Bonavista, Newfoundland - July 17 - 19, 2015

Bonavista, Newfoundland - July 17 - 19, 2015

July 17, 2015

Bonavista is a community about 215 miles from Twillingate.  We headed down the road.  We stopped in Gander, Newfoundland, at the Atlantic Aviation Museum.  There was a lot of great information about heroic rescues of planes in the area.  Stan and the other guys really enjoyed it.   Another part of the museum was dedicated to 9-11.  On September 11, 2001, when disaster struck in the US, many flights were rerouted from all over the world to Gander Airport.  The town of Gander, population of less than 10,000 people, stepped up to house and feed in excess of 6,700 people.  There were letters from people all over the US thanking the Gander people for their generosity.

Stan with one of the planes



Gander, NL on 9-11












101st
Airborne

From there, we continued on to the Silent Witness Memorial.  This is a memorial to the flight that crashed in 1985 carrying the 101^st Airborne Infantry Division “The Screaming Eagles”, from Ft. Campbell, Kentucky.  There were 8 crew and 248 passengers returning from Cairo, Egypt after a 6 month tour.  They made a fuel stop in Gander, Newfoundland.  They couldn’t gain enough altitude on takeoff and crashed on the site we visited.  All passengers and crew were killed.

Arrow Air Crash at Gander, NL



 

Silent Memorial Statue












From there we continued on to the Paradise Farm RV Park.  It is a beautiful site that the owner, Shawn is trying to get approval to upgrade power.  We found out at our evening meeting, that he received approval today for upgrading a portion of the sites to 50 amp.   He will be ahead of most of the RV Parks up here.  Most of the parks we have stayed at only have 30 amp service.  We also have cell service here.  Yippee.  However, there is still no WiFi or Direct TV.  Each day we are getting more anxious to get back to the services that we have been spoiled by.   We have about one more month in Canada.

We will be sightseeing on our own for the next couple of days, so Wagon Masters, Jon & Jenny and Shawn told about some of the places to visit in the area.  Seeing the Atlantic Puffin Sanctuary is high on Bev’s list.

Stan spent most of the late afternoon, tackling the lock on the door of the coach.  It has been sticking and we have fear that we will be locked out again.  Highly unlikely that they have a locksmith or RV center here in Bonavisita. 



July 18, 2015

We woke in the middle of the night to pouring down rain.  I guess, better at night than during the day when we are trying to be outside in it.  We have had a few days like that too.  This morning the wind was whipping up pretty good, so we stayed in the coach in hopes that it would clear.  

Finally, we decided to have some lunch at Mary Brown’s a local chicken fast food place.  It does not compare to KFC, but at least we can say we tried it. 

On the way to Cape Bonavista, we saw the Sealer’s Memorial.  This had been mentioned to us by an employee at the Aircraft Museum.  It was a statue of a Father & Son, along with a listing of hundreds of names on a granite memorial.  We didn’t find out more, but decided we needed to ask some questions.  More to follow.

From there, our next destination was the Cape Bonavista Lighthouse Provincial Historic Site.  We drove up toward the lighthouse and of course we saw a lot of beautiful rock formations and rocky shorelines.  We were also surprised to see horses and cows alongside the road without fences.  I guess there is not a lot of places to go since it’s a peninsula. 

We chose not to get out of the car because it was SO windy.  We took pictures and decided that was good enough.  From there we went to the Dungeon Provincial Park, where there are unusual rock formations with a twin extracted sea cave.  It was amazing. Again we could take pictures without getting out of the car.

Bev was insistent on seeing the Puffins at the Elliston Puffin Sanctuary.  Stan did not find any need to see the birds, so sat in the car while Bev walked up the path to the top of the hill overlooking the Bird Island.  Oh, my gosh, there were so many birds out there – both Puffins & Seagulls.  It was so cool to see them – of course we see Seagulls in Seattle, but not the Puffins.  On the path there were several Root Cellars also.  Apparently, they have more root cellars than nearly everywhere else.

