This is It!

Judy made fresh partridgeberry and orange muffins this morning for our trip. We each had one hot and fresh right out of the oven and she sent two along for our drive.

Today was another foggy day in Nfld. Our drive was only 2.5-3 hours. We left Paradise a little before 11 and arrived at Cabot RV Park in Charleston about 1:45 p.m. The roadsides are lined mostly with pink and purple lupines and a blanket of yellow. There are millions of tiny yellow flowers that look like buttercups in some places and yellow daisies in other.   We have even seen them growing horizontally out of rock faces. The views continue to be beautiful and I am not convinced our camera can do it justice.

After checking in, upon our arrival at the campground, we went to the dump station before proceeding to our site. All sites here only have water and electric and there is no wi-fi. 

It didn’t take us long to set up – although our site is quite muddy with deep ruts, so we manoeuvred in such a way that we could make it to both the door of the motor home and the car doors without walking in muck. 

The young family beside us in the campground is from St. Anthony’s.  When he first told us where he was from, we thought he said Stanton, but realized quickly he was saying St. Anthony’s when he said it was up near the tip of the island. He was a very nice fellow and told us it would be a shame to come so far and not go up there, as so many others have said – so we are planning on adding that to our trip. I love the accents of the people here.

We left for Clarenville about 3:15, and decided to drive along route 233 to see if we wanted to take the mh on it when we depart on Saturday. It would save us some mileage and we thought time, but decided within 10 minutes that we did not want to drive the rig on this road and would stick to Route 230.

Our first stop was the visitor centre on the TransCanada just outside Clarenville, where we picked up a local map and got directions to Elizabeth Swan park. We plan to attend Arts under the Stars, which is free entertainment – could be music, dance or theatre. We don’t know what we are in for tonight. We also asked at the visitor centre if they could recommend a restaurant where we could get a good seafood dinner.

We realized quickly when we got to Clarenville, there aren’t many dining options. We had dinner at Steads Landing. I  ordered cod cheeks, but they were sold out, so opted for the same dinner as Marcel - shrimp, scallops and fries.  Had we known it was all going to be deep fried, I probably would have had a bowl of chowder instead and perhaps a salmon burger. Although the food was a bit disappointing, it hit the spot.  After dinner, we headed straight to the the Elizabeth Swan park. Several times, Marcel said he didn’t think there was going to be a show, as there didn’t seem to be any action on the stage. Cars arrived and left the parking lot, mostly young families with children coming to the playground, or young adults going to the local cinema (which shared the same parking lot). We sat there until 7:25. As we started the car to leave, a lady approached us and told us it had been moved indoors to the Clarenville Event Centre. I was pleased as the wind had picked up, it was a little chilly and I know I would have been cold as I had left my windbreaker back at the campground.

The performance was fantastic and we are glad we stuck it out and found out where it had moved to. When we entered the theatre, there were 5 guys on stage and they called themselves “This is It” . One played accordian, guitar and banjo; another played bass guitar, another played a 12 string guitar and was the main singer; another played guitar and harmonica and the last fellow played guitar. All of them sang individually as well as back-up for each other and they were awesome. They sang a lot in 'a cappella' and their harmony was beautiful.  We loved the show and were so glad we found it. It ended about 9:15. We filled up with gas at the Canadian Tire in Clarenville. Gas is up 3 cents a litre here from yesterday in St. John’s area, and now is at $136.5/litre here.  We were lucky enough to follow another car all the way back to our campground, which made us feel a little safer with driving at night. We arrived back at the campground about 10:20 p.m.