ElsieD

Nice!

There aren't that many Tim Horton outlets in Newfoundland. You will only find them in bigger towns, bigger being relative. There is one here in Clarenville and there was one in Cornerbrook. St. Johns no doubt will have a couple. We were almost surprised to find the one in Cornerbrook. Tim H. Used to make their donuts fresh at each location but now they are brought in. The quality has suffered but when you have a craving......... P.S. where are you now? We are in St. John's Friday and Saturday nights, going home Sunday. We have some good restaurants lined up for those days.

I'm almost embarrassed to post this picture of our supper. We finished lunch around 3 so knew it would be a while before we would want to eat again. We decided to pick up a couple of sandwiches from Tim Hortons and eat them tonight whenever we feel hungry. John's is turkey and bacon club while mine is a chicken salad. Hopefully we will be on a better schedule meal-wise for our last couple of days.

15 cars did not get on the ferry as there was no room. They get to wait four hours for the next one. The guy who was first in our line-up was the last car not to be let on the 6 o'clock ferry so he got to wait 4 hours. Some of the locals who were taking the ferry had parked their cars in the lane the night before and had someone drop them off this morning. Clever way to make sure you get go board. We just had lunch in Gambo, via Gander Bay and Musgrave Harbour in a place called Cashen's Chestnut Cafe and General Store. We were here 4 years ago and wanted to eat here again. As you can see from the picture, it's an unremarkable looking place. Four years ago there were 4 tables running down the middle of the store. The side shelves held the general merchandise. This year he has added another small room with 3 more tables. I had toutons, baked beans and yogurt with some fresh fruit. I wasn't expecting the yogurt. John had a hot turkey sandwich with potato wedges, dressing, carrots and peas, gravy and mustard pickles. He also had pickled beets which I ate. Sadly, I did not have room for cheesecake with bakeapples. The food was solid, good, home-style cooking just as we remembered it. We are now on the TCH on our way to Clarenville. We are staying at a hotel we have stayed at on our previous trips called The Wave and so are very familiar with it. It is a beautiful day here today, sunny and warm, the temperature is about 23 celcius. Quite a change from the cold and snow the other day. We just passed a sign that said there 8 moose accidents last year and 4 so far this year.

It is 8:20 AM and we are lined up waiting for the ferry. Said ferry holds 73 cars, although I was told that they can sometimes squeeze in 74. When we came across yesterday I asked the ticket guy about what time we should arrive at the ferry terminal today and he said to show up an hour before. The ferry leaves at 10:00 and John did a rough count and said we are somewhere between 35th and 40th in line. I'm glad we came as early as we did. Looking forward to getting on so we can get some coffee and tea.

And the menu.....

The rest of the day contained a couple of self-inflicted errors.. First, neither one of us read the ferry schedule correctly and as a result, got there three hours before departure. It is too far from anywhere to go somewhere so there was nothing for it but to wait. At this terminal there isn't anything to do, you can't even get a coffee and so we were limited to working on our St. John's legs by walking around a while. Eventually the ferry came, we got on first by virtue of being the first in line and therefore got off first. We wanted to see Fogo, the town, before we headed off to Tilting where we were staying the night, or so we thought. So we toured Fogo, then went to Tilting. In Tiltiing we could not find our accommodation so we stopped and I asked someone where the street was. They had never heard of it. Eventually, we realized that our accomodiation was in Fogo itself, so back we went. While these places aren't far apart, they aren't next door either so that ate up some time. We found the place and realized we had passed it on our little "tour" of Fogo. We unloaded the car, and realized that although it was only 6 o'clock it was time to find somewhere to eat, not that we were starving but because most places close by 8. The place that looked most promising was a restaurant called Scoff, in Joe Batt's Arm, a town between Fogo and, you guessed it, Tilting. Off we went. This is now our third trip to/through Joe Batt's Arm. We found the restaurant without any problems and settled in. I had the duck confit on a touton, with orange, molasses, pickled shallots and raisins. John had salt cod pierogies with scrunchions, onions, crème fraiche and mustard pickle. We shared some French fries and dressing with gravy on the side. We could have licked the plates it was that good. For dessert we had a piece of caramel apple pie that could only have been improved upon if it had been served warm, rather than chilled. We were a pair of happy campers.

