Remembrance Day weekend will sometimes surprise, but the final reliable long weekend in Newfoundland for casual, comfortable camping usually comes in early October with Canadian Thanksgiving.

There was a problem with getting away to camp though, as Isy actually cares about celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving even though there's no Detroit Lions football.

So we compromised on one night of camping, then two nights in a cabin rental seeing as it's slightly inconvenient to cook a dirty bird on a Coleman's camp stove.

Still needing to pack a few things after work, we only reached the turnoff for the Baie Verte Highway as night approached. We pulled off on the NL-410 because of the abundance of woods roads up there, quickly finding Black Lake Road and a passable clearing to set up our tent. I continued down the road in hopes of something on this "Black Lake", but peering out from the top of a roadside hill, Black Lake looked like where everyone built their cabin.

Returning to our mediocre clearing, the dog almost immediately informed us of a moose carcass off in the woods by diving in to retrieve pieces, and then whining as he was attached to the back latch of the car in response. He proceeded to eat gravel as we struggled with the tent, making sure we noted his displeasure with the revoking of his carrion access.

It also only took a few minutes for Baie Verters to pass by on quads and in trucks, looking puzzled with our campsite choice. Where some of these woods roads can be awfully quiet, this was clearly a popular road for cabin owners.

This was all still a million times better than spending $140 on a motel in Springdale, especially as no one stopped to bother us. Plus, when I went off for my morning lavatory break, the back of our campsite had a strange clearing with tall birch trees and less brush than usual. I've wanted to return to this area and explore these woods since.

After stopping for some ruins I'll cover in the future, plus riding at the Gander post office, we kept on our way to Gambo and then north to Musgrave Harbour and our efficiency unit/cabin rental.

It's a funny thing in Newfoundland to try and find an efficiency unit with a large oven and not just a cooktop. Especially when you don't exactly want to call these places and explain that you'll be running their stoves for 6 hours at 350°F.

Places here also lack an online presence (although this is getting better in recent years). Each rental often only has 2 or 3 pictures posted, and sometimes those pictures are only blurry shots from visitors. I was left squinting and studying a lot of photos, trying to find somewhere we wanted to go for the weekend, that also had an oven big enough for a turkey.

Thankfully Trip Advisor had a clear picture of the oven at the Olde Brook Cottages in Musgrave Harbour - a great option in that it was far enough from Corner Brook to feel like we were getting away, I hadn't already combed over every street in the town multiple times, plus there were nearby lighthouses that I could try and visit.

The next day we drove the same hour back towards Gambo, this time turning off at the exit for Greenspond and its Puffin Island Lighthouse. Stopping at the convenience store because I forgot to grab money just in case there was someone who would take us out to the island lighthouse for $100 or $200 or whatever, I soon learned that neither of the two stores in Greenspond have an ATM.

So it was 15km back out to the highway, and another 10km back up the highway to the nearest gas bar, to then return to Greenspond with money in hand. The second-to-last time I was here, after going down to the fish plant and asking about anyone who goes out to Puffin Island, I was pointed towards a house where I'd find "the guy who usually takes people out to the island." Except he wasn't home.

Today I went back to that same house, left Isy in the car & knocked on the door, surprised to find it opened by a woman in her 20s. Usually the feller who brings you out in boat is middle-aged, but I suppose Greenspond is the type of place where someone in their 20s already long ago learned their way around a boat.

I was even more confused as I asked if so-and-so was home and she yelled out to her presumed husband that I was at the door. Down came a dude taller than me, pretty ripped, with no shirt and more ink on his body than open canvas. This was the guy who was going to take me out in boat?!

Except it wasn't. After asking about going out to Puffin Island, we sorted out that I had the wrong house and I was looking for so-and-so next door. Whoops!

Next door, a yappy dog immediately reacted to my knocks, while a woman invited me in, as the man I was looking for was at the dinner table with a friend. Walking into the split-level, unconventionally laid out house that I liked, it wasn't long before I was in the kitchen, waving and explaining who I was and what I wanted.

"You want a beer my son? Sit down."

Cracking my Bud Light, I was extremely happy that this man was home, but going out in boat suddenly didn't seem likely as today was his Thanksgiving and he didn't have time to head out to Puffin Island. So we moved away from that conversation, to what I thought of Greenspond, to how I have all these lighthouses, to who I knew in town and then a whole host of other things that moved closer to what the two men were talking about before I came - including going out to the garage to retrieve a frozen seabird for his friend, coming back with a frozen solid 2L carton of milk with the dead duck conveniently stored inside. He turned to me to make sure I appreciated his ingenuity (which I did).

