Spent a nice, peaceful night at the Grand Bay West trailhead and woke up to clouds and fog and wind. Had a nice breakfast of hot oatmeal.
Mimicking the Canadian National Parks Red Adirondack Chairs
We drove around town again.
Scott’s Cove is a very colorful place with vendors booths of all colors and a stage for performers shaped like a ship with sails.
Too early in the season for them to be open. Might be fun to check out when we come back to catch the ferry to Nova Scotia.
We stopped next at the Railway Heritage Museum which has a sculpture of an astrolabe outside and two very old ones found by a diver at Isle aux Morts from the early 1600’s, one French and the other Portuguese.
Lots of interesting old things from people’s houses. There was also a contest to pick the best drawing done by high schoolers. All of them we good, must have a great art teacher. We participated and donated $5. Buy the time we left it was raining hard and the wind had picked up too.
We headed west out toward the Codroy Valley on route 1 passed the Table Mountains and took the gravel road to Cheeseman Provincial Park to check out the facilities and by a seasonal provincial park pass. The gate attendant was at lunch when we got there so we pulled up to the park office building to wait.
Someone saw us and was nice enough to come out in the rain. He asked if he could help. We told him we wanted to purchase a seasonal pass and also wondered what the wind would be like going up toward Codroy. He said the wind and rain were due to increase markedly that afternoon and that it could get a little dicey on the highway. He suggested we could have lunch in one of the sites in the shelter of the hill and trees while we waited for the attendant to return from his lunch.
When the gate attendant returned we purchased our seasonal provincial park pass and learned it would cost $30 plus HST to stay overnight or $20+ without electricity. But showers could be had for $5 for both of us.
We decided not to go on to the Codroy Valley but to check out Cape Ray and the lighthouse, which were closer, and then go back to Port aux Basques and get some steaks to sous vide while parked at the Visitor’s Center to get their WiFi.
It was at Cape Ray that the first Telegraph cable was laid connecting Newfoundland and North America in 1856. The lighthouse and the seascape were pretty stark as was the land around, but interesting and dramatic with the waves crashing on the rocks.
Went back to Port aux Basques and the Foodland and bought the steaks on sale, also broccoli and liverwurst and drove to the Visitor’s Center and fixed the first two and a couple of potatoes for dinner.
(Astrolabe sculpture on left and Visitor Center on right.)
We drove back to Grand Bay West, …
… and took a brief walk on the boardwalk around the beach between the rain showers and called it a night.
