HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, GAIL!
Day 98 – The low last night was 61 degrees. We’ll take that! This morning it was sunny and beautiful. I think summer has finally arrived here. In a month will winter begin? Today we took a drive north, again taking advantage of the good weather.
We made a couple of stops in Marystown, the large town about 20 minutes from our campground: the auto parts store for some oil for the Honda and a tool, and the grocery store for some sunscreen that wasn’t overly greasy. Then we traveled north on Route 210, the only road that goes up and down the entire peninsula. This is the same road we took to come down to Frenchman’s Cove where we are staying. Side roads, some just gravel and some paved, but all of them fairly narrow, branch off the 210 leading to small ocean side villages. We’ll be taking many of these side roads today. Many of them we’ve driven before, but this is some of the prettiest scenery on the island. We could drive it again and again!
Favorite, most picturesque villages were Bay L’Argent, Little Harbour East, Harbour Mille, Jacques Fontaine/St. Bernard’s, Brookside, Petite Forte, and Parker’s Cove. Bay L’Argent has a ferry terminal for passenger’s only (no vehicles), taking people to a couple of outport villages where there are no roads. We’d like to do this someday, but it would require an overnight stop and we can’t leave the girls. Harbour Mille is gorgeous, at the end of a remote road, and just amazing. The road that travels to the first four villages mentioned above is on the northwestern side of the peninsula, and it has scenery that is almost too much beauty to see in a day, especially on a clear day like today. Wow!
The other three villages mentioned above were on roads off Route 210 on the eastern side of the peninsula. The scenery was similar, overwhelmingly beautiful. When you get to the last village on any of these longer side roads, they seem to be untouched, more remote and wild. Mmany of these people have had homes there for many generations. In most cases, the homes are very well maintained. And of course, fishing is what most of the people do there for a living. Also, most of these older seaside villages at the end of the roads were originally outport towns, only reachable by boat/water or on foot. That makes it all the more intriguing to us. How it must have been to live that way…….
There are no restaurants on these side roads; yesterday and today we’ve just had protein bars that we brought with us. Only occasionally is there a gas station, so after nearly running out of gas a couple of times in 2019, we almost always stop at the rare gas station. Also, potty stops……
When we drove down this peninsula last Sunday on the way to Frenchman’s Cove Provincial Park, we passed by signs on Route 210 at the entrance to a road leading to Parker’s Cove. The signs advertised Scallops for Sale. The fresh fish of all kinds in Newfoundland is incredible. We were only able to fit a certain amount of fish in our freezer when we left home – frozen fish. So when we see signs advertising fresh fish, we usually go for it if we have room. So after finishing our side-road trips, we saw the Scallops signs again at the next side road south – the road to Parker’s Cove. This was not a village we visited in 2019. We turned down the road. We found Parker’s Cove, when we got to it, to be charming, but we saw no signs in town for the Scallops. Hmmm, what to do? Ask your super-friendly Newfoundland resident! The nice lady in the convenience store parking lot did indeed know where to get the Scallops. She said, “You’re looking for Wilson. Drive across the street and take the next road on the right to the end.” Okay, thanks so much, we said. She said, “You want his phone number?” We said, Uh, sure. She gave it to us. She said, “If he’s not there, he’s probably in Rushoon. You can check there.” Okay, we said. (Rushoon?)
We followed her directions, taking a very narrow, driveway sized, gravel road down to the water. Sure enough, there was Murphy’s Lobster Pound. This has got to be it. No one was there. Darnit! There were two more phone numbers on a sign on the door. We wrote those down, too. We looked on the map. Rushoon was a village off the next small side road south of Parker’s Cove, past the village of Baine Harbour. Let’s go to Rushoon and try to find Wilson because the lady in the parking lot said he’d be there!
When we got out to Route 210, we tried to call Wilson. No cell signal. We drove to the road that was supposed to eventually lead to Rushoon. Pulled off on that road and tried calling again. Phone number one, message box full, no answer. Phone number two, left a message. Phone number three, a man answered. Rob says, “Are you Mr. Wilson?” He said, “I am Wilson.” Rob asked about the Scallops for sale, and was Mr. Wilson in Rushoon? Wilson said he had some very fresh ones that he just got, but the problem was that he was in St. John’s and wouldn’t be home until after 7:30 p.m. Rob said, we were staying at the other end of the peninsula and would only be here a couple more days. “How much Scallops did we want?” asked Wilson. We said, “Four pounds” (thinking 4 meals). I guess that was a large enough amount, because he asked us about tomorrow and said he would be leaving to go back to St. John’s, but he could leave the Scallops with his sister back in Parker’s Cove. We said okay – where in Parker’s Cove, what’s her address? Oh, he said, you can’t miss it. Uh-huh, we said. “Past the Church at the stop sign, the dark-colored bungalow – not the two story house, the bungalow.” “Have you ever been to Parker’s Cove”, he said. We said we’d just left there. “The bungalow.” he said. Then he said he’d call us tonight to give us his sister’s phone number. Okay, we said. And that’s how you buy fresh Scallops in Newfoundland!
Of course, we haven’t gotten the Scallops yet, but that should be another story for tomorrow. We got back to the RV around 6 p.m. The high today at the RV was 81 degrees. Where we were, it was the mid-70’s and very comfortable. Tomorrow is another day. We’ll see what happens!
Love the scallop story