Friday night, after we left St. John’s (yet again, this time we were there for my physiotherapy appointment), we decided to head south on the Avalon Peninsula. By the time we finally left the city, it was late afternoon, so we drove about an hour and pulled off the road for the night on Route 13.
What a novelty: camping just about anywhere you want! We passed several other “gravel pits” (some may have been actual gravel pits, others are just cleared areas on the side of the road), with anywhere from one to dozens of campers. Apparently the provincial government is trying to discourage this cultural phenomena, instead directing people to public or private campgrounds, but there is a long history of Newfoundlanders camping in open spaces where they do not have to pay.
Ours was just a little pull-off, but it gave Anouk room to explore. It may not have been the end of the Earth, but it sort of felt like it. The undulating barrens all around us had small copses of stunted spruce and alder interspersed with countless kettle-hole ponds. Savannah Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos sang all around us. Two bird other songs remained unidentified, but I desperately wanted to turn them into a Lincoln’s Sparrow and a Willow Ptarmigan. A lone Pickerel Frog doing its banjo call kept us company until well after dark (which in these parts is about 10:00 p.m.).
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