Leaving William's Harbour at 830 in the morning, I did what I could to sleep through the rough seas and constant rain. Intermittently waking up, the weather was far less turbulent as we approached and docked in Charlottetown. It seemed like yesterday was going to be the one day of truly crummy weather.

With the rain tapering off, I turned onto an even further road from Trans-Labrador Highway, the 24km (15mi) NL 511-10 to Pinsent's Arm.

At the end of it, I was 52km (32mi) from the Trans-Labrador Highway and felt like I was in maybe the most remote place I'd ever been. If the Trans-Labrador Highway outside of Southern Labrador wasn't remote enough, and a sizable community like Port Hope-Simpson wasn't remote enough, and then a somewhat remote place like Charlottetown wasn't remote enough; well then you could go even further to Pinsent's Arm. 55 people call this place home.

The origin of Pinsent's Arm is the opposite of William's Harbour. Here you had nearby summer fishing stations like Square Islands and Triangle, but the residents would overwinter at Pinsent's Arm. This would only change in the 1950s, when people decided to stay year round at Pinsent's Arm instead.

By 2004, 13 years prior to my visit, the province completed the road connecting Pinsent's Arm and Charlottetown.

I found three streets and most of them dead-ended in people's yards. Therefore, it didn't take long to check out the scene and find myself heading out of town.

While it was fun to see such an obscure place, unfortunately I was feeling crabby and let my mood win out over exploring the coastline or wharf.

Along the road to Pinsent's Arm I noticed some type of operation surrounded by a fence, without much activity. Seeing as I passed one car on the entire drive, I pulled over for a closer look.

While I couldn't figure it out at the time, this was apparently a mink farm.

Reading up on the operation, they lost $400,000 when Aleutian Disease was found in the province's mink in 2007, leading many to be culled.

That wouldn't close down this operation though, as John C. Kennedy's Encounters: An Anthropological History of Southeastern Labrador says it was still open in 2013 - stating that several Pinsent's Arm residents worked here.

While it felt like it closed yesterday, it was actually sometime in the past 4 years.

I had aspirations of checking out St. Lewis this afternoon, but backtracking brought me to Port Hope Simpson and I was tired of driving on gravel roads.

Instead, I was soft and grabbed a motel to enjoy a much welcomed shower. There were even some good places to camp along the road back in Pinsent's Arm, but I still gave in to the ever-present travelling allure of a random motel.

I took some solace in the fact that I found the reasonably-priced Campbell's Place Motel, instead of paying the astronomical rate of the Alexis Motel. For how much I screw up in life and pay for expensive lodgings, that's twice now that I've escaped the tentacles of the Alexis!¹ Score one for the good guys!

1 - In 2010, I went inside the Alexis, heard the rate, then slept in my car in Pinware instead.

At least I would get some biking in today. And if you've ever wondered what the best/only bmxing spot in Port Hope Simpson is...well, here you go!

The funny thing is that I managed to film something I actually like on this spot, so it'll make a quirky addition to some type of edit in the future.

I also went for a pleasant evening walk around Port Hope Simpson, heading from my motel all the way around the harbour to the other end of town, to where the ferry leaves for William's Harbour actually.

The next day it was back to Charlottetown to wait for my 1pm ferry. Again I had time to go for a walkabout, one where I contemplated how I could have used this time to check out St. Lewis instead. Whoops.

Today's ferry would be going to Norman Bay, a place not threatened with resettlement just yet, but another obscure and hard to reach place that I knew I should see if I was going to be up here.

The reason I had to wait a day was because the ferry simply came back from William's Harbour and parked in Charlottetown yesterday. With only 2 destinations, this ferry sticks pretty close to an 8-hour workday and would now stay in Norman Bay tonight.

I had my 70L backpack with my tent and sleeping bag ready to go.

There were only four guys working on the ship, so even though I'm not the most talkative and slept most of the William's Harbour route, we were now familiar with each other. This meant that I was shown the kitchen's coffee maker and told to go up to the bridge to hang out and take my pictures during the sailing.

As much as I would have preferred this for the William's Harbour run, this fine day and minimal wind was going to make for a great 3 hours of sailing to Norman Bay.

Now this was worth $8.25!

The only thing that was missing was a topographic map as I was having trouble understanding the captain's stories and land features through his accent, haha.

Eventually the conversation would taper off, but the captain didn't seem too bothered. I took the opportunity to put my feet up with another cup of coffee, dig into my book, take in the shoreline and bask in this fine day.

As much as I didn't have all that great of reason to go to Norman Bay, this ride was unbelievable. I was very pleased with where I found myself.

The three hour boat ride passed all too quickly and before I knew it we were approaching Norman Bay, population: 45.

We'd brought a small boat from Port Hope Simpson, so the main focus in docking was getting that boat off the ferry and onto land.

