NEWFOUNDLAND – TWILLINGATE MISCELLANEOUS.
Day 84 – We slept in this morning and hung around the RV until about noon. It rained during the night and it was very windy. It had stopped raining this morning but was still windy. Last night we tried to make a reservation at Notre Dame Provincial Park, but could not get a signal for long enough to do that. We were able to check availability though. All sites with hook-ups were booked. Only one of the sites we’d marked as a favorite was available for that weekend. And we couldn’t get online. Sigh.
Around the campground, it had been packed with very large RV’s for several days when a caravan had come in – some tour from a travel agency – each RV had a number & everyone went to planned places together (apparently no children). We’d thought it would be very loud here with so many campers, but we found that people come here to see the sights and are gone all day. It was pretty quiet. Then Wednesday they all left and the campground only had a few campers come in for one night – they were quiet. When you’ve only got a day or two to fit everything in, you have no time to create noise. Now we are nearing the weekend, so we’ll see if it changes, but so far we are pleasantly surprised at how nice this campground has been.
About Newfoundland, we absolutely love it here. It is a different world. We’ve been thinking that it will be hard to leave & never come back again. This started out as a dream come true on a list of places we would love to visit. We didn’t expect to like it this much. As expected, the unspoiled beauty is amazing, but there is so much more. Like for those that hate hot, humid weather, you can’t do much better than this. The bugs that people said were so terrible – they are no worse, or even less than upstate NY or Maine. We’ve actually come across less, but maybe it’s a low bug year? So what if we had a little RV pad in the trees that was completely private except for the rocky cliff below the tree opening over the water and the waves were breaking and the whales were frolicking and the gannets were diving and the temperatures were in the 50’s at night and the 60’s to 75 degrees during the day? But it’s such a long way to go to get there. And we’ve got the land in Maine. But the bugs are bad on our land &the temperatures can get too warm & humid (for us) in the summer. But there’s nothing as special as our harbor in Maine in September and October. Hmmm. So prices are low here. We’ve been looking at these idyllic little villages with the rocky cliffs. Taking it all in. Yes, if the absolutely right things just happened to come along and hit us in the head, we sure would consider it. Three months in NF; three months in Maine. Who knows……
Enough already, we left around noon to go to the Dockside Seafood Restaurant of Doyle W Sansome & Sons in the small town of Hillgrade. We were lucky we could get in. Usually this place is swamped. They have a lobster pool – you cannot get lobster any fresher. This place is about ½ hour from the campground at the end of a winding road. You can eat indoors or outdoors and you can watch them bring the catches in from the harbour and unload. Today was very windy and cloudy. We opted to eat indoors. Not wanting to work that hard for my meal, I got the Fresh Scallops Dinner which included choice of sides, beverage & dessert. Rob got the Fresh Snow Crab Legs Dinner which included the same as mine (he doesn’t mind working for his meal). Both meals were excellent. If we lived near here, this would be our go-to restaurant if we wanted casual – special restaurant would be the Canvas Cove Bistro. Our desserts were Blueberry Cake w/Vanilla Sauce for Rob and Partridgeberry Cake w/Vanilla Sauce for me. (I have become quite attached to those Partridgeberries and wish we could get them in the States. We are looking forward to trying the NF Bakeapples which come into season in August.)
Then we drove to Kettle Cove North to look again at a piece of land that we found earlier in the week – except there’s no for sale sign out. We were hoping someone would be outside nearby & we could ask about the land. It looked like someone had just bought it & recently put in a gravel road to it OR someone had put in the road in preparation for putting it up for sale. No one was around that we could ask about it. We may try again. (Yesterday we saw a different plot with 575′ of waterfront footage – very nice and it was for sale, but closer to a road than we’d want to be. It really has to be EXACTLY what we’d want for us to consider it.)
We drove back to the RV. 60 degrees with high wind gusts and very cloudy skies. We caught up with some things, like baking 2 loaves of Italian Herb Bread (for Rob’s garlic-cheese bread) and paying bills, and yes, getting ahold of the Provincial Park Services reservations system and reserving site #7 at Notre Dame Provincial Park for the weekend after next. YAAAA. It was too windy to sit in the screened tent so we sat around and watched as the weekend crowd arrived and scoped out sites here. For dinner we’d brought home from our lunch restaurant a Lobster Sandwich to split and two cups of Seafood Chowder (plus we will have fresh garlic-cheese bread right out of the oven to have with it). The girls are happy we’re here. One more day at Twillingate and we leave for 4 nights on Fogo Island by the sea. Getting out just in time. We found out last night that a huge festival is beginning in Twillingate next week. The place will be packed.