Sunday, July 15 - St. John, NF to Gander, NF - 225 miles

We packed up the motorcycles anyway, and started off, hoping it would dry out again.  Sure enough, before too many miles, it stopped raining, and remained overcast, but with good visibility.

Our willingness to ride the motorcycles in all kinds of weather has paid dividends in what we've been able to see.  More often than not, the days have cleared up and rewarded us with really good experiences.

This was our first whole day exposure to New Foundland, and we found the terrain very interesting.  Because it is quite far North, the trees and bushes are not very large, no doubt partly from the very short growing season, but also from the lack of soil to grow in.  We found that the nickname "The Rock" for New Foundland is very appropriate.  It seems to be solid rock, with a few separate boulders here and there, with hardly enough soil to grow much of anything.

However, The Rock has a rugged beauty, with most of the plant area looking relatively stunted like the "muskeg" in upper Canada and Alaska that we became familiar with last year.  We had expected larger trees and forests, but while there were forest areas, the trees were relatively small.

Then there are the lakes and "potholes" - thousands of them.  The lakes in the rock depressions are very pretty, with rugged shores, and are generally surrounded by green vegetation.

Unfortunately, the overcast made the lighting conditions poor and we didn't get any photos of the general area.

We did ride along the shore of the ocean from time to time, and enjoyed the beautiful views of bays and inlets.  Small harbors are to be found from time to time, with neat and well cared for homes near the docks.

When we got to the town of Gander, we found a airplane museum, right across from our motel.  So of course we had to tour that.  They had some planes with interesting parts played in the history of Gander and Newfoundland.  This old PBY was used in New Foundland long after it had been retired from WW II.

And of course, Norm had to go visit the airport, since it had an interesting history and strategic value in developing aviation.

At our motel in Gander, we ran into one of the bikers, Bob Guthrie, whom we'd met in waiting to board the ferry in Nova Scotia.   Bob owns a farm in Ontario, Canada, and was on a vacation ride like us, so we had a pleasant visit with him.

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