LIGHTHOUSES & OUTPORTS.
Day 31 – Much warmer this morning, it was 47 degrees when we got up, quite overcast and windy. The weather forecast called for very little sunlight, lots of clouds & increasing winds. We feel a storm coming. Since we’re leaving this campground tomorrow, we’re taking a drive today, clouds or no clouds. Last night at the campground, it was family reunion time or something. During the day at least 4 travel trailers and 2 trucks without RVs arrived, and there was a large get together with children & adults and a couple of very happy dogs. Games were played, the people and the dogs ran around, and a good time was had by all. This morning you could’ve heard a pin drop, it was so quiet.
We went to the local Home Store for a propane refill, conveniently just down the road from the campground, drove back and dropped off the tank at the RV, and departed for our drive at 10 a.m. The party people were still not stirring; busy night! Even the dogs were worn out. We took a picture of the colorful Craft Store at the campground on our way out.
We drove south on the Trans Canada Highway past Wreckhouse, turning east on the Highway and stopping first at J.T. Cheeseman Provincial Park. We needed to pick up a Provincial Park Pass for 2023. This was where we camped in 2019 after we got off the ferry from Nova Scotia. They weren’t open yet this year when we arrived. After purchasing the Park Pass (which lets you get into all Newfoundland Provincial Parks free for a year and costs $50, Canadian currency – otherwise it would cost $10 per Park to enter, whether camping there or not), we drove through the campground and down to the beach. It turned out that the huge hurricane that took out all those trees in Nova Scotia last year, also hit Newfoundland very hard. According to the Park Ranger, campground roads were washed out and you can no longer reach the beaches. He said 100 homes in the area were destroyed. (I, personally, didn’t know there were 100 homes in all of Newfoundland, hee hee.) We also found out that people can camp at Cheeseman Provincial Park when they are not open for the season. The Ranger told us you can just come in and camp anywhere, but there would be no services whatsoever. Good to know since we are self-contained.
We kept heading east passing Port aux Basques where the ferry came in. When we got off the ferry on Tuesday, we drove west, then north on Trans Canada Highway 1. Now we were driving on Route 470, past Port aux Basques as if we’d turned right then to go east. East of this arrival & departure port town, a two-lane winding road travels to several small-to-tiny outport towns before the road ends at Rose Blanche. At that point, there aren’t any roads traveling west-to-east, just a community, LaPoile, 35 kms to the east and reachable only by a passenger ferry. The previous time we were in Newfoundland, we were surprised to learn that many of these outports had no roads at all reaching them until the 1960’s.
The scenery immediately after Port aux Basques was wild and rough with very few signs of people anywhere. We passed by turn-offs on narrower roads, some not paved, to the small outport towns of Margaree, Fox Roost, Isle aux Morts, Burnt Islands, Diamond Cove, Harbour Le Cou, and Rose Blanche.
The town of Rose Blanche: “Rose Blanche is a small community located on the southwest coast of Newfoundland, 45 kms east of Port aux Basques, the terminus for Marine Atlantic’s ferry service to the island. The harbour was first used by French migratory fishermen who came in the early 1700’s to fish the nearby Rose Blanche Bank which had an abundance of cod. The harbour provided good anchorage, being well sheltered by Caines Island and Rose Blanche Point. The name Rose Blanche is a corruption of the French words, “roche blanche” (white rock) which can be seen at Diamond Cove. This white quartz was highly visible to the French migratory fishermen when they first approached the shore in the early 1700’s. The first permanent settlers came around 1810. The Old Stone Lighthouse was built 1871-1873 from local granite, and no other structure remains from the earliest days of this community’s history.” from the pamphlet, “Rose Blanche Lighthouse, History Lives Here”
We stopped at the end of the road at the trail to the Lighthouse. We’d been on the road for awhile and having finished my tea, I really needed to use the Restroom. There were public facilities there at the end of the road by the trail. Yes! I rushed over to find the door was locked. A lady who was near there emptying the trash said, “Sorry, we don’t open until June 4th”. And I said, almost to myself, “Now what am I going to do!” She said, “Wait right here”. I was like, umm okay? She came rushing back and said, “You can use this one”, pointing to a brown house near the cliff. I opened the gate and followed a trail to the brown house, walked in, and there were 3 people there in a living room, unpacking things from a box. I said, “I’m sorry but I’ve needed to go to the bathroom for a long time and the nice lady said I could use this one”. The older gentleman said, “Of course, this way, please”, and pointed me to a small room outside of a hallway. I entered the room, shut the door, and boy did I use the bathroom! They were all waiting for me as I left the room, including the woman I met outside, and I thanked them profusely. They said this house was a B&B and they were unpacking, getting ready to open on June 4. There were 4 bedrooms upstairs, each with their own bathroom: a small kitchen, and a living room, all with spectacular views. It was not a new house. Little did I know at that time, this was the Lighthouse Keeper’s home, originally built in the early 1900’s. It is now called the Rose Blanche Lightkeepers Inn B&B and is open from June to some time in September. As we found out in 2019, Newfoundlanders are extremely nice people!
