It had been a while since my friend and I went camping, and where she enjoys the Bonavista Peninsula, that seemed an agreeable destination for this long weekend.

Leaving work on Friday afternoon, you usually get to the Gambo or Glovertown area near sundown. We've camped on a woods road near Gambo because of this, but today I had a better idea.

Coming across Drover's Beach on the internet, the satellite views showed car access and it looked like a great spot to camp. In real life there was lots of trash and subsequent signs saying "No Camping", but with no one around, we decided to act as if we went far enough down the beach to be outside the No Camping zone.

The other worry was driving on the beach. Shelloo asked what I thought about it, but seeing as I'm not Luke Bryan, I don't know about things like driving on beaches. So I got out of the car and jumped up and down while examining the sand...and it seemed solid enough. I figured my weight didn't really displace much, so a car was probably fine.

(Hilariously enough, one of Shelloo's coworkers told her that they got stuck on this very beach.)

It was so windy that cooking dinner was a pain, but the same winds were warm and lovely on this quiet beach as the year had finally settled into summer. Every time I wandered off to explore the nearby bushes, all of the shrubs and short trees swayed in gentle unison.

Another motivation for stopping here was that our friend Rosie had to be in Gander tomorrow. By stopping here, she could join us and eventually a second car and a second tent made its way onto the beach.

Where I've camped in some mediocre spots, I was pretty pleased with myself for having this site in my back pocket when a third joined us.

We woke up to drizzle, which as we headed back to Gander, turned into full-on rain. While we initially planned on hiking or driving somewhere, suddenly we were faced with the question of what to do in Gander on a rainy day?

Bowling it is!

I was worried the alley might be busy on a rainy day, but we had the place to ourselves and the owner was helpful without being overbearing.

It was a great afternoon and a laugh in Gander.

Soon Rosie had acquired her new dog and was headed back to St. John's.

Shelloo and I were off to Bonavista, where we stopped and checked out a sealed abandoned house before then stopping in King's Cove. Recently the mayor of King's Cove had made headlines in calling for the immediate demolition of their St. James Anglican Church, since selling the building would be a constant reminder of their failure to keep the church open. The church needed $35,000 in repairs.

I initially thought this had to be a mistake, to demolish such a beautiful and prominent church in a handsome community of gorgeous old homes that sit showcased along the hillside. If they were calling for this church to be demolished, it had to be in such a state of disrepair that local residents were under threat from blowing shingles and stray clapboard.

I've since learned that the Anglican Church makes their deconsecrating decisions monetarily. Along with King's Cove, there were four other Anglican churches closed in 2017, and in cases like Keels where they had a buyer for the building, it was sold into reuse; but in cases like Princeton where the community wanted to reuse the building themselves, it was instead sold into being dismantled for salvage. It doesn't seem to matter what happens to the building afterwards and demolition is almost preferred.

(It's time to be more diligent with photographing Anglican churches when I'm in the outports.)

King's Cove is a lesson in giving adaptive reuse some time to work though. Following the uproar of the demolition news articles, nearly 3000 people signed a petition to save the church and additional light was brought to the fact that there was even a potential buyer who actively wanted to buy the building.

Thankfully St. James was finally sold to Chris and Karen Ricketts, who already own and previously renovated the abandoned Round Da Bay Inn in Plate Cove West. The Ricketts plan to turn the church into a home and artist's studio, and despite the mayor's best attempts, it'll help keep King's Cove as a destination on the Bonavista Peninsula.

Prior to this trip, I'd studied a couple of prospective camping places on Google Earth, but we found one with no trespassing signs & the other with a gate. The gated one looked like we could simply carry our stuff up into the abandoned gravel pit, but it was also an abandoned gravel pit.

Nearby was this immaculate grassy patch right on the ocean in a tiny hamlet of an outport. Here's where I have to give Shelloo credit, because she argued for simply camping in plain view. Giving it a few minutes in case anyone was going to come over and tell us to get lost, we then pulled out the tent and not a soul came throughout the evening or night.

