UP IN THE HILLS & DOWN TO THE WATER.
TRAVEL DAY
From: The Wilds Resort & RV Park, off of Route 90/Salmonier Line, NL.
To: Bird Island Resort, St. Bride’s, NL.
Day 90 – We’re traveling from one peninsula to another again. This one is called the Cape Shore Loop. The main attraction here, for us, is the Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve, which is only a couple of miles from where we’ll be staying. At Cape St. Mary’s there is a vantage point that overlooks a magnificent sea stack which supports the third-largest breeding colony of Northern Gannets in North America.
When we got up this morning it was warm and humid, and at 7 a.m., 67 degrees with clouds and fog. We departed The Wilds at 10:45 a.m. It was still cloudy and up to 71 degrees. We drove south on Route 90, then headed west on Route 91. At Route 92, we headed south again on a different peninsula.
The southwestern end of the peninsula is where the road becomes Route 100 and travels west to the other side of the peninsula where it passes the turn off to the Ecological Reserve. Another 3 km and Route 100 has curved northwards and we had arrived in St. Bride’s, our destination for the next 4 nights.
The entire trip was on two-lane roads, going up & down hills on a winding highway. We encountered little traffic. It’s fairly remote in this area. We had to take it slowly for parts of this drive. Route 100 was in bad shape, very bumpy and uncomfortable.We sure heard plenty from the peanut gallery in the back of the RV. The rest of the road conditions were mostly okay, not great, but we’ve seen worse. Roadwork was going on in some areas.
It was cloudy and foggy sometimes which cut the visibility down at times. The scenery was great; we just couldn’t see as far as we’d have liked. For much of the drive on Route 92 we had climbed high into the hills and were surrounded by forests. As we got further south, there were less trees and at times it seemed we could see forever from the top of the world. In the distance we could see the bays, and eventually the ocean and headlands jutting out into the sea. If it had been sunny and clear, we could only imagine how lovely it would be. Once we got on Route 100 going west along the southern end of the peninsula, it was very foggy again and visibility decreased even more. We’ll be driving back on the same route in 4 days; we hope it’s sunny for the view.
Our destination was the Bird Island Resort in St. Bride’s. This is where we stayed in 2019. As mentioned before, it is close to the bird sanctuary, but it’s also the only place in a fairly large area where we could find a place to stay. There are no RV parks or Provincial Parks in this area. Bird Island Resort consists of acres of lawn on the top of a rocky cliff with several buildings in use as a motel or a “resort”. The grounds are immaculately kept with picnic tables placed along the white picket fence at the edge of the cliff. You can hear & see the waves breaking on the rocks below. The view on one side is of a couple of headlands with a few houses here and there, and on the other side it overlooks the harbor. You can watch the fishing boats come and go.
In 2019 we couldn’t find anywhere to stay, so we called the Resort’s number and asked if they might know anywhere we could possibly park the RV for several days. They invited us to stay on their property. So this year, we called them again and here we are. We have electricity and water (which needs to be boiled), a great view of the ocean, and we will ask them later in our stay if they have a dumping station available. They did in 2019. We are parked at one end of the parking lot. There are no guests here right now, but we heard people would be arriving for the weekend. We leave on Saturday, so that works out well for everyone.
We arrived at 12:25 p.m. which included a stop for gas in the RV. It was 67 degrees, breezy and foggy. We had a late lunch after unpacking and setting up. There is a wi-fi signal, so it looks like we will have a connection. If it’s not too foggy tomorrow to see anything, I’m sure we’ll be going to see the birds at the Reserve.
