Saint Vincent's to Bluefin RV Park, and on to Bay de Verde

Along the way in the morning

 

Friday night we parked at the town of Saint Vincent's. Several people had mentioned it as a place the whales come right in close, so you can see them without being on a boat. 

We learned that they come in when the Caplin (a main food fish, kind of like a smelt) come in to spawn in the shallow waters in St Vincent's bay. The Caplin are just starting to come in now so not many whales yet, but we did get a sighting of one whale as it hunted back and forth. It was evening when it came in, so the light for pictures was not great:

The view from the St Vincent rest area

Several whale sightings like this, we think of the same whale

We couldn't tell what kind of whale it was, but didn't seem large

 

We had to move from the rest area to a different place across the road for overnight, as they don't allow overnights in the rest area where the whale views are. We had a very quiet night there though, and even access to a real bathroom. Both nice spots, we may be back here before we leave Nfld, depending on Cathie's surgery scheduling. The Caplin (and thus the whales) will likely be coming in by then.

When we set out in the morning, it was into fog as usual:

Also as seems to be usual, it cleared up a lot by a couple of hours later:

A hiking trail runs along a lot of the East Avalon coast

It's just nice to see actual grass and sod. This is on the East Coast Trail.

The grass is growing like crazy right now, in the places it can find some dirt. Unfortunately the Black Flies are coming out too, as we get into milder temperatures.

A little place called Ferryland is quite pretty. There is an archaeological dig going on there that we could have toured, but they wanted a fair bit of $ and we're just not that interested in relics from the early 1600's:

It turned into a beautiful sunny day, still a brisk breeze though

When we went to the Theatre group in Twillingate the main emcee mentioned a prolific songwriter that we had never heard of, the late Ron Hynes. Ferryland has a tribute to him on one of their main patios, "The Man of a Thousand Songs":

 

As we worked our way north along the eastern Avalon, we seemed to enjoy it less and less. Clearly developers are moving in, especially around the Witless Bay area. We had aimed for a formal campground near there, even though it cost a lordly $35/night. When we got there though, we found lots of construction, new owners, and a lofty $65 per night demanded for a full-hookup site in a cramped gravel lot, and no other facilities at all. Clearly they are aiming for the self-contained upscale big rigs, definitely not us.  

So we pressed on, heading over to the TCH (Trans Canada Highway) to a camp called Bluefin. Again not a place we'd normally go, mostly big rigs with families, and gatherings to celebrate Saturday night. Weather wise it's likely about what a May 24 weekend would be in Ontario. 

However, full hookups (power, water, sewer) let us dump our waste tanks and refill the water tanks. They also had real washroom and showers, and I even had our propane tanks filled there. It's cool enough overnight that I don't want to run out of propane for our little heater. 

Route for Saturday June 17:

The next day...

We had decided to tour another peninsula to the north of where we stayed. It's still part of the Avalon Peninsula, but north of the TCH. We enjoyed this day much more, as it's not as busy as the southeast Avalon, and the roads are better. :))

On a back road when we were looking for something else, we noticed a variation of the root cellar we had never seen before:

Unfortunately it was all locked up, so we couldn't tell if the window was into the root cellar (would defeat a lot of the purpose of a root cellar I would think), or a second level inside. Maybe it was the man-cave the owner needs sometimes.

We stopped at a little town called Harbour Grace, thinking that name was familiar somehow. We're still not sure why it tickled our memories, but in a park on the way into town there is a statue of Amelia Earhart. This where she took off for the first female solo nonstop trans-Atlantic flight in 1932, successfully landing at Londonderry Ireland.

A tramp steamer ran aground here, and was apparently abandoned.

A recreation of an early lighthouse

The plane behind her has nothing to do with Amelia's flights. It's a DC3.

Gord getting his Father's Day treat, a quality fresh hot dog at the Wiener Kings cart in Bay Roberts (Cathie got one too):

Further north, near Salmon Cove, we came across yet another huge iceberg:

It didn't look that big from a distance

But we got closer...

and closer...

It's hard to get the scale, but it was huge although low-slung

 

Remember, we only see about 10% of the berg above water.

In Adam's Cove Cathie noticed this fellow contemplating his boat, maybe thinking he should go out and see the iceberg?

Adam's Cove is just up the road from Salmon Cove, and it's where we got the closest to the berg.

Tonight we're dry camping behind the Post Office in Bay de Verde. A welcoming town, there are 2 areas to overnight, gravelled and with picnic tables. We're the only RV in town right now, and we won't be using the picnic tables (Brrr):

More colourful houses. Lots of hills in this town.

The town harbour. It seems quite prosperous here.

Route for Sunday June 18: