on New World Island (theory holds that the island’s name commemorates the 1523-24 expedition of Giovanni da Verrazano establishing the cove to be part of the New World rather than Asia) in north eastern Newfoundland with a population of just over 2,000. It is a very charming village offering Dinner Theatre, boat tours of icebergs and whales, and lots of shops with local arts and crafts. We stayed with Stuart and his parents at Dove’s Nest B&B and they were very gracious hosts and the breakfast was really good (homemade Bakeapple jam!). Linda hand hooks the most beautiful rugs and they are all over the house. Wow!
The other couple there was from Nanaimo!
Twillingate is one of the oldest ports on the island and was a historic fishing community but now its economy relies more on tourism. We visited artists studios and gift stores, and the Wooden Boat Builders Museum where we met Anne Poitier and Calvin Pardy hand crafting a dory to be auctioned off as a fundraiser. It was a dream watching the time of them meticulously measuring and shaving the pieces. The museum tells the wonderful story of this dying craft:
“Today most boats are designed by desk bound architects and engineers applying basic principles of science to the complex reality of the Atlantic Ocean. The older traditional approach to design couldn’t keep up and the new approach remained inadequate. We are in danger of losing the lore of the past before we have refined the science of today.”
Look Aft and Learn
It’s so wonderful that this craft and those stories are being kept alive!
On a lighter side, the ladies at the post office were great! We visit the post offices in most towns we go and have our postcards hand stamped - it’s kinda fun and always friendly.
The small communities up and around the coast remind us of Gibsons, Granthams Landing, Hopkins Landing, Roberts Creek, Pender Harbour and Sechelt (to name a few) dotted along the Sunshine Coast, each with its own personality and qualities.
* Car Alert - For those of you wanting something other than a black or silver car without going on a waiting list, they’re all here! And there is an E.V. group here on the island that we heard about on the CBC and met a member, Ashton, when we were at breakfast!
From Twillingate to New-Wes-Valley, route 340 to 331 to 330 along the coast through Musgrave Harbour and Newtown to Badger’s Quay, where John and Ruth greeted us to the beautiful Kittiwake B&B. It is their home and we were made to feel so welcome, and our room is great! We shared stories about travel and family - sorry Roger in Tamworth, Ruth has you beat by a couple of siblings, 18 to be exact.
Not many cyclists along these routes this past while, wonder where they all are? The big motor homes are taking over the road instead. EV charging has been really easy, and John let us plug in at Kittiwake too.
https://kittiwakehousebandb.com/#71b222d9-678e-4db0-a8a4-865caf19cfee
New-Wes-Valley takes in Newtown, Wesleyville and Valleyfield, population just over 2,000. Barbour Island and Barbour Living Heritage Village in Newtown (known as the Venice of Newfoundland because of all the channels), a former hub during the seal hunting days and ensuing prosperity.
Kate, our tour guide at Barbour Village, told us that in her school there are 50 students, 5 in her grade. She plans to go to Alberta to work and that is what a lot of people from Newfoundland do and that there is a whole community of Newfies up there in Fort Mac. I told her about the book Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton. You can ask Amy at Totally Book-ish, I’m sure she’ll have a copy.
Speaking of books, we have amassed quite a little library in our backseat from all our Independent Book Store visits - I finished Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (a must read), Anne of Green Gables, dabble into “Are You Kidding Me?” by Lesley Crewe (PEI author) when I need a chuckle, finished Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Woman in the Attic by local author Emily Hepditch, and currently reading Still Hopeful: Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism by Maude Barlow. Roger is reading Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can’t Stop Eating Food That Isn’t Food by Chris Van Tulleken, a rather scary book about the food we eat which I am not getting into until after we’re back in our own kitchen!
The REACH Museum & Art Gallery in New-Wes-Valley has a great exhibit of Lucas Moreau work - Queer Newfoundland Hockey League (QNHL), a fictional hockey league made up of 14 teams, and all the names use pejoratives used against the LGBT2Q1A and community. The exhibit includes a collection of knitted team jerseys. Very cool, and thanks Braedon for the tour of that and other wonderful displays.
We have been introduced to the provincial flower the Pitcher Plant (which is carnivorous!), learned lots of local history, and heard the split pride/sadness stories of children from the villages who go away to school and stay in the city, same as everywhere I guess. All along the side of the roads we saw cars parked, apparently people are out in the bogs foraging for Bakeapple berries.
There is some competition among the locals as to which is the best sandy beach to visit along the coast here - Musgrave Harbour, Lumsden, or Cape Freels. We opted for the latter and it was amazing - about a mile of fine grey sand scattered with the odd jellyfish.
Then to the docks at Beothuk Fish Processors near Greenspond which sources from approximately 900 independent fishers utilizing anywhere from 35 to 65 foot boats. They handle ground fish such as cod, Greenland turbot, flounder, and halibut, shellfish including crab, and squid, capelin, herring, mackerel and smelt.