Lots of trout in the streams here. It is called "troutin'", as in "let's go troutin'". And even better, the trout are speckled trout.

Seen while waiting for the ferry:

There is a saying here that goes something like this "if you don't like the weather, just wait 5 minutes". It must be true because now we need our 😎😎

This morning the weather seems to have improved in that it is not snowing and the winds are not gusting at 75kmh. It is also going up to a reasonable 12 degrees and right now it is not raining although rain is called for. We had breakfast this morning at The Cozy Tea Room in Twillingate. The place lived up to it's name. I had toutons with partridgeberry jam and tea John had a breakfast sandwich of eggs, bologna and cheese my second touton with molasses and coffee. The food was good and the bread is made on the premises. We are getting ready to leave the tea room and are headed to Fogo which is, not surprisingly, on Fogo Island. We will get there via a ferry crossing.

Last night we went to hear a group of women called The Split Peas. We were familiar with their music having purchased a couple of their CDs on a previous trip and we had a great time. At half time we had toutons and tea, the toutons came with a choice of molasses or partridgeberry jam. As you can see, the show is held in a very informal setting meant to resemble a kitchen party and audience participation was encouraged throughout, whether singing along, dancing, or interacting with the mummers. The building it was in was unheated and not insulated so it was a bit chilly given the day but warmed up a bit as the evening went along. Below is a picture of the group. They are all local women and put on two shows a week during the summer. There was also a song done called swervin' (spelling mine) and there was a group member dressed up as someone who was servin' around while the song was being played. A picture with her and John is below. We never did have dinner as we were too full from lunch so nothing to report on that front. We did eat a couple of crackers and cheese before bed but you have all seen that before.

I'm sorry to read you are going about the sad business of closing up your mom's house. It is a sad thing to have to do.

Coming to Newfoundland?

@blue_dolphin You are amazing. I just watched these. Thank you!

We are leaving before too long as we are going to a concert. There is a group here called The Split Peas who are a group of 6 women who sing traditional Newfoundland folk songs. The last time we were in Twillingate we went through a museum and on the way out the door, bought one of the CDs. We really liked the music so we planned to be here when they play so we could take in one of their shows. It is a 2 hour show and there is a break when they serve toutons and tea, which is also the name of one of their songs. We are still stuffed from lunch so that may be our dinner as well.

We did see a pod of whales on Sunday but I could not get any pictures. They rise up and then disappear so quickly that all I was getting were pictures of water. I did get one that if you enlarge it you can see a fin and over the right you can sort of see another. No icebergs yet.

Well then, come on over! We are in Twillingate at the moment in a cozy little 1 bedroom place. If you get here tonight you can have the sofa bed and we can all go there for lunch tomorrow. We wouldn't mind having an excuse to go back.

I asked today about salmon fishing. There is no commercial salmon fishing in Newfoundland, just wild salmon fishing. The limit is one salmon per person per day. So said some Newfoundlanders I got to talking with at lunch today. Another interesting tidbit is that the commercial halibut fishing is restricted to one day per year. I guess that explains the price. The lobster season ends this weekend. There were four people at lunch today eating huge lobsters.

I edited my post to firstly, make a correction, as in the chowder contained no potatoes (I had typed fish) and edited to clarify the other dishes. That picture is of the scallops.

For those who cared about such things, a copy of the menu:

On to lunch! We had a great lunch today. We had calamari, seafood chowder, which some might argue should not be called a chowder as it had no potatoes, just a lot of seafood, we also had fish cakes and an order of scallops. We shared everything and finished off with blueberry cheesecake for John and partridgeberry cake with a vanilla sauce for me. This was good, solid food, well prepared. As mentioned above, it is very cold here today. The washroom at this place is in it's own little UNHEATED house and I can personally attest to the fact that the porcelain throne was very chilly.😯

The previous two trips were in August/September and we had great weather. We will be getting better weather later this week but I have to say today is miserable.

Excellent idea. How does that sound, @kayb ?

We clearly picked the wrong month. We have since found out that a lot of places don't open until July 1 and are only open for July and August. Still, we love the place and are enjoying ourselves (but would have liked better weather).