A storm rolled in and stayed for awhile last night bringing a lot of rain and wind. Michele said she heard the wind whip the side of the hotel a few times in the night. We resigned ourselves to having a rainy and foggy day, hoping for some breaks to enjoy the scenery for the 242 miles north to Rocky Harbour.
We had breakfast at the hotel and were out the door at 9am. Our route took us mostly on TransCanada Highway 1 north on the western coastline of Newfoundland. Not long after we left we saw the mountains in the thick clouds.
Soon after we saw a sign that stated 26 kph winds at Wreckhouse, so we knew it wouldn't topple over the Mazda with us inside! We approached and drove through the Wreckhouse area without issue. There were other parts of the route today where the wind was much more intense on the car. During this short stretch of road construction, Rob sarcastically said, "This would have been great on the bike." Can you tell by now that we're so happy we drove the car instead?
About an hour later in the Codroy Valley, Rob took a detour along Highways 407 and 406 that would take us around the Codroy Estuary, over "the Gut" -- the small inlet between the estuary and the Searston Bay, and through the Codroy Provincial Park. We drove the loop around the estuary. Near the Gut Rob noticed a nice beach as we drove over a one way trellis bridge with a wooden road surface.
Along our journey, we found sheep peacefully growing wool for knitting projects.
This house was built on this island connected with a man-made causeway. What a fun place to live surrounded by amazing views an all sides.
When we came completed the loop around the estuary and passed by "the Gut", we stopped at the beach and parked by the dunes. The rain held off just enough for us to walk along the beach. Back at the car, a native Newfoundlander who appeared to be camping or on a road trip was parked next to us and asked Michele if we came all the way from Virginia to see the birds. Apparently the piping plover, a sparrow sized shorebird, is popular at that beach earlier in the year. He said they've already left for their migration south to the Caribbean. Then he talked about how women in Newfoundland can't wait to get out, move to the U.S., and marry American men. We believe that he didn't approve of this. He was a character!
Rob snapped a picture of a Common Stern doing their acrobatics along the water in the stiff wind.
Back in the car we headed back to TransCanada Highway 1 and continued towards our lunch stop in Corner Brook, the largest town we encountered all morning. It had a Walmart! The planned lunch stop was a pizza place with good reviews, but the GPS routed us to a small hospital instead. We took a look on Google maps and realized it should be down the street a bit. That put us on the campus of the local university. No pizza place whatsoever, despite seeing pictures on Google Maps. So we drove over to our second lunch option, Jungle Jim's. It is a chain, kind of like Ruby Tuesdays, but with jungle decor. We shared a chicken wrap and salad, and finished up at 1:30pm. During lunch we chatted about how much rain we've had on this trip, probably as much or more than all of our long distance trips combined over the past 14 years!
Rob found a provincial park nearby that looked pretty in the pictures. The park would have added another 3 1/2 hours to our trip after lunch, but we decided against it since the weather was deteriorating. The clouds and rain were obscuring the mountains and likely the water views as well. Instead, we continued on our originally scheduled route that would take approximately 90 minutes to reach the day's final destination, Rocky Harbour.
Today we saw several motorcyclists, nearly all in rain gear. It was a difficult day for riding. The wind was intense, the rain was persistent, and it was not especially warm in the 60s.
However, there were moments when the clouds briefly cleared and skies were dry.
There were several overlooks along the way and we caught a few snaps before the weather prevented us from using our cameras.
We arrived at our hotel, the Candlelight B&B in Rocky Harbour, at 3:30pm. Our hosts, a husband and wife team that also ride motorcycles, were so welcoming. They have a well honed procedure for guest check in to make everyone feel at home. We sat in the dining area and they walked through the many breakfast options. The options even had options. We selected a 7:30am sitting time so that we could leave early to head up to St. Anthony (a scenic spot) tomorrow, several hours away. Then they walked us through recommended restaurants and sightseeing, and highlights of Gros Morne National Park. The B&B is a converted church building and they ask guests to not wear shoes inside. The owner offered us hand knitted slippers for our stay and Michele took her up on it.
After we settled in, we drove over to the recommended drug store to pick up apples and bananas for the week as snacks. We topped off on gas and stopped in a gift shop that was highly rated, but nothing struck our fancy. Then we drove over to a recommended restaurant for "clean food" (aka not fried) to try to make a dinner reservation, but since it's also a coffee place, it was too busy to ask. We skipped that and instead came back to our hotel for an hour.
We decided to try nearby Sunset Cafe for dinner. This was our pretty view of town from our cafe window.
Tonight's dinner recommendation was meat lasagne with bread, which sounded heavenly in today's chilly and damp weather. We ordered that, a salad and a brownie. After, we browsed the gift shop below. The lady at the counter suggested we eat at the cafe and we told her we just had the lasagne. She said the lady who cooks upstairs "does everything right."
Back in our room for the night, we chose a few movies from the owners' DVD library and settled in, but decided to turn in early instead. Rob caught a break in the heavy cloud cover to snap the sunset from the B&B property.
Tomorrow we head north about 215 miles which should take about 4 hours in the hopes of seeing whales and possibly the remnants of icebergs. The place we are going is where the UK couple saw both a few weeks ago. Our hotel host said the region had 90 degree temps recently for several consecutive days, which is highly unusual, so the icebergs might be melted. We'll see tomorrow!
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