Our View From The Road

We’re still here. Today was a much nicer day weather wise with sunshine in the afternoon and no winds. A lovely Spring day.

Barb and I went for a morning walk around Woolfrey’s Pond on the 2.5km boardwalk. We saw a Loon sitting on her nest and an Otter sunning him/herself on a rock. we also saw many smaller birds flittering about the black spruce trees, poplars and maples.

Mark completed a couple of repairs that were required on the yacht ahead of handover to the new owner and then we relaxed at his AirBnB enjoying Mary Brown’s Chicken for dinner.

We have now returned to the marina where we will spend our last night in Lewisporte before heading to Twillingate tomorrow.

Today was a day of relaxing. We spent the day lounging in the van at the marina and helping Mark. It was drizzly and foggy.

For dinner we visited Chelsea’s Fish & Chips which were lovely.

Wow, did the wind blow last night. The rain continued most of the night as did the wind gusting to 60+ km/h at times. A restless night unfortunately.

Today the park showers (10/10) felt wonderful as we readied ourselves for a travel day that would see us end the day in Lewisporte. We took our time getting ready as Barb prepared a grilled egg sandwich for my birthday breakfast. After emptying the tanks we set off back along the Dorset Trail towards the Trans Canada Highway (TCH). 90min of driving in the rain (heavy at times) and thick fog watching carefully for roadside Moose. None weee seen and before long the rain eased and we made it back onto the TCH heading East towards Grand Falls.

The TCH is quite a nice road with passing lanes every few kilometers helping to ease backlogs of cars caught following slower moving vehicles.

Stopping for fuel ($1.871/liter) near Bishops Falls allowed us to relax for a few minutes before returning to the highway for the last few kilometer’s. we turned off of the TCH and onto Route 340 which took us into Lewisporte where we pulled into the marina where we will be spending a couple of nights.

Our good friend Mark, with whom we sailed to Newfoundland in 2019, has sold his yacht which he has kept in Lewisporte for the past 6 years. He is here to remove personal belongings ahead of the new owner taking possession and we thought apropos to give him a hand and say goodbye to the yacht.

We enjoyed dinner at Li’s Restaurant a local Chinese establishment before returning to our van at the marina for the night.

Camp day today. Laundry, cleaning, etc. To aid with this it rained so we spent most of the day inside.

We did venture out later in the afternoon and walked to The Outport Museum and Tearoom. The owner of the home turned into a museum when there was a moratorium placed on Cod fishing. Being out of work and a history buff, he began collecting items from around the community that spoke of the history of La Scie and the area.

Today the old house is full of artifacts that speak to the lives of the people who once lived and worked to build the community that exists today. The owners took it upon themselves to tell us stories and add information to some of the pieces on display.

The tearoom serves traditional Newfoundland food and Barb enjoyed fish cakes while I had Moose soup. We also enjoyed dessert before heading out and back to the van.

It was lightly raining when we initially headed out earlier, our return walk was fraught with gusty winds and driving rain. Definitely a quiet evening inside.

Tomorrow we head to Lewisporte.

Shallow Bay Campground is wonderfully quiet. We had a nice nights sleep and awoke to a sunny morning after some light overnight rain. Parks Canada comes through again with their nicely equipped showers (9/10) and we got ourselves ready and packed to go before 10:00am. This included a quick stop to empty our tanks.

Re-joining Route 430 South we made our way through Gros Morne National Park towards Deer Lake where we stopped to re-provision and fuel up the van.

Heading East on the Trans Canada Highway, we stopped for lunch at the White Bay Restaurant. Continuing on the TCH, we arrived at the Route 410 exit that headed North into the Baie Verte Peninsula and towards our destination of La Scie. This route North is called The Dorset Trail.

La Scie (French for ‘The Saw’) probably hints at the towns forestry background. Today, fishing appears to be the primary industry with the very secluded harbour well stocked with all sizes of boats.

We are camping for a couple of nights at the Island Cove RV Park located at High Point on the North side of the harbour. The campground is small with only 9 serviced sites and about the same number of unserviced sites.

Before dinner we hiked up to the High Point Lookout for some wonderful views offshore. As a bonus there are a couple of icebergs below the cliffs.

After a later dinner we relaxed and then watched the sunset before retiring for the night.

Tomorrow is a day for relaxing and getting a few chores done.