Day 2 (September 11, 2024): Around the bottom of 'the boot'!

After a hearty breakfast of sausages and eggs at our AirBnB in Big Salmonier, we set out at 9:18AM to start a long day of driving - basically to circumvent the “bottom of the boot” and then head for home.  The expanse of the peninsula left us agog most of the way, as did the stunning beauty.  We ducked into St. Lawrence, Lawn, Fortune, Grand Bank, Frenchman’s Cove Provincial Park and Boat Harbour for a bit of exploration, as well as another picnic lunch in Marystown.

We arrived back home, at Clarke’s Beach, at 5:30PM.  The trip took exactly 32 hours, and we covered a total of 753 km.  Wonderful scenery, a real trip down memory lane for my parents, and a great time together!


The driving plan for the day. 


A view of St. Lawrence, where the main industry for much of the 20th century was the mining of fluorspar.

The St. Lawrence Miner's Museum closed on September 1st.  So we were limited to seeing the huge miner's hard-hat on the roof, and some spruced up mining equipment on the lawn.

The St. Lawrence harbour.

The Burin Peninsula barrens, just west of St. Lawrence.


Lawn’s harbour.

One of the nicest things about Lawn is its rambling waterfalls, which tumbles down into the town and then ends up in the harbour.

Just west of Lawn, looking back on the town.

Piles of logs were more plentiful than we expected.  I mean, the Burin Peninsula is either barren or contains stubby trees - one can hardly imagine there being enough tall trees to cut logs like this!

The view or Lamaline. 
Although the ferry to Saint Pierre et Miquelon departs from Fortune, the route would be much faster if the ferry departed from either Lamaline or nearby Point May.

In Fortune, once you pass through these doors, you are cleared to be in... FRANCE!  It seems so surreal that such can be the case in a small Newfoundland outport.  This is the customs office for the ferry to Saint Pierre et Miquelon, which is an overseas territory of France.

Off the coast of Fortune, in the distance, you can see the island of Brunette. It is uninhabited now, but in the 1800s, up to 300 people lived there. In 1964, then-Premier Joey Smallwood had a herd of bison imported from out west. These bison were placed on Brunette Island. Unfortunately, the cliffs and topography were not well suited to them, and they died off.

The Seaman's Museum in Grand Bank is quite the spectacle.  It is actually the former pavilion of Yugoslavia from the Expo 67 site in Montreal.  Then Premier Joey Smallwood fell in love with the pavilion, as he felt it looked very futuristic.  So he bought it from the Yugoslavian Government after Expo 67 for $50,000.  It was dismantled and shipped to Grand Bank via barge, where it was re-constructed.  We were told that the shipping and reconstruction put the overall project at $1 million, when all was said and done.  The museum is an extension of The Rooms, Newfoundland's provincial museum in St. John's.

Dad with one of the museum's impressive model schooners.

Skis from a bush plane.

Ned Pratt, son of the famous artist, Chris Pratt, had an exhibition of his photographs on display.

 - Ned Pratt

The Mariner's Memorial in Grand Bank is part of the George C. Harris House Museum.

A lovely day in Grand Bank!

Grand Bank.  And just a note on Grand Bank…. Like many small Newfoundland outports which, for decades upon decades, have depended on a small
Bank of Nova Scotia branch having a presence, they will lose their beloved bank — their only bank — next month. It’s part of a centralization effort on the Bank’s part. Everyone will now have to drive 54km to Marystown to access cash, as there won’t even be an ATM in lieu of the bank branch, come October.  

We visited Frenchman's Cove Provincial Park, the only provincial park on the Burin Peninsula.  Dad and Mom camped here in their van over 10 years ago, so they were happy to revisit.

The beach between Frenchman's Cove and Garnish.

Building the Route 210 highway around the peninsula was no small feat.  This rock cut, south of Rushoon, was perhaps the most dramatic rock cut we encountered on the entire route.

The last village we visited was sleepy Boat Harbour, where traditional salt-box houses line the harbour. 

This house in Boat Harbour looked like an amusement park!

As we left Boat Harbour, storm clouds were forming, and a huge rainstorm hit us for our last hour of driving on Route 210.












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