Journal Day 23

We were up early and on the road to tour the Irish Loop... took route 13 over to Witless Bay and down the East side... it was overcast, and being late in the season, many places were not open... very commercial on the start of the drive with lots of offers of boat tours... as we moved further down the peninsula, the scenery became more spectacular and reflected the roughness of the coast line.. We continue to see cemeteries with great views along the coast.... a great place to be put to rest, and a mixture of the old with the new type stones.... As we went across the bottom of the Peninsula, the wide open spaces running into the rocky shores were some of the most impressive scenery yet... most difficult to capture with a digital camera on a cloudy day, so we just drove through slowly, enjoying it... we did run across an old bridge on a discontinued stretch of the highway that we were able to make our way to on a rocky path to photograph.... Then as we passed the most southerly bays and started back up the other side, near Peter's Bay, we began seeing Caribou... once right in the road ahead of us, and not interested in moving as we approached, the leisurely wandering off across the tundra.... then several times later we spotted small groups, and one with a very large rack of antlers...

Even in the cloudy weather, this was a very beautiful drive... we completed the circle drive by 2:00 which was our checkout time at the camp, so hooked up the trailer and decided to head East.... we pushed hard, deciding to skip our tour to Bonavista and along Trinity Bay.... we are beginning to tire of touring the outports and beaches.... we continued along almost 350 miles to Gander where we decided to stay in a small motel for the night and sleep in a real bed, get caught out on our computer work before continuing.... this will be the first night out of the camper in over 3 weeks... we made good time on TCH 1 which runs across the Island.... much of the trip is on 2 lane road, but with frequent passing lanes as you go up and down the many hills, so traffic moves at 70 mph most of the time... we did hit a couple patches of road repair that put us on gravel for a short period, but overall it is good road...

We plan to sleep late, clean up, and head for Gros Morne Prov Park around noon, a short drive where we will spend a day or two on the way to the ferry...