Central Newfoundland and Fogo Island
Central Newfoundland and Fogo Island. Newfoundland and Labrador. Canada.
22 August 2019.
Not Larry and I woke up at 09:00 and had some old-high-school-bedroom lovin’ to start the day. F U N!
We packed Beatrice and cleaned the house… Now wait a minute, that is not really accurate… Actually, I burned everything that resembled garbage in the backyard while Not Larry cleaned the house. I tried to help her out but I only seemed to be in the way, so I hid outside, attending to the fire. My burn-resume is pretty impressive and I was where I should have been employed anyhow. Sometime during the morning cleaning, Not Larry painted Beatrice’s hub-caps a neon pink. Our long lady got a pedicure.
We carried on to a Newfoundland town called Campbellton, a place where a high-school girl in a gas station told us that we could have internet coverage and we would be able to park Beatrice in the school parking lot, “Since there is no school in August.” We found the school, called Greenwood Academy. Our location seemed suspect…‘We are just parked here officer, waiting for the children…’
The school had an abandoned look though apparently it is still in use. We parked in the back behind the school, in a shady area that made us look shadier and creepier. If anyone found us parked in the motorhome they would for sure think we were up to something and we would be the talk of coffee row. The school yard is overgrown with hollers and these could by my last words. We could be buried here and no one would know…
23 August.
We got through the night. The girl at the gas station must not have told her assailants. Newfoundland is a really pretty province, and we basically parked in a holler-growing educational dump for the night that is probaby frequented by bears looking for buried tourists! We have made better sleeping choices…
Not Larry’s family comes from Fogo Island, and she has not been there herself since she was a very little girl. To catch the ferry, it leaves from a town called ‘Farewell.’ The man running the check-in for the ferry said, “Nice rig,” to Not Larry in an awesome Newfie accent when we arrived. It was $28 to get Beatrice on the ferry and an additional $8.50 to get me on as an additional passenger. The ride was 45 minutes. I spent most of it shooting dirty looks at a lady I recognized who had passed us illegally on a corner on the way to the ferry. When we eventually got to Fogo Island, one of the first towns we arrived in was called Little Seldom. Newfoundlanders are ridiculous. “Have you been there?” “Seldom. Actually, maybe little seldom.”
Fogo Island is a giant rock. The back yards of houses are layers of one massive rock piled high behind the homes. We headed to the furthest point that we could drive on the island close to a town Tilting. There was an old cannon on the ground at the point.
So, I am just not sure about cannons. They seem overrated to me, like an image of something powerful and potent that is actually limp. Were cannons just a yappy little dog on the beach. If my ship was right next to yours and you had a cannon lined up at me, I would probably not like that. But from a beach 300 yards away…I am probably coming in. I will find a place to park my ship a few hundred yards from your beached-cannon, and then we will come in and sack the place.
Not Larry and I headed to the area on Fogo Island, close to Joe Batt’s Arm, where her grandmother grew up. A man next door to the original house that she grew up in was outside and we ended up in a conversation with him. He knew most of her family and spoke of her extended family that she did not even know about. I took pictures of Not Larry on a rock that she was on when she was a little girl. That particular rock was how she actually identified the place this time to find the house!
When we left, we headed to Fogo on Fogo Island where we climbed the Brimstone Head, which is said to be one of the Four Corners of the Canadian Flat Earth Society.
Brimstone Head is beautiful as it is this giant rock rises high above the ocean surrounding Fogo Island. Brimstone Head it more like a hill and it made me sweat to climb the rock. This is partly connected to the fact that I do absolutely nothing to stay in shape and also because the shape I know of me is changing due to the fact that Not Larry is a kitchen wizard. So, I am finding that I sweat more doing things that used to require less or no sweat at all. The days of me saying, “No sweat,” may now be behind me. The expression should probably change to, “With some sweat.” Or perhaps I should start running in the mornings…
We were sure we missed the ferry from Fogo Island to the island of Newfoundland and I casually drove, arriving 10 minutes late expecting it would be gone. But, there was still a line-up and Beatrice was the last vehicle to get on! Lucky. As soon as we got parked, I decided I would nap for the ferry ride. But before Not Larry disembarked from Beatrice to see the ferry, she came for a Beaver ride, and then left me to sleep off the exhaustion and only came back when we arrived at the mainland. It was a great ferry ride! I felt used, but what a great way to be used!
I took over driving duties as Not Larry whipped up a driving-meal by cooking cod as I drove us to Gander. We ate dinner when we stopped and then I washed dishes as she drove us to Glovertown. RV living! We found a pull-out on the side of the road next to the ocean.
We had a couple of beer and then we had some really awesome oceanside-road-romance. Life is good.
24 August.
Not Larry was woken up in the middle of the night when I elbowed her very hard in the chest. I felt terrible about that. I was having a dream that a large stuffed animal that resembled a pirate version of the Disney character Goofy was some kind of voodoo doll. This character has been re-occuring in my dreams, and it wanted money from me in my dream and was saying, “Feed me. Feed me. Feed me,” over and over. I had the character around my neck as that is where I was carrying it. Someone came up behind me and tried to steal it from me and I put my elbow into the person to stop them. That person turned out to be Not Larry who was innocently sleeping beside me. She got it in the chest. That made me feel really bad. When we fully woke up again about an hour later she called me a ‘meanie-pants.’ I felt awful…
For the video of Newfoundland Travel Fun: A Good Time Province, click here!
A Few more photos of Northern Newfoundland and Fogo Island:

‘Umm, well sir, if you are looking for our place it is the one just behind the lip of the giant view-obstructing stone.’

We bought some beets, and they are good, but there is just no one who does beets like Pat does at home.

And then these guys were thinking, “You know what, business is booming here. We need a bank. How about we turn our house into a Scotiabank?”