I took the opportunity to scoot by and check out the village.

The majority of the homes in Norman Bay were tucked away and hidden by shrubs or full-on forest. This gave it the feel of some Northern Ontario town, more than your typical Newfoundland or Southern Labrador village.

Walking along the main road I liked one house in particular, where the owner built a small road through a low-lying marsh, connecting his home out along the sea.

I continued past the last of the houses and looked to the northern hills. There were a few breaks in the trees and I figured I could summit the hills and grab a better view.

Fighting through brush and up rock walls, eventually I found a great panorama of the islands outside the village. Did I mention it was a fine day?

It was also hot enough that I put my toque in my pocket, then managed to lose said toque when a branch stole it somewhere along the way.

I really hope someone in Norman Bay found it and now rocks my Detroit Olde English "D" liquor store toque.

Around this time, Norman Bay was worried about their ferry and with good reason. With William's Harbour resettling, suddenly you had an entire government ferry doing a 3-hour run just to service a community of 45 people.

And since the resettlement of William's Harbour, the government has done something I've never seen them do before, they replaced the ferry with helicopter service.

Now if one wanted to see Norman Bay, sure it would be great to go in a helicopter, but the helicopter only comes twice a week. You would have to fly in on a Thursday and stay four nights until Monday morning. So it's a good thing I was checking out the scene today, because I'm almost certain I wouldn't see it under the current circumstances.

Heading down to the dock to relax, a resident was there right after and asked me if I wanted to go out in boat. Soon enough we were bombing out of Norman Bay, heading way out to the outer islands.

The landscape was gorgeous in the late day light, but it was also sort of hard to get over the fact I didn't have a life jacket. I hadn't foreseen going this far out with my landlubber self and now we were sure rocking around in the cold Labrador sea.

We picked up his dog from along the shore, but before I knew it we were back at the wharf, drinking beer while some of the men cleaned fish. Almost as soon as I was out there and worried about not having a life jacket, I was back on land.

I then had a pretty good laugh as they gave one guy the business for the amount of salt beef he eats at the buffet in Lab City. They were talking about some measure of salt beef that I didn't understand, but apparently buddy eats 25 of this measure - and I don't care what the measure of salt beef is, 25 is an ungodly number.

Standing around, one of the guys from the ferry asked where I was going to set up my tent. Not having seen anywhere good in town, plus hearing about black bears and our 7 a.m. departure; all lead me to planning on setting up right in the beat up grass next to the wharf. Telling him this, he told me to take the sick transport bunk on the boat instead. Apparently they have an extra bed for the ill to be brought to Charlottetown but no one was being transported tomorrow.

I continued to read out on the deck under the full moon afterwards, but that was apparently silly and I needed to come inside. It's here that I really showed my roots, because sure I could talk with the captain about the baseball he was watching, but hoo boy did he school me at darts. I was enjoying how "Newfoundland" it was to be playing darts on a provincial ferry, but I felt bad as the captain seemed annoyed by my lack of competition.

Still though, playing darts with a ship captain on a government ferry? Check it off the list!

With the ferry leaving at 7 a.m., that was pretty much it for Norman Bay. The ferry worker said I could keep sleeping right until we got to Charlottetown, but I also wanted to see Norman Bay disappear by the early morning light.

Getting up as the boat moved in the morning, the village was already almost gone as we were about three hundred feet from the wharf.

This morning was just as exquisite as yesterday afternoon, so there was no way I was going back to bed. Relaxing on the back deck, heading up and drinking coffee on the bridge, I was all over the boat and taking it all in.

This morning was also an example of the scheduling nonsense that I mentioned in the William's Harbour update. Even though it said online that we'd leave at 6 a.m., we were actually leaving at 7 a.m. - which had serious implications when I already had an extremely tight schedule to catch the noon ferry back to the Island of Newfoundland.

There was nothing I could do on the boat though, so it was time to simply enjoy the gorgeous scenery and this fantastic morning.

Once I was back in Charlottetown, I rushed to my car without even taking my jacket off, driving like a bat out of hell to try and get to Blanc-Sablon. For all of my risking demerit points and possibly careening off the gravel highway at high speeds, I crested that curve outside Blanc-Sablon just to see the Newfoundland-Labrador ferry pulling away from the dock. Son of a!

So it was another five hours of Labrador, before getting back to St Barbe and having four hours of driving mostly in the dark. It wasn't that big of deal though, as I'd seen the disappearing William's Harbour, had a lovely evening in Port Hope Simpson and savoured the ride to Norman Bay and back.

This afternoon could've been better if they hadn't torn down the Blanc-Sablon skatepark, but between a beach walk at Davis House and lunch in Blanc-Sablon, I was on the island ferry and headed back to the place I sleep soon enough.