Terrys Blog
After some 6200 KM we have arrived home safe and sound…… and very tired. It was a great experience and a lot of fun. Will we do it again? Hard to say. We will think about it.
In the mean time September is here and with September comes new beginnings in all of our endevours. New season of Squash, New season of Pickleball, new projects and on and on. Who has time to think about another vacation. 🙂
We look forward to sharing our experiences on this trip with all who are interested.
Off to an early start. Breakfast at Timmy’s and then on our way. We hope to make it into Ontario by this evening.
19:10 We are back in Ontario. Not far into it, about 10 KM . We are camping on the shores of The St. Lawrence. A beautiful campground. It’s well worth a return visit during a summer.
Home tomorrow.
Our second day on the road and puts us 700 + km closer to home. We left the beaten track to do a little exploring. Susan saw an ad in a travel book about “Train Pie” at a historical Train Station in McAdam NB. It’s a long story and we look forward to telling it in person. Here is a pic.
We are back on mainland Canada. After a 6 hour Ferry ride and a 2 hour drive to an RV park, we are now in Nova Scotia.
More once we again get WiFi.
Port aux Brasques has been lucky in avoiding the major hit by Dorian. Some rain, lots of wind but little or no damage. Talking to the locals and they are taking it in stride. Wind is a constant here. So it’s a little harder than usual. No Problem.
What is holding back the Ferry is the waves. Reports of 30 meter waves have been heard. The Ferry people will not take it out till they are much less. That is supposed to be Monday morning. As of 8:00 PM we haven’t heard of a cancellation. Keeping our fingers crossed.
With any luck the waves will be a lot less tomorrow morning and we will be on our way home. Susan is not looking forward to a voyage that involves waves.
While waiting to check in to a hotel room to ride out the storm, we ventured about 40 KM east of Port aux Basques along the south coast to a little village of Rose Blanche. Here there is a Granite lighthouse originally built in 1873.  It had fallen into disrepair and in 1988 the town folk took it upon themselves to rebuild it and make it a tourist attraction. Construction started in 1996 using granite from a local quarry and following the original methods of construction. No power equipment was used in the construction.
it’s a lot longer that I had anticipated.
Back along the coast line to Port aux Basques and to the Hotel to wait out the storm. At last report we will not be leaving Newfoundland until Monday Morning.
With the exception of one heavy downpour the first week caused by Tropical storm ERIN, we have had lovely weather. Yesterday on our way down from Twillingate a heavy rain hit. We had to pull off to the side for about five minutes and then it was gone. Other than that lots of sunshine.
Then the reports about hurricane Dorian said it would hit Newfoundland Sunday. We called and changed our ferry departure from Sunday to Saturday. We cut short some planned activities. On a shortened visit to Gros Morne this morning we received an message informing us that the ferry was cancelled for Saturday and we were rescheduled for Sunday (our original leaving booking). But……. Dorian is going to be hitting NL on Sunday.
We are now expecting to have to stay hunkered down here in Newfoundland till Monday. We think we may forgo RVing and get a hotel room.
We made our way west along the Trans Canada Highway to the town of Deer Lake where we found a beautiful RV Park on the lake.
I am sure that in summer this is a very popular place to catch some rays. Unfortunately at this time of year it was too cold to venture into the water.
From here we drove northwest to the Unesco World Heritage site, Gros Morne. Since the 1960’s this had become a major geological investigation site. It has been determined that at this point, the plates that move within the earth did something different in their movements. Instead of compressing the magma as they move they squeezed it up to the surface. This is the only place on earth that you can see the magma that makes up the underlying core of the earth.
throughout our trip there have been warning signs to be vigilant looking for Moose, Cars and Moose don’t mix. This is one of the funnier renditions of the warning.
Really, we feel that the moose (and all other wildlife in Newfoundland) are really just employees of the government and like most attendants at the Information Centres, they have been laid off at the end of tourist season. We have not seen a single wildlife in Newfoundland. Even on George St, in St, John’s which has no less than 20 bars, we didn’t see any wild life, It may have been because we were there at 2:00 in the afternoon but still.
As for Corner Brook, the second largest city in Newfoundland, we have no pictures. It is by far our least favourite place in NL. It took us a long time to find the information centre (using Google) and when we did, it was closed. The city is built on hills and the streets follow the hills and wind everywhere. Then there are so many one way streets you can’t find your way even if we had a good map, We couldn’t wait to get back on the highway and headed south.
Today we had an opportunity to see Gander. We drove around the airport and reminisced about Come From Away. We then went looking for the 9/11 memorial. It is situated in the North Atlantic Aviation Museum. It’s small but had a good representation of aircraft through the ages.
And it is here that we found the tribute to the 9/11 event. Here is Susan with a piece of the World Trade Tower that was given to the town to commemorate their help in their time of need.
The receptionist at the Museum was only 6 years old in 2001. She remembers her parents making food for the plane people and bringing some people home to use their shower. We told her to thank her parents for representing Canadians so well.
From here we headed north to Twillingate, a small fishing village on the North Atlantic.
Like most places we have visited, the tourist season being over, things are closed up or getting ready to close. They have returned to the quiet life of a little fishing village.
In the spring and early summer they thrive on boat tours to see Icebergs and whales, neither of which are there at this time of year.
We had the pleasure of spending the morning with dear friends Edwina and Damien Brazil from Spaniard’s Day NL. We first met them on our vacation in Ireland and have kept in touch ever since.
After a breakfast and catching up they guided us on a tour of the area ending up in Dildo NL.
On to Gander for the night.