We awoke to a light rain and it stayed that way most of the day. Our plan was to take the back roads to Cape Freels and try some seabirding. This meant bypassing Gander on this part of the trip, but we will get another chance. There weren’t any birds to be seen at Cape Freels. In fact, there wasn’t much to be seen except fog and rain. We managed to see a couple of unidentifiable sparrows fly by, but that was it. In hindsight, that should have been expected. While Cape Freels is high in the list of eBird hotspots, the most recent posted checklists only showed a couple of land birds.
From the cape. we were on our way to Terra Nova National Park. We made a stop at The Independent Grocer in the town of Gambo as we needed fresh foods and bread...and cookies. It was a small market, but significantly better than either of the two markets in Twillingate. Amazingly, it even had a loaf of our favorite traveling sandwich bread, Dave’s Killer Seed Bread. We never expected to find that in Canada.
We made it to the park at just about lunch time. Being still damp and spitting rain, we decided to opt for a powered site for the next couple of nights. We lucked out as there were only a few left...tomorrow is Friday and the campground is pretty well booked. Finally, we backed into site 79, a very open but flat site at the end of cul-de-sac loop and had lunch.
After lunch, the weather had improved enough that it was a light drizzle, so we gave a short walk a try. We found only four birds in the half hour walk, all right near our site. The highlight was two Hermit Thrushes singing of opposite sides of the road in front of our site. It seems a bit late to be competing for a mate, but they were giving their all.
There is a very interesting campsite across from us. Rather than being a tent ot RV site, it contains a very odd structure which they are calling an “Oasis”. It is shaped like a raindrop on legs. I first thought it looked sort of like a giant onion, but the park describes it as a raindrop. It has tall peak to floor triangular windows on one side and a dutch door on the other. Inside, it is a little open room with a roughly triangular settee and a table that convert into a bed. It also has a hammock-like loft. It is an ultra-tiny house without cooking or toilet facilities. The site is equipped with a gas grill though. The view from the Oasis is quite impressive, looking down into the bay below. It is booked every night through the second week in September.
The weather forecast is for a better day tomorrow, becoming partly cloudy by the afternoon, but the temperature will also be rising, to about 80 by late afternoon. We hope to attend a guided bird walk in the morning and do an afternoon hike as well.
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