SALVAGE.
Day 65 – We slept really hard last night. The Park was quiet, it had cooled down nicely, and we were tired from the long day. The low last night was 54 degrees. When we got up, it was quite murky out and 66 degrees. We spent some time this morning in the screened tent. Then after lunch, we took a drive.
We’d stayed at Terra Nova National Park in 2019, at this campground but at a different campsite. We were just passing through in a hurry on the way to Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve. We only stayed one night and didn’t have a chance to do any exploring of the area. This afternoon we drove through the other campgrounds within the Park and checked them out, and also stopped at the Blue Hill Overlook. We couldn’t really see that much because it was so overcast, but we could see enough to know it’s a beautiful area.
Immediately after leaving the Park, we turned off on a shortcut to Route 310 heading northeast. We drove through the small towns of Sandringham and Eastport before getting to the tiny old village at the end of the road. Beyond Eastport and its popular beach, it was remote and fairly unpopulated. Salvage, the last village on Route 310 at the end of the road, was a treat. From the Newfoundland/Labrador Traveller’s Guide 2023, “The most photographed spot here is Salvage, pronounced with a long ‘a’ as in ‘age’. This is the oldest European settlement along this part of the coast and is a classic outport with wharves, fishing stages, fishing boats, and fishing paraphernalia.”
Most of this peninsula was surrounded by bays and many small, uninhabited islands. Very pretty. Shortly after turning around at Salvage, we took a small side road to two small villages – Sandy Cove and Happy Adventure. Sandy Cove had a sandy cove (imagine that) with beaches. Since there were more overflow parking lots than there were homes, we guess it gets very busy in the summer (and evidently the summer season doesn’t officially start in Newfoundland until July). Happy Adventure was near Sandy Cove and there were several large “St. John’s McMansions” intermingled with the other cottages. Next to the Happy Adventure Town Building was the Happy Senior’s Home. Happy, happy. Grin.
The temperature near the ocean was 25 degrees cooler than at the campground. Quite different! Back to Route 310, we soon took another small side road to St. Chad’s and Burnside, two old villages that we liked. St. Chad’s was charming and quiet. At the end of this road was the small village of Burnside. Off of Burnside was Squid Island, which was driveable via a small, narrow wooden bridge. In Burnside, you can hop on the St. Brendan’s ferry which takes passengers on a scenic trip in between groups of islands, to & from an island where there are three tiny outport villages: Shalloway Cove, Dock Cove, and St. Brendan’s – reachable only by boat. We didn’t know about the ferry in advance, but will make this trip at another time when the sun is out. We suspect the pictures would be great and we might even see a whale.
At the National Park, there was a line-up of cars checking in. The weekend is here. When we got back to the RV, it was almost time for dinner. Inland, it was steamy and murky; the high today was 86 degrees. Today we used the air conditioning in the RV for the first time this year. A few days ago we had the thermostat on heat all the time.