20020615

June 15, 2002

Day 37

Start: Country Inn Motel & Trailer Park, Gander, NF
End: Peyton’s Woods RV Park, Twillingate, NF
Miles: 90

The high today was 42f and the low was 38 last night or early this morning. Note the sameness of the high and low. It was cloudy, foggy, and misty, with some rain. It was not a nice day, weather-wise.

We ate, unhooked, and left for Twillingate, some 90 miles north of Gander on the Kittiwake Coast (their name for this area). Despite the short distance, it took a couple of hours to get here, due to poor roads and poor weather.

We found the campground without problem, but the owner wasn’t in. The sign said to pick a place and settle later, so we did. I was wearing jeans & long-sleeved shirt, plus a fleece vest and long, hooded, raincoat, with gloves, to set up. It was cold! 

We had a quick lunch in the little house in the cold, foggy, campground. Then we took the truck around town to see things. The road on which the campground is located is a loop that goes to the oceanside. We found a small (10 feet high or so) iceberg offshore. A trip to Durrell, up the southeast shore of the Twillingate bay, showed us another working village on the shore of a little bay. 

There is a local winery in Twillingate. They make wines out of the various berries that grow on the island. We bought some to bring home. 

We went out the northwest shore of the bay. The local lighthouse was really fogged in; we were looking at it when the foghorn went off and startled us. But there was a gift shop next to it, and a few goodies found their way into our bag. Then back into town to another gift shop and one more purchase. A trip to a local tour boat that takes people out to look for whales and icebergs found no one at the boat. We’ll try tomorrow, when it’s supposed to be cloudy, but not foggy.

The local museum is close to the campground. It’s the former rectory of the Anglican church here. They have some very interesting shipping items as well as artifacts from the early days of the town.

We returned to the little house to sit for a bit and have a Clancy’s (an ale by the Moosehead people).

The campground owner, Ross, came by. We had him in, then went through the process of paying him. He has an accent straight out of Ireland, which made him a little hard to understand. He’d just come from the pub at the top of the hill, which may have contributed to that. I told him Dolores was in lobster withdrawal. He told us to go to the Anchor Motel dining room and tell Gus that Ross had sent us.

There was no Gus at hand in the dining room, but they did have fresh lobster. Dolores demolished another crustacean, and I had poached halibut. It was quite good, and the staff was very nice. After we’d paid, and were leaving, we saw a person near the motel desk. He turned out to be Gus, so we delivered our message. Then we chatted for a while on the changes in travel since 9/11/2001.

We came back then to the little house in the cool (the wine had warmed us up) campground to settle.