We drove around the area, visiting other towns.  We drove through Melrose, Port Union, Catalina, Little Catalina, and Maberly.  In Port Union we found a place that we plan to visit tomorrow.  It is the Port Union National Historic District, developed by Sir William Ford Coaker.  More to follow tomorrow.

We needed to get back to the RV because they were having a dinner put on by the Fantasy Staff.  We all met in the barn for Walk Around Tacos, Moose Burgers & of course, dessert.  What in the world are Walk Around Tacos – You take an individual serving bag of Dorito’s, cut open the side.  From there you add taco hamburger, refried beans, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, sour cream and salsa.  Take a fork and eat it right out of the bag.  Easy cleanup and YUMMY.  It was also great to try moose burgers – they were wonderful.

The interesting thing about the meal was – keep in mind it is July 18 – we were sitting out in the barn with jackets, hats and gloves.  The temperature was about 50 degrees.  Needless to say, we made an early night of it.

July 19, 2015

At least we don’t have rain, but it is still 50 degrees, so we sat around in our robes and played cards for a while before taking off on our adventures.  We even tried Cribbage for a bit – we need more practice.

We heard last night that the lighthouse was well worth the visit, so we decided to go back and investigate.  Truly, it was quite different from the other lighthouses we have visited.  The living quarters of the family was built around the outside structure of the lighthouse.  Also, there were six lights on the top rather than the one mirrored dome.  They had an interesting system to notify the light keeper that it was time to rewind the cable to keep the lights going.  There was a weight that brought the cable down every two hours – then the lighthouse keeper needed to go up and crank the cable up – which took about 15 minutes – which meant that he had to work around the clock.  Luckily, he had an assistant.  Being a lighthouse keeper was a very prestigious job.  They were paid in cash, so no taxes and they had money to pay others.  The Cape Bonavista Lighthouse was a very desired job.

Yesterday, we had gone by the Port Union National Historic District and decided to go back.  We are so glad that we did, because we got our own private tour and received a lot of information on the area.  We were told about William Ford Coaker, who at 11 years of age started to work on the fishing docks.  By the time he was 16 he was managing a general store.  He went on to become a farmer (owned and farmed the land in which our RV Park is located).  However, he was a forward thinking man and down at the docks he found that many of the young men were paid less than in other areas, and started the first Fisherman’s Union. 

Mr. Coaker, also brought electricity to the area in the early 1900’s, building a hydro station.  He formed a factory, using electricity, built housing for his employee’s, build a church for the town, and the first newspaper in the area.  He really wanted Port Union to be the Capital of the Province.  Unfortunately, that ended up in St. John’s instead.  I am sure that I have missed some of his accomplishments, as he was an amazing man. 

While we were there, Bonnie, the tour guide, told us more about the Sealer’s Memorial.  As the story goes, there was a Seal Hunter and his son that owned boats for seal hunting.  They each took out a group of men to hunt.  All of the hunters were on one boat, but the weather changed, and they could not all be accommodated, so they sent part of the group across the ice to return to their original boat.  However, the men on the ice did not get back to their boat and all froze to death.  One pair in particular, were a father and son that were found frozen together.  The Father had hunted before and did not want to return to the hunt, but the son wanted to try it, so the father went with him on the trip.  Disaster struck, the mother and wife was left to grieve.

We had wanted to visit a couple of more places in Bonavista, but found we were running out of time and having difficulty locating the last two places.  We decided to visit Mifflin’s Tea Room instead.  We wanted to try some of the local fare.  We had Fisherman’s Brewis, Touton (fried bread dough), Fish Cake, Baked Beans & Bologna.  Of course, we had to try Iceberg Beer – a local beer.

When we got back to the RV, Bev went in, but Stan stayed in the Jeep to hear the end of the Nascar race since we don’t get XM Radio here in the motorhome.  Kyle Busch won the race and Stan came in for the night.