A CHANGE OF PLANS.
Day 36 – The low last night was 36 degrees. This morning when we got up it was cloudy. It remained cloudy all day, and in the afternoon the wind picked up enough to shake the RV a little. The wind was unexpected for today, but we knew it was supposed to rain early evening today through Saturday. Our plan was to leave here Saturday and go to La Scie, one of our favorite places in Newfoundland, and camp on top of the cliffs looking over the northern Atlantic (whales & icebergs in season). We were going to stay a week. The weather forecast beginning Saturday and lasting through Tuesday had us concerned.
We needed to find a place to go where the wind gusts wouldn’t be an issue. Inland was the answer. We took a drive today to an area we hadn’t been before, to Sir Richard Squires Memorial Provincial Park. This remote Park is deep in the woods on hills northeast of here away from the Ocean winds. They don’t open for the season until tomorrow, so we took a chance driving to see if the gates would be open and we could look around at the campsites. Never being there before, we didn’t know if the roads in this remote area would be okay to drive in the RV. Or if the campsites would be large enough for the RV and tow car.
We left at 10:30 a.m., heading north. When we reached Route 422, we turned east. The road was paved at first. The more remote it got, the bumpier the road got. Then the pavement ended and we were on a dirt road that wasn’t too badly maintained, but we did have to slow down to avoid the potholes. By this time it was very remote. We saw two large cows in the distance eating grass near the road. WAIT, that’s not cows; it’s two Caribou! Oh happy day! MOOSE 4; CARIBOU 2.
Soon thereafter we arrived at the Park. The gates were open. We drove through the campground looking at the campsites and found several that would be good for us, and we wrote down the site numbers for future reference. We decided this Park was doable in the RV. At the La Scie area, the winds Saturday (travel day) and Monday were too high for us to be safe. Also, it was forecast to snow Monday & Tuesday. Inland at the Squires Provincial Park, the wind gusts would be much less, still windy, but safe; and there was no snow forecast for the area. Decision made, we headed back toward Deer Lake and our current campground, taking a side road to check out where that road went. We found an older community with some large cattle farms called the Upper Humber River Settlement, where there were new developments with “St. John’s McMansions” being built.
Back at the RV we had lunch, then changed around our reservations previously made, canceling the week in La Scie and moving it to a week in August. And moving other things around to accommodate that change. Since La Scie was one of the reasons we returned to the Island, we were not going to give that up. We decided to stay at another remote Park, Sop’s Arm Park, after leaving Squires to fill up the end of the week that had opened up when we hoped to escape the weather. When next week is over, we will resume traveling our planned route. The wind continued to increase and it began raining. The high today was 58 degrees. Tomorrow, rain or shine, we have to go south to the big city of Corner Brook to get stocked up for the next leg of our journey. We’re hoping for some good produce.