While it was overcast and may not convey in these pictures, this really was a fantastic campsite with easy access to a deserted beach. I like the more isolated places without anyone even likely to be around, but it was also fun and unique to be right in the middle of an outport community.

We often have discussions about "best stealth campsite" & this one is usually up there.

The next morning we continued meandering about and upon seeing a striking abandoned house, I pulled the car over for a closer inspection.

I loved the colour choices of the porch/workshop.

The kitchen was cluttered with couch cushions and cabinets, but moving into the living room it was apparent that this place was last inhabited by older folks.

One spot along the wall, where it looked like a photo once hung, there was a handwritten roll call of everyone who was here for Thanksgiving in 1998. Usually I'll look for a calendar to estimate when a house is abandoned, but in absence of a calendar I didn't think to look at any of the newspapers near the front door.

Upstairs, there was either a small broken window or a roof leak, because the nearby ocean was getting into the home in the form of green, damp moss. I've seen this stuff before but it's usually a whole rotting floor of green moss, not just isolated on one bed.

As much as I'm not a scary movie guy, I have to admit this bed make me think of something evil grabbing me if I were to lay down.

For all of the crappy, glorified shed, abandoned houses that Shelloo has checked out with me, it's pretty funny that she skipped out on this one. Not only were the 1970s furniture pieces and fixtures amazing, but the fireplace and the overall construction of the house shined as well.

It's too bad this house has slipped through the cracks and is more than likely headed towards eventual demolition.

Following the abandoned house, we went about more conventional things like the Bonavista Lighthouse, The Dungeon (above), Elliston's Bird Rock, a stately iceberg & Neil's Yard café⁰.

0 - Neil's Yard is now closed, but its apparently been replaced.

Iceberg off of Squarry Island in Bonavista. The cement base is from the old lighthouse.

We also stopped at a new pub for lunch, parking across the street where I could appreciate one of my favourite homes on the whole island.

The above picture comes from 2012.

Five years later, and although photographing miscreants were finding their way inside, things were looking better. There's a company renovating a ton of homes in this area & I found they were originally choosing easy vacant houses instead of rundown abandoned houses, but of late they've also been picking up some more of the more endangered ones.

A banner for the company hung on the front of the house.

I was pretty excited to finally check out this beauty, even if almost all of the windows were boarded over and I was left to take flash pictures in the dark.

My excitement would evaporate quickly. As I was walking on the creaky stairs, I could hear two voices really close by. I froze in place and held on for a second, hoping a head wasn't about to pop into my entrance and reprimand me.

Then there was no more talking.

Giving it a few minutes, I looked outside and there was no one around. There was just that warm, summery wind. Deciding to get going, I returned to the car and asked Shelloo about it, but she didn't know what I was talking about.

As best as we could work out, it was just two loud Newfoundland men walking by having a boisterous conversation. It had nothing to do with me & they were nowhere near the house, haha.

The food and atmosphere at the so-called pub was fine. Afterwards, we wrapped things up with a pleasurable walk around handsome Trinity. Shelloo was enamored with blooming trees and I found the foundation of an old fish plant was a great spot to ride my bike. The only problem was that I needed ledge wax and a broom, but at least I now know about somewhere decent to ride on the Bonavista Peninsula.

Leaving the peninsula, we still needed somewhere to camp tonight, so I pulled on to a random woods road very close to Drover's Beach. Shelloo was going to accept my decision here, but you could tell she found it weird that we were going to camp in a crummy clearing when we had an exquisite beach campsite all of 5 minutes away.

Alas, I found next to nothing on Drover's Ridge Resource Road within the first handful of kilometers. Agreeing that it wasn't worth camping in an 8ft square of scrub just to say we camped on this resource road, we ended up back at Drover's Beach.

Taking it easy for once, we conquered the 4 hours back to the house and were back in CB at a decent time.