NEWFOUNDLAND – BUTTER POT PROVINCIAL PARK TO FERRYLAND.
Day 50 – We have no internet & cell phone connections again. We’ll be here at La Manche Provincial Park until Wednesday, so assuming our next Park has connections, we’ll be sending out a group of blog posts all at once. We apologize. Rob was up at 6:30; I got up a little after 7. It was 41 degrees out and it shot all the way up to 43 degrees later in the day, LOL. It was very foggy all day. It began raining around 6 p.m.
We figured with this dense fog, it was no use taking a boat trip. They offer lots of them from close to here at Witless Bay & Bay Bulls. There’s the Witless Bay Seabird Ecological Reserve right off the coast where lots of birds nest. The Reserve is located on four islands & it’s known as the best place to see Puffins nesting. The boat tours go there and also look for Whales, and at this time of year, Icebergs. The peak of the Whale watching season is July. But today, with the fog, it wasn’t the day to go out.
There is a whole peninsula below us for us to explore (we’re trying to see every one in NF; they each have their own interesting histories). And 57 km above us is St. John’s, the capital and the biggest city in Newfoundland. Above St. John’s is another smaller peninsula which we’ve heard is quite beautiful with “jaw-dropping” scenery. All of this is along the coast, the outer perimeter of the Island. In most of NF, there are hardly any towns nor roads other than the coastal roads, and there’s the Trans-Canada Highway that runs through the middle of the island and the cities along that highway. But the Island is quite large, and many people coming to visit think they can see it all during a week’s vacation. You would miss so much!
This morning, because of the fog, we decided to drive northwest out of the fog to check out Butter Pot Provincial Park. Since it’s closer to St. John’s, we’d thought about moving there after this Park to use it as a base for St. John’s and the peninsula above it. Because the NF busy season is approaching and because of Butter Pot’s proximity to St. John’s, we figured we’d need to make reservations, especially over a weekend. It’s really difficult to look at a campground online & figure out what is a good campsite. So we drove up to Butter Pot to personally drive through the Park before making a reservation for next weekend. We’re glad we did. It’s a nice Park. The Ranger said they book solid on seasonal weekends. She let us drive around and it took quite a while. There were at least four loops and almost 200 campsites. Some sites were small & close together, others were good but by the large playground, some were not level, and others were very good. We picked our favorite 5 in order of preference and made a reservation for five nights beginning Wednesday night. Out of the five, two were available – our #1 and #5 choices. So we got what we wanted; the future looks good. Grin.
We drove back to the RV and had a late lunch. The fog had lifted only a little. We drove south as far as Ferryland and did some exploring in the fog. We took very few pictures because of the weather. We did see two Icebergs, a very small one and a larger one floating next to it. We drove through several wonderful, small fishing villages but we couldn’t see much out into the Ocean. We were in one lovely village, Brigus South, where we could drive right down to the fishing wharf and look out over the gorgeous rocky headland. There was a nice Iceberg there. We got pictures of that. A lovely village below Brigus South was Admiral’s Cove. We stopped there, and Rob was taking pictures of the rocky cove and nice scenery when he looked up to see a dog charging at him. Uh-oh. He looked more closely trying to decide how to react and he saw the dog had a stick in his mouth and he wanted to play. He ran up to Rob & dropped the stick at Rob’s feet. Rob threw it & the dog retrieved it. This game went on for a bit. I wished I’d had my camera with me; it was really cute. Then the dog began getting over-excited and it was time to go.
We know there are islands and rocks and whales and lighthouses out there at all the places we went, but we just couldn’t see them in the fog. The town of Ferryland was another great place, but it was too foggy. Evidently it’s famous historically because it was the home of the Colony of Avalon in the 1600’s. We intend to go back soon on a better day so we can see more and learn more about this picturesque place.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
We drove back to the RV in time to make dinner and beat the rain. It is so overcast, rainy, and foggy that we cannot see the water right in front of the RV, but we CAN hear the Loons. One thing we did notice today is that the real estate market around here seems to be booming. We guess because it’s not too far from the big city, folks may be buying weekend or summer homes, or possibly buying to commute? There are sub-divisions going up, land is for sale, and some homes are for sale. I have looked online at other areas we liked like Branch & Point Lance, and some of the small fishing villages way up north on the Northern Peninsula. Very few homes or land are for sale in those places. And when spending time at our favorite places, we didn’t see any for sale signs at all. It sure would be nice to have a little plot of land to park the RV overlooking whales & icebergs & seabirds for a couple of months every year……..