Day 90 - 92 - leaving New-Wes-Vally/Badger’s Quay with a great send off by John and Ruth, and neighbour Emerson, with a promise to visit us when they do their trip across Canada. We left them with the EV $20. from the EV charging station in Corner Brook and the story that goes with it (we mentioned in an earlier blog).
Rte. 320 took us through Hare Bay (great cinnamon buns) and Gambo, birthplace of Joseph Smallwood, the main force who brought the Dominion of Newfoundland into Canadian Confederation in 1949, becoming the 1st Premier of the new province until 1972. Lots of places still display the Federation of Newfoundland $20. bill on the wall of their business.
On our way to see the puffins we saw this sign at Newman’s Cove and just had to stop in.
We wondered if this is what Ry Cooder had in mind for the album by that name of an ensemble of Cuban musicians recorded at Havana in 1996. It turned out to be a beautiful spot overlooking the water, serving up wood fired oven pizza. Probably not what Ry had in mind because his club was Buena Vista Social Club, but it was definitely worth checking out.
Did we mention the potholes?! The potholes here are like playing Whack-A-Mole and the Kona warning light comes on suggesting we take a break because we’re swerving all over the road!
Bonavista is one of the celebrated sites for viewing Puffins and it was a bust for us that day - more people than birds!
(that’s a puffin lower left in photo, all the holes are nests)
Nice lighthouse though, and cute chairs. (notice the way you can arrange them to suit your mood!)
It was cold and windy, but we did get to Dungeon Provincial Park where a massive heart shaped crater with two separate openings to the sea, a breathtaking sea cave which forms a natural archway.
Elliston is also the site of 133 documented Root Cellars, the “Root Cellar Capital of the World”. People would mould cellars into the side of the hills forming them with flagstone from marine sandstone to store their garden harvest to last them through the long winters. Some of them are still in use.
Still on Route 230 (note that I have stopped calling the roads here highways), through Port Union, Canada’s only Union built town, founded by Wm. Croaker as the base for the Fishermen’s Protective Union in 1916 and it is now a very well preserved historic site.
A lot of these big ‘refueling’ stops (fuel, drive thru, convenience stores, some EV charging) are owned by Irving, a big family enterprise that I won’t get into here, and this one is near a huge crude oil refinery in Come By Chance, with a refining capacity of 130,000 barrels/day! The plant is undergoing conversion to a biofuel operation which sounds pretty and counts for something, but certainly won’t reduce production, or consumption. Speaking of consumption, some to the stations here have run out of gas! It went up 7 cents a litre and people are hoarding I guess.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/newfoundland-gas-shortage-1.6928456
We checked into the Winsor B&B in downtown St. John’s and it’s beautiful. Gery was there to greet us and show us to our room and help us get settled before we ventured into downtown and check things out. Winsor B & B is a beautiful Edwardian style home with very modern improvements, clean and spacious. The neighbourhood has similar homes, all really well kept - I wonder if people need to sign some sort of an agreement to maintain these homes when they buy them because we didn’t see one unkept one.
https://www.winsorhousenl.com/
The houses in St. John’s are just like the postcards - jelly bean colours all in a row. What a vibrant city, and George’s Street is exciting with all the bars and entertainment , but we’re cold and tired so called it a day.
St. John’s in the pouring rain is still St. John’s and needs to be explored. We took the car downtown to a level 2 EV charger on Duckworth St. and walked pretty much all day - Quidi Vidi is in a tiny bay and filled with artists studios - a great visit with Sarah who weaves yard from her own Angora rabbits. She loves her craft and was fun to talk to, about weaving and other things.
We headed off for Signal Hill National Historic Site. Roger got out in the pouring rain to go inside, I, on the other hand, stayed in the car and enjoyed looking at nothing but rain and fog from the comfort and solitude of the car!
This is what Roger saw from Signal Hill, this is what I saw from the car!
Signal Hill was where Guglielmo Marconi, using an antenna suspended 500 feet by kite, received the first transatlantic wireless signal, the letter ‘S’ in Morse Code. I’m quite confused by all this because I thought that was the claim to fame that Table Head in Nova Scotia 15 December 1902 and Signal Hill was 12 December 1901! I’ll let someone else figure that one out - I’m busy trying to put everything else down :)
Did I mention it’s raining!!
Dropped in and visited Elaine at Elaine’s Books on Duckworth Street, a great little shop that’s been open for 7 years. Very friendly and lots of great books and local art! Keep those bookstores alive people, these folks are doing their very best to be there for You!
We were so grateful to get back to Winsor B&B, peel off our wet clothes and light the fireplace in our room and Gery helped Roger plug in the car (level 1) for the night.
