NEWFOUNDLAND – POLLARD’S POINT TO PORT AU CHOIX.
Day 118 – Well, plans do change. We got up this morning with the intent of travelling to Labrador on Saturday, staying overnight at two campgrounds on the way to the ferry terminal. It was 52 degrees this morning and cloudy at 6:45 a.m. We packed up and departed our campground at RiverSea Motel & RV Park in Pollard’s Point at 9:55 a.m. It started raining soon after we left.
201 miles, (5:25), 41881-42082
The “low fuel” warning came on. We knew we had 60 km to go before the first gas station. We made it in time & filled the RV with gasoline. The first section of the drive was rough roads on Route 420 south. It got better once we were on the Trans-Canada Highway heading west. It continued raining lightly until we turned off on Route 430 north. We drove thru outrageously beautiful Gros Morne National Park, and although the clouds were thick & there was no sun shining, it was still remarkable. We first came this way on May 25, almost three months ago, just five days after arriving in Newfoundland.
Our intent had been to stop at the halfway point between Pollard’s Point and St. Barbe where the ferry terminal was located – a campground in northern Gros Morne National Park. But we hadn’t had a decent internet connection in several days, so we kept checking the phone to see if we cound get a weather forecast. Finally, when we did get a forecast, we saw that high winds were coming our way beginning the day we’d plan to travel by ferry from Newfoundland to Labrador. We stopped at a pull-out and since we had a good connection at that time, we called various campgrounds in Labrador to see how long they would be open until closing for the end of the season. We saw that we could still safely put off our trip to Labrador for a week or two & hopefully by-pass the high winds AND the campgrounds would be still open. But, it just seems strange that campgrounds will be closing in several weeks due to the cold weather arriving again. When we arrived here in late May, and until the end of June, the weather was cold with icebergs everywhere. And soon it will start up again?
Anyway, based on this information, we changed our plans and decided to put off the trip to Labrador for one to two weeks, making our reservations for the ferry when there are less windy conditions. We decided to go back up to Port au Choix & spend a couple of nights there. We last stayed here at Oceanside RV Park, a Lion’s Club park, for one night last May on our way up to the tip of the Northern Peninsula. There were things we wanted to do but they were not open yet for the season. Now we could do them. It was a nice campground right on the Ocean. We called and they did have space for us. Nice to have a phone connection! When we were last here, we’d been blown away to see the Ocean iced over and this is where we saw our first iceberg, small but still an iceberg. We were so excited. We’ve seen so much since then!
We arrived at 3:20 p.m.. It was 73 degrees, partly cloudy, and hazy out. We chose site #14, set up, and headed outside to enjoy the view. It had cleared somewhat and become fairly windy, but it was quite pleasant with our wine & beer. There were a couple of Osprey (Fish Hawks) flying in front of us, then suddenly diving straight down into the water for fish. There were four tent campers, two van campers, and two RV campers here – not too bad for summer season on the water. The high today was 74 degrees.
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