Once his friend left, we got back to the possibility of heading out. He asked his wife what time so and so was coming back, and about dinner, and explained to me that I wouldn't have much time out at the lighthouse. This was all agreeable to me & with a few last hems and haws, he finally told me to finish my beer and we'd go.

Isy had been waiting in the car the whole time and was really confused when I returned after 30 minutes of beer drinking and negotiating, to say that we needed to get down to the dock asap as it was time to head out.

By now, I've pictured how the boat ride would go for all of the 18 remaining lighthouses in this province. Puffin Island would be one of the most often pictured though, on account of just how many times I've stood in Greenspond and looked out at this island a measly 400m (1/4-mile) offshore.

It really seems like such an attainable lighthouse.

My first attempt was a half-assed go back in April of 2012, where I took out money, but my fear of talking to people kicked in and I moved along. Returning in July of 2013, I overcame my fear of talking to strangers, but moronically showed up specifically at low tide because I thought it would be helpful, but the b'ys obviously don't want to navigate a harbour with plenty of rocks, to bring you out to an island without a wharf at low tide.

We stopped again during the Peckford Island attempts, actually working up the courage to talk to someone, but it ended up being someone's son who came back after a long hiatus and was only checking up on the old family house. The next time would come in November of 2016, when we rented a house in Greenspond with a giant window that featured Puffin Island and the view mocked me as I sat there and wondered how a lighthouse so close to shore was so unreachable. While there, Rosie also knew someone's uncle in Greenspond, but he didn't want to go out to the island in November for obvious reasons. Later while walking on nearby Ship Island, Rosie said we could swim out there sometime, but I would save any swimming attempts for Catalina's lighthouse if that's what I was going to do.

As we neared the island, I grew confused that we weren't shooting straight for the wooden slipway extending into the sea. Asking our skipper, he curtly replied "don't like landing over there. Strong undertow and I don't like bringing my boat over there."

I was confused as to how an undertow affects a boat, but this wasn't the time to ask questions. Instead it was time to apparently leap from the boat and grab onto the rocks, as the rocky isle provided no better options and the skipper indicated this is how you land on the island if you don't use the slipway (or a helicopter).

I stood up in the rocking boat, trying to steady myself and time my leap. We didn't get all that close to the island, but confident in my landing abilities, I went for the handplant leap over the side of the boat and onto the rocks, except my feet shot straight out on rocks as slippery as parking lot ice with a light dusting of snow. Suddenly I was sliding back down into the ocean and somewhere in there was an outboard motor as my eyes looked across at the boat's underside.

Fighting and clinging, my lengthy arms stretched out in search of dry rock as my feet went below the water and weren't clinging to anything. Pain then shot into my hands as it met rough, pumice-like boulder surfaces, but digging the meat of my palm into that rough surface beat going down into the water and under the boat.

I pulled myself up in a series of tricep dips and shimmies until I finally found a ridge of rock and clumsily threw my ass and back into the crevasse behind it. The judges weren't going to award me any points for grace as my feet were up in the air, or especially grace under pressure as Isy and the skipper looked on wide-eyed. I was now on Puffin Island though, even if I was on my backside.

Puffin Island isn't an especially big island, so even without landing at the slipway, I still found the curving, grassy path up to the buildings in no time. Rushing forward, I wasn't going to open myself up to any dawdling that could stop me from finally getting this lighthouse.

And oh yeah, Isy had stayed behind in the boat after seeing me slipping and falling along the shore. She thought better of attempting it herself and she doesn't have the same obsession with standing before lighthouses on their islands.

It would be easy nowadays to fail to realize Greenspond's early importance in Newfoundland, but the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador states Greenspond was "at one time an entrepôt that almost rivalled St. John's."

This was because of Greenspond's proximity to lucrative fishing and sealing grounds, as well as its location north of the heavily-populated and wealthy Bonavista. Greenspond's location also leant itself to becoming a trading centre, as the first year that an export office was created in the town, ships left Greenspond with cured cod, furs, berries, etc., to head across the ocean to places such as Great Britain, Italy and Portugal, and in following years, Ireland, Brazil & Greece.

Even with Greenspond's importance, early lighthouses were only established at Cape Bonavista and off of Musgrave Harbour in the Wadhams. This means there was an obvious call to build a lighthouse in Greenspond, especially with its mediocre harbour and many offshore islands.

