Boondocking at Mt Carmel to Bauline East near St Johns NFL

July 22:

Would you believe that on Friday I got us lost leaving Mt Carmel….again! This village is about the size of Sopchoppy but there are three paved roads that intersect there at the head of a bay. For some reason I kept wanting to go south instead of east. When I could get a cell phone signal I kept trying to get us a camp site for the night. No luck. It was Crab Festival Weekend at Holyrood and the best I could do was a promise of a space in a field that would allow us to use their washrooms. For $40!

Going south put us on the southeastern “claw” of the Avalon Peninsular doing a loop that would bring us back to the vicinity of St. John’s, NFL’s capitol city. It was another stunningly beautiful day with miles and miles of amazing ocean views. We stopped at the Visitor’s Center for the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve and dropped the RV in their parking lot so that we could use the Jeep to go out to Cape Race. 

 Mistaken Point’s  580 million year old fossils are the oldest known complex, multicelluar organisms in the world. You can only go out on the cliffs with a guide, it is a rough five mile hike, and it was freezing cold. We passed on seeing fossils “in situ” and opted for waiting to see them in the museum in St. Johns.

It was freezing out at Cape Race too, but having the Jeep enabled us to follow trails out over the tundra right to the edge of the cliffs. It is no wonder that so many ships wrecked here. It is just about as desolate as it gets! The amazing thing is the immense variety of wildflowers! They are rarely more than three or four inches high but the ground is covered with them and they are so colorful. There are  a number of different varieties of orchids that are native to  NFL and some of them grow in the tundra and are almost too small to see.

Looking for a campsite we figured it would be another gravel pit but luck was with us. We stopped at a Provincial Park near Burnt Cove just for the heck of it. They were full but the Ranger suggested we try Celtic Rendevous just three miles down the road. I called and they had a spot for a small RV! We are so grateful for our small rig.  Nearly every campground can tuck us in somewhere.

More about Celtic Rendevous later.