Rob had also encountered this woman. He was starting up the trail to the Lighthouse, and she was emptying more trash, and stopped him, saying that there was a better way to take the trail. She said, “Take the trail along the shore to the Lighthouse. You can see a huge rock in the middle of the trail. Well, not huge, but pretty big. Fiona was here.” Rob was like, “Fiona?” And she said, “Hurricane Fiona”. He’s like, DUH!
We spent some time at Rose Blanche, a very scenic outport village at the end of the world, or so it seemed. The lighthouse park had great views, a place for picnics, and several boarded-up small buildings, which in season are a gift shop, an office that sells tickets for the lighthouse tour, a fisherman’s museum with a model boat collection, restrooms, and a takeout food kiosk selling picnic lunches. After Rose Blanche, we turned around and drove through each of the tiny towns on the way back to Port aux Basques.
We stopped for gas in the Honda at Port aux Basques and drove through the city looking for a place to get a bite to eat, but all restaurants were closed except Tim Horton’s, a fast food restaurant you’ll find all over Canada. It was packed with cars, both the parking lot and the drive-thru. I guess that’s what happens when you come to town too early in the season. We decided to eat protein bars instead and continued driving back on Trans Canada Highway 1 to Route 408 and the road to Cape Ray where we headed west to the Cape Ray Lighthouse and the Ocean. There we saw more indications that Hurricane Fiona did lots of damage. There was a home that was blown off its foundation and what was left of it was sitting up the hill a bit, siding was being replaced on houses, roofs were being worked on, and trees had been cleaned up where they’d blown over, etc.
We drove back to the campground and the cats were happy to see us. The sleeping campers had awakened. The temperature today was only in the 40’s further south at the outport towns, but here it was 59 degrees. It remained overcast and cloudy and windy. Check out time here is 2 p.m., but tomorrow we won’t be hanging around that long because by then the winds will be high enough that it’ll be unsafe to drive the RV. We’ll be leaving Wreckhouse winds behind and heading north before the winds get too bad here.
More tidbits about the areas we’ve visited since arriving in Newfoundland on Tuesday, from the Newfoundland/Labrador Traveller’s Guide 2023: “Port aux Basques was named by the French settlers after the Basque fishermen who arrived first in the 1500’s.” “Further along on Route 470 is the historic community of Isle aux Morts; if you are a dog lover, visit Hairyman’s Safe Haven Cafe’ & Gift Shop to learn about Hairyman, the local Newfoundland dog who rescued 163 shipwreck survivors in 1828.” “In Rose Blanche, the restored 19th-century granite Lighthouse overlooks the resting places of an untold number of shipwrecks.” “D&T Stevenson, lighthouse engineers from Edinburgh, Scotland, designed the original lighting apparatus. This is the family of noted author Robert Louis Stevenson.” “Leave your car behind and take a 90-minute ferry ride to the remote village of LaPoile for a taste of the past. Local tours guided by fishing families will also take you to abandoned communities to explore the old way of life.”
For more detailed information about Grand Codroy RV/Tent Camping in Doyle’s NL, click here.
Love the B&B story. This was a great blog. Thanks Vicki.