On March 13th 1867, John Thorpe Oakley, House of Assembly Member for Bonavista, brought forth a petition from the Reverend of Greenspond and other citizens, that a lighthouse be constructed on Puffin Island. It wasn't until 1872 that work actually started, but by 1873 a fine granite lighthouse was constructed by the firm of Smith & Haw.

With the granite cut from Puffin Island itself, and the lumber taken from the nearby woods, it's said that this original Puffin Island Lighthouse was the first public building in Newfoundland built with all Newfoundland materials.

Smith & Haw would go on to build an almost identical granite lighthouse a year later, which thankfully still stands in Rose Blanche on Newfoundland's southwest coast.

So even though Puffin Island's granite lighthouse was replaced in 1950, you can still see what it looked like by heading down to the Port aux Basques area instead of Greenspond.

It's a testament to the danger of these shores that there were still lots of nearby shipwrecks even after the completion of the Puffin Island Lighthouse. In fact, there were so many nearby shipwrecks, that some Greenspond residents were almost making a steady side hustle in rescuing mariners. This is after the government had approved a program where they would pay anyone feeding or housing shipwreck victims in the time it took for the government to get there or arrange for these victims to move on.

In just 1884, there were an incredible 120 reported Newfoundland shipwrecks where residents received payment from the government for their assistance. The Encyclopedia of NL says that based on local records, "Greenspond was a major recipient of these funds."

By 1898, after much money was drained from the coffers of Newfoundland by these shipwrecks, another lighthouse was finally built on Little Denier Island off of Salvage. This light was "up the bay" from Greenspond and provided a greater safety net in terms of a string of lights along the coast from Little Denier, to Puffin Island, to the Stinking Islands (now Cabot Islands).

Lightkeepers' life on these offshore islands is often over romanticized and seen as this desolate, far removed and lonely job. Puffin Island is obviously different than that because of its proximity to Greenspond and the interaction of the keepers and residents.

By the 1950s, with Albert and Averil Wakely living as a lighthouse couple at Puffin Island, Albert would fire off his shotgun three times if there were seals offshore (as opposed to the one ring of the ever-present fog alarm). The hunters of Greenspond would then set out for the seals, often grabbing lunch, tea and brandy from the Wakelys as they headed out, and returning later with gifts of seal flippers. And it wasn't just fatty meat exchanges either, because following the departure of Averil to go birth the Wakelys' child in Greenspond, seven or eight of the townsmen then wrapped up Averil and the newborn afterwards, pulling the two of them by sled over the sea ice for the kilometer to the lighthouse and back to her home and husband.

I'd always wondered if there was ever enough ice in Greenspond to allow you to simply walk over to Puffin Island. I remain curious how often this happens nowadays.

Good lord, I couldn't believe where I was standing. I'd finally made it and I was savouring this, even as I knew I was on a clock to get back to the boat.

It's in this frenzy of rushing around though, that I forgot there's actually still a bit of the granite lighthouse foundation still visible behind the keeper's house. D'oh!

Just as I was noticing the blood on my camera shutter from those shoreline rocks, the door of the lighthouse pushed open and out came the keeper, who was excited with the visitor and asked if I wanted the grand tour.

The grand tour of a lighthouse I've been trying to get to for 10 years? That I've plotted and thought about extensively?

This was going to kill me, but I had to turn him down as I knew my skipper was waiting back at the boat and trying to get back to Thanksgiving.

"Oh. Okay. Well, I at least have to get you to sign my guestbook." the lightkeeper dejectedly replied. Slyly wiping my hands on the upper thighs of my jeans where my coat covered the red splotches, I stepped into the lightkeeper's kitchen, noticing that it had been over a month and a half since anyone had come out here and signed his guestbook, which surprised me as I thought more people managed to get out here.

Now, Puffin Island is one of 50 staffed lighthouses left in Canada, all located in Newfoundland & Labrador (23) or British Columbia (27), and down from 264 staffed lighthouses when they started working to reduce lightkeepers in the 1970s. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans tried to fire the remaining staff from these 50 lighthouses in 2010, but visits to BC and NL, including a visit to this very lighthouse on Puffin Island, led the committee to change their mind and see the value in lightkeepers.

One of the secondary arguments for keeping lightkeepers is the value they provide in tourism & I really lament not being able to take up the Puffin Island Lightkeeper on his grand tour offer.

An unwelcome visitor came to Puffin Island on April 4th of 2012 and wasn't even invited in to sign the guestbook.

