Bonavista and area

Last night's situation with Air Bnb turned out to be for the best as the regular Bnb we got in the nearby town of Elliston was fabulous. The house itself had a strong curry smell (which we knew about from reading reviews) so we "sucked it up" because we are not fond of curry. The lady owner of the place was amazing and after a wonderful breakfast of basically "home cooked" everything she told us all of the great things that we could do in this rainy, windy type of day.She was right!

We were out her door at 10 AM and went 100 metres down the road to a very well done display/museum on the life and times (and tragedy's) of the life of a seal hunter. Very well worth the few dollars we spent to get in (and we are "seniors" here for most entries).

From there we backtracked a few kilometers to the town of Port Union. This town was essentially the vision of one man who got fishermen to band together to form a co-op and live and work in together for their own betterment. They had electric power in town before most cities did. Some of the town has been rebuilt (with much to go yet). The museum stop was worth every penny as part of it included a tour of the old linotype newspaper and how it all works; our guide for that part was the old fellow who learned (as a young man) from the last newspaper owner on how to operate all its  many printing  components.

Once this fascinating tour was completed we drove back to Bonavista where we completed three separate tours. The first was the Mockbeggar Plantation (basically farming on the flat area next to the sea); the second was a drive out to the light house (and being able to go up into it to see how it actually worked). The third was called the Ryan Premises which was the restored buildings of an extremely well off family in the 1800's with the last name of Ryan. These people were a merchant family and like most merchants in those days they were usually hated by the fishermen and sealers-hence the founding of the town in Port Union which aimed to take some control away from  the merchant families controlling all aspects of the fishermen's lives. They used a barter system called "truck" as there wasn't much physical money around and of course the merchants controlled the local economy (like the "company "coal towns in Alberta).

About 4:30 ish we started driving off the peninsula taking a secondary highway along the north shore. The waves were crashing and the sea was really roiled up. Great photos ops to be had!

The road was totally awful with many areas in desperate need of repair; you know it is bad when you can't even get the car up anywhere near speed limit!

We had a grand total of ZERO minutes of sunshine today and had howling winds for most of our time.

We are staying at a Quality Inn at Clarenville and tomorrow we will be on the Avalon Peninsula where St. John's is- although we won't be there tomorrow (I don't think anyway)