North on the Viking Trail

On Friday morning, we headed north to St. Barbe, Newfoundland, where we were going to stay for 2 nights and take a day trip to Labrador on Saturday.

We headed north on Highway 430 which is the same highway we would take all the way to St. Anthony (after we leave St. Barbe).  This road is also known as the Viking Trail because it takes you up to where the Vikings first landed in Newfoundland around 1,000 AD.

The highway followed the coast just about the entire way.

There were little communities every few miles along the coast.

At one point, the GPS showed we were off road. 

This is not the screen you want to see on your GPS…particularly in a motorhome.

Fortunately, the GPS was wrong.  This is the road we were on when we received the warning messages.

In Newfoundland, they have an unusual way of securing their electric poles in the ground.

Maybe this is where the GPS warning should have come up. 

(Just kidding!)

Parts of the road did come inland where you could see that wide-openness we have come to appreciate in Canada.

The mountains were to our east....

...and the coast was to our west.

Everywhere you drive in Newfoundland, you will see wood stacked along the road.  Gives you an idea of how cold the winters get up here.

When we arrived at the campground at St. Barbe, there were two other motorhomes in front of us who had stayed at the same campground as us in North Sydney and had rode the ferry over at the same time as us as well.  Mary, Bob, Dave, Martha and Mary were parked in the 2 motorhomes at the far left.

After getting set up, we went across the street to the Dockside Motel restaurant and had a really good lunch.  Chuck had ½ club sandwich and soup and I had grilled cheese onion rings.  When the waitress brought the onion rings to the table, she asked me if I wanted any honey.  I said “for what?”  And she said for your onion rings?  Never heard of that before.   But I told her that I would try it.  Let me tell you something:  honey with onion rings is DELICIOUS!  I like it better than ketchup. 

We next drove down to the dock to take a look at the ferry.  Not as big as the ferry to Newfoundland from Nova Scotia.

We had to get a few groceries so we went to the grocery store in St. Barbe.  The grocery store is really more like a general store.  Surprisingly, they had a lot of various groceries including produce and some meats (frozen, of course).  They also had a few things like you would find in a hardware store.  Chuck ended up getting some lobster gloves for dumping the gray tank.  He was wanting something a little thicker and that he could use over and over.  He still uses the disposable vinyl gloves for dumping the black tank and connecting and disconnecting the sewer.

After we got back to the motorhome, Chuck talked to a man in another motorhome at the campground that he had had engine problems.  His water pump had gone out.  It was so sad.  They were part of a caravan and the caravan had to go on and leave them while they tried to get their motorhome fixed.  A tow truck came later that afternoon to take the motorhome to get it fixed way back in Corner Brook (over 200 miles away).  Fortunately, he could let the motor run long enough to drive it up onto the flatbed trailer of a tow truck.  Hopefully, they got it fixed and were able to catch back up with their caravan.