WEDNESDAY WORK.
Day 7 – No morning constitutional today; we were busy early with other things. It was 42 degrees and cloudy this morning. We got a call first thing this morning from the local guy about the trees; he apologized & said he hadn’t checked his messages.
Another busy day. We got online right after we got up – before coffee, which made the battle for campsites more difficult. Yesterday, we’d planned the earlier parts of the Newfoundland trip with iceberg viewing in mind. Currently there are more than 80 icebergs scattered around northern/northeastern NF. icebergfinder.com
It’s heart attack time when you are online, trying to get the best campsites while others are doing the same thing at the same time. “Oh no, the reservation system has kicked me off”; “Why do I have a site in my cart already when I haven’t picked one yet”; “Oh dear, our first site is taken, it was just available a second ago”; “Our first choice is gone, the second one is gone, the third one is now taken, quick – what’s our next choice”; “The system won’t take our payment information”; “Oh no, it says we have an error, what the hell is wrong now?!”; etc. Fun & games! In the end, we made reservations for 7 different Provincial Park campgrounds and 3 different National Park campgrounds, occasionally getting our first choice but always getting a site within our top 5 choices. Not too shabby.
After our marathon campground reservation party we went into town to run errands to the town recycling center, the post office, the hardware store, the library to donate a box of books, and got gas and propane. Of course, we checked out the restaurants to see what was open this early in the year. Basically nothing of interest to us, but we were very happy Morano’s Pizza WAS open (just Fridays & Saturdays for now) – they have some of the best pizza we’ve ever had – and we will be visiting them before we leave for Canada. We stopped for pictures of Johnson Bay from Lubec. Quiet, for now.
We returned to the RV, had lunch (Beyond Burgers), and Rob went out to do more tree work while I worked on campground reservations. The camping reservations we need now are all the other parks that are not Provincial or National Parks. Since it is off season everywhere, it’s often difficult to reach people, and when you do they are not necessarily in work mode. Many go off-island for the winter – one man was in Florida and not leaving his winter domicile for weeks before coming back to open up his campground – and several others just wanted to chat about the fishing, lobster season which is starting soon, the weather, etc. Most are only open for about 4 months a year. We’d planned to return to several places we visited in 2019 for more extended stays; many of these campgrounds fall into this category.
At the end of the day we’d booked several of our favorite places (including the campground we needed located near the ferry terminal upon arrival AND before departure from the island; a week at the top of a cliff overlooking the waters where icebergs & whales are often sighted – La Scie; and 6 nights on Fogo Island near Twillingate (more whales & icebergs). Rob finished the tree clean-up except for the two trees leaning on the power lines which will be taken care of when we’re gone. Tomorrow I will continue booking campgrounds and Rob will do the chipping/shredding of the trees & brush he’s collected at the end of the driveway. He’s taken pictures of the results of his work.
The girls continue to sleep, eat, and cuddle – oblivious of all the bustling about going on around them. What a life! Again, the high today was only 48 degrees; it remained cloudy.
Your morning did sound stressful, yikes!