River of Ponds
It was only a four hour drive to the RV park so we took the long way through Roddington, the moose capital of Newfoundland. Sure enough, as we were dodging potholes in the road, three moose crossed the road in front of us. Fortunately we were going slow enough and didn’t hit them. Moose are a major problem on Newfoundland roads. There are a lot of people killed every year. Moose are also destroying the environment because they eat so much and killing trees. Their presence is really changing Gros Morne’s forests and hunting is now allowed within park boundaries. We’ve only seen five moose so far. One very large moose was standing in the ditch and looked like a statue. I didn’t realize it was a live moose until we had passed it and it turned its head to watch us go by.
We dropped Ronald, the hitchhiker, off, hoping he would quickly get a ride, and went to our second back in site. It was really pretty at River of Ponds and even though it was kind of cold and foggy, there were some kids playing in the pond.
We were unable to hook up to the “drinking” water, though. A lot of the drinking water is not treated and comes from ponds that can be accessed by critters large and small. People are really paranoid about another Walkerton so everyone says to boil the water. We don’t hook up to those water sources because we don’t want to contaminate our water hose or our water lines in the 5th wheel. We have enough water onboard to handle one or two nights without being hooked up.
There was a nice hike through the woods and we thought it might take us around the lake but it eventually just disappeared several feet from the shore. Kind of disappointing. We found out in the morning it was just a moose trail. There were moose droppings right behind where we were parked. I also saw a vole running along the edge of our parking spot.
We had a much needed restful afternoon. We have read so many books on this trip. Inspector Banks became a familiar character through his murder mysteries.
There is no TV reception, cell reception is intermittent, sometimes there are no radio stations – not even CBC – and even if the RV parks advertise wifi (or internet in some cases, not even wifi), it just doesn’t reach the parking areas and is only available if you take your laptop or tablet into the office. Even if you can access wifi, it is so weak that it takes hours to download your email. Just not worth even trying most of the time. Makes booking each night’s spot a bit tricky sometimes. During the “high” season I have found that it is necessary to book the spots, especially if you are ahead of or behind caravans. Some of them have 60 big rigs in them. We had to leave Triple Falls early in the morning because 30 big rigs were coming in at 10am. It takes them time to be assigned their spots and then get backed into them. We would have been caught there for hours. We passed a lot of the caravan on our drive to River of Ponds. A whole line of Airstream trailers.