Day 93 - We had a wonderful breakfast at Winsor with our fellow travellers and shared stories of our travels and ‘where to next’. One pair travelling are doing something that we think is wonderful - they are asking people along the way what their favourite song is and why. The songs are their playlist and they have committed to listen to the whole song, whether they like it or not and they can reminisce about who gave it to them and why. That is so cool. Gery and Lesa were wonderful hosts, thank you again.
We discovered that we had made a big mistake in booking our next place near Fortune before checking on the schedule for the ferry we want to take to St. Pierre-Miquelon, the French Islands off the south coast of Newfoundland - the ones we drove across Canada with our passports to visit! We couldn’t get a round trip on a Tuesday! The cost of staying overnight there etc. was too much, so we skipped it - Damn it!
But off we went, drove down the Burin Peninsula Heritage Run Route and loved the trip. It was very different than other places because it changed so drastically and quickly. One minute mountains, then flat land, then forests, then hills, then ocean, and sometimes the St. Pierre - Miquelon Islands 😒
We arrived on the Monday of the August long weekend and everything was closed, even the Walmart! I didn’t think Walmart ever closed! So we bought Cracker Jacks at the gas station and a box of crackers & Mr. Noodles in Frenchmen’s Cove.
The cabin we booked at Grand Beach was beyond perfect - almost at the end of the point (the picture above is of an old cabin on the point) across from a beach filled with sea urchin shells - the gulls here eat well. And when we asked a neighbour what was the land we were looking at across the water, wondering if it was islands or another point or cove, they replied “Over Across the Bay”, that’s what they’re called. None the wiser we had to pull out our map to see that we were looking at Frenchman’s Cove Provincial Park, we think.
The neighbours are quite curious about the MeAnd’Er car and came by to check us out. The MeAnd’Er has been fun here in Newfoundland because everyone gets it! Some even take pictures.
Here’s sunrise from our little green cabin on the beach:
We explored the southern tip of the Burin Peninsula and the Seamen’s Museum in Grand Bank. The building was originally the Yugoslavian Pavilllion at Expo 67 in Montreal, and Premier Joey Smallwood visioned the triangular design as ships’ sails and persuaded the government to buy it for $50,000. The museum was filled with amazing stuff, NFLD currency, stamps, postcards, china, fishing and boat gear of course, and some amazing, big ship models.
Day 95 - topped up the EV at Marytown and heading to Gander after checking suggestions from friends and notes from Jean and Donna, and emails from Sharon F. making sure we don’t miss anything as we make our way out of Newfoundland.
We visited Dolly & Pearce at the Town Square Book Shop, and that was quite a treat. Dolly is a real character and told us all about collecting all of these used books on their bikes and in shopping carts and opening this store about 7 years ago - she figures she has about 10,000 books in there and she might be right. I bought Farley Mowat Never Cry Wolf, Alan Doyle’s book Where I Belong, and Dolly gifted us a book Between the Boulevard and the Bay by local author Ron Young, signed by Dolly herself.
Gander Airport - a very emotional time visiting the place where, on September 11, 2001 “Get those planes down now!” came across the airways and the air traffic control tower in Gander handled directing 100’s of aircraft in the skies and landing as many as they could in Gander.
In a matter of hours, 38 jetliners parked nose to tail on the ground and there wasn’t a plane left in the sky. The town’s population doubled with more than 6,500 strangers in a matter of hours, foreigners from 90 nations, strangers, potentially other terrorists - they didn’t have to let them in but the people of Gander provided shelter, food, or visions, prescriptions, care for animals and the arena became a walk-in fridge. There is a very moving memorial at Gander Airport and a piece of the World Trade Centre steel presented to Gander International Airport in gratitude for the profound humanitarian role the Airport, and the people of Gander, played in the wake of the attacks on 9/11.
On the first day, we had 7,000 strangers, on the third day we had 7,000 friends, on the fifth day we had 7,000 family members. - Claude Elliott, Former Mayor, Gander Newfoundland
We stood there in the airport, looking out at the tarmac and tried to imagine what it must have been like, and couldn’t.
The musical “Come From Away” tells the story so eloquently - it’s playing here now but we couldn’t get tickets, they’ve been sold out for months!
What do lighthouses and sunsets have in common?
- Each one is more beautiful than the last
Other things we have learned about travel:
Drinking water - tap, well, spring, rusty, stinky, hard, soft - we’ve had them all. Thank goodness we brought our Brita
Toilet paper - some of it is worse than a highway rest stop, but they’ll add a quart of stinky fabric softener to make the towels soft!
Laundry - ‘lie flat to dry’ and ‘line dry’ do not work in a laundromat. Between weight gain and clothes dryers the elastic in everything is shot!
Shoes - don’t pack a pair for every outfit, you’ll only wear 2 pairs, one for rain and one for the rest of the time
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