Keeper Joe Goodyear was at the lighthouse performing his duties when he felt a cold shiver go over him and thought to himself, "there better not be no polar bear behind me." It was only after the other keeper spotted the bear and yelled out, "Polar bear! Polar bear!" that the two keepers closed up the house as the bear approached. Opening a window as the bear was at the door, they made noise to try and scare off the mammal which could have weighed anywhere from 750 and 1500 pounds as a male.

The polar bear thankfully left after the keepers started making noise, but unfortunately went towards Greenspond where onlookers and police were along the coast. Knowing that it would still be an hour before tranquilizers would show up, an officer of the RCMP decided to take down the bear with his rifle.

Joe Goodyear had been keeper at Puffin Island for 25 years at that point and it was the only polar bear he'd seen during his time.

I hadn't stayed so long that I was being rude, but it was time to get back to the boat.

Moving down the path, I noticed that the two lightkeepers had taken some other path and were having a chat with the captain of my boat. This pleased me as I thought the conversation probably distracted the captain from how much time I was taking.

Barging in, the lightkeepers were already moving away, so it was clearly time to go. One was actually still sort of close as I carefully stepped out on a rock with an uncomfortable distance to the boat, and carefully picked out one last rock where my feet inexplicably shot out on what must be the most slippery rocks from Nuuk to Cape Hatteras.

The lightkeeper looked alarmed as he scooted back down to give me a hand, while I was again left spinning my feet like the roadrunner, trying to gain traction and get back onto one of the flat rocks. Eventually the captain squeezed in probably more than he would have liked with his boat, and I managed to quickly topple aboard.

The skipper slowly shook his head in disbelief. I couldn't believe my lack of grace either. He told me that next time I come to Greenspond and we go out in boat, that I'm not to wear those bologna skins, pointing at my white and red-accented skate shoes.

He also asked if I saw the foundation ruins of the granite lighthouse & this is where, as Puffin Island floated away, I realized I saw the stones, but it didn't click in my head what they were, or that they were worth a picture. Son of a!

Lastly, about halfway back he told us about Newell's Island where there was once a healthy population of people, with 114 families living in 23 households there in 1911. Today, there's only a graveyard out there, so clearly I should have told the skipper to pull her into Newell's Island so I could slip and fall my way up on to another island out here!

Instead we landed back in Greenspond, where I didn't understand what our skipper wanted me to do with the ropes when approaching the dock and I wish I had a picture of his face as he sighed with defeat at this point, like, "this fucking mainlander." LOL.

He still showed us his stage though, which had a picture of Puffin Island and that made me happy.

And the money we spent an hour backtracking to take out? He waved his hand at such a silly notion of me trying to give him any money for his gas or time.

It was now time to head back up to Musgrave Harbour and start into Thanksgiving, which in my mind, had now changed to a celebratory feast of getting Newfoundland & Labrador lighthouse #63. Eighteen to go!

About the only complaint I had was that Isy put me to work whipping cream. Because we don't have the technology to avoid standing in the kitchen with a spoon, making little circles and wearing away our wrist cartilage? It was time to sip bourbon and celebrate Puffin Island - not whip cream like it's the 1850s! Bah!

Once the 3 hours of making whipped cream was over, I had to laugh at the fact that the cabin actually had a picture of one of the 18 NL lighthouses I have left to see.

This is Offer Wadham Island, which is even further offshore than the Peckford Island Light I saw here at Musgrave Harbour in 2015, but the further Wadham Islands are known for heavy seas and waves that turn the minutes into hours. My friend Darren who took me out to Peckford Island didn't seem keen on ever returning to Offer Wadham Island in his smallish boat.

Speaking of Peckford Island, with the old lighthouse looking rundown and the new skeleton tower sitting ready to be installed when I visited in 2015, I've since wondered if the Peckford Island Lighthouse is going to go away.

Especially seeing at the Peckford Island Lighthouse is a poorly known lighthouse only built in the 1960s, there seemingly wouldn't be much uproar about its destruction - but from my camera's poor zoom function, it sure looks like it's still out there.

Heading home the next day, I figured Isy might appreciate a small detour to see the wreck of the Ahern Trader.

I couldn't believe how much has disappeared or been destroyed since 2009. The northeast coast of Newfoundland and its shifting sea ice takes a toll.

We also stopped in Gander yet again to ride street, but it was far too windy and they hadn't replaced any of their austere shopping plazas with architectural masterpieces over the weekend.

So we instead took some pictures around the Fraser Mall before heading home.