The time of year had come where the squeeze is on by needing to celebrate both my birthday and American Thanksgiving. The pandemic had made things less hectic than usual though, since it's not like we could make any big plans to leave the island.

Thanksgiving was nice in its normalcy. I was thinking of slacking on the spread, but Isy wouldn't have it. And then you had the customary and comforting Lions loss, this year at the hands of the lowly Houston Texans.

For my birthday, we deemed it acceptable to head somewhere within one tank of gas to do one of my favourite things: walk around a new or unfamiliar city. And in Western Newfoundland, with its emptiness and my love for exploring cities/towns/villages/hamlets, this means one new street I may have missed or a single vacant shop I'd never noticed before.

The best fit for these parameters was Springdale, a metropolis of 2900 people that's 90 minutes from Corner Brook.

Only going to Springdale would eliminate the need to go in to pay for gas - pay at the pump isn't available everywhere in NL - but also allow us to eliminate any infectious interactions with other humans by not needing somewhere to sleep. Plus, we were already urinating in the woods and packing drinks/snacks, to keep our contacts down to a clean zero.

Our first stop was at the skatepark, where I'd normally ride during school hours just to eliminate the chance of encountering annoying scooter kids, especially with the local school right next door.

I mentioned it to Isy that I found it weird how we were peacefully riding during lunch hour, and she quickly roasted me with the "maybe the school is in lockdown because of a strange older man outside?" Har har har.

Following the skatepark, I pulled my car into downtown Springdale to take a closer look at some of the side streets.

Can't say I'd ever noticed this fantastic creamsicle relic before!

Down at the shore I birded for a few minutes before eyeing up a ramshackle structure just behind us.

I always like to check off the birthday essentials of abandoned building, Taco Bell, QMJHL hockey game, and bike riding; but this place seemed like a little too much of a deathtrap to actually go inside.

Maybe deathtrap is a little rich for a building where you'd only fall 20 feet to the floor below, lol.

Out front, a variety of trucks blocked the collapsed portion and I wondered if this was a coordinated effort to hide the eyesore from the public. The owner of this building has long fought against the town's demolition orders, so it wouldn't be that much of a surprise (and it's also kind of hilarious).

Nearby was a large boulder marking the original spring for which Springdale got its name!

I thought about how Springdale is known as Skindale for the apparent amount of skin you can get around here and if there a rock marking....ah, nevermind.

I now wanted to walk the streets and explore the buildings and architecture, but it was unclear if this was a good idea with the residents of Springdale watching our every move and knowing that we weren't recognizable locals. I sort of shot myself in the foot here, since Springdale doesn't have enough nearby villages to produce an adequate number of people to overwhelm someone's busybody mind. Theoretically someone could know all ~5000 people from Springdale and the 13 neighbouring communities.

And before you get on my ass that these people had legitimate concerns, remember that we were urinating in the damn woods on the way to Springdale, and also dehydrating ourselves to keep them safe. I so wished that I thought to make a shirt listing all of our precautions, since I hate how you can't do certain things in these towns because of their small size and nosiness.

My car wasn't helping anything either, as my license plate holder blocked the provincial symbol. When I got home I immediately took pruning shears and cut out a plastic rectangle that'd blocked the Newfoundland & Labrador logo, but that wouldn't help me four hours earlier in Springdale.

There would be no fun wander about and taking in this slightly unfamiliar town on foot. I snapped a few more pics from the car and we kept it moving.

Just up the road in Shoal Arm, there were explorations that worked better for Covid times as a network of empty and rarely-visited gravel roads led around the old Little Bay Copper Mine site.

I've long wanted to take a better look at the remains up here, so this was a nice consolation for not being able to walk around Springdale.

Although now that we were taking a closer look at things, "Open Hole, Keep Out" was quite the alarming sign. The mine here had shafts sunk to about 2000 ft, so this was a fence I was actually going to respect.

Except that as we rounded the path up the hill, I realized it marked a whole open, surface-level mining area. The "open hole" referred to the drop from cliffs down to the ground far below.

Continuing up the road, I'd driven this NL-392 highway a handful of times now, so I'd already noticed a disused property home to a small shack and two old UHauls.

I guess this would have to do in terms of checking off "explore something abandoned" for my birthday, lol.

The thing I found funny was that if someone were to stop at all these silly forgettable buildings I've seen over the years, I'd probably be pretty enthralled with their website.

I pulled into the village of Saint Patrick's too, as I'd driven these streets previously but it's one of those communities where I didn't stop to take a picture since there wasn't anything all that exciting about it. It was all modern cabins, without any schools, churches, or a post office.

Except that today I pushed down the road on what I previously thought was someone's driveway, but instead it led to more of Saint Patrick's main road and to the above beauty. It doesn't feel like there's many houses like this anywhere in the area, so I happily stepped out to capture the remarkable stunner.

I only managed to snap two pictures before someone came out of their dining room and hollered out, "excuse me, excuse me! Can you stop taking pictures?? We don't like people taking pictures of that old eyesore."

This overwhelmed my system for a second, as how could anyone think this was an eyesore, especially in a place where there aren't any other great old homes. For instance, the house that the woman came out of was a grey trailer clad in vinyl siding.

My brain kept encouraging me, "tell her you think her house is an eyesore. tell her you think her house is an eyesore. tell her you think..." but I thought better of surprising Isy with a yelling match as she sat in the car not paying attention.

But then, upon getting back into the car, Isy was all for telling the lady her house was an eyesore. Bah!

A couple of days later, an unseasonal warm front came through and allowed comfortable camping in early December.

With the windchill it was a bit cold, but I had a solution for getting out of the wind down near Port-aux-Basques, lol.

I've posted about these concrete structures previously, stating that they were mechanical shops for the trains that passed by on the railway about 20 feet away.

In a place that gets winds that force Tim Horton's to reinforce the drive-thru menu/speaker, it was good to have walls blocking us in while camping.

Since we were down here on the southwest coast, we covered the 45km (28mi) drive over to Rose Blanche the next day for something to do.

Along the way though, we actually found something new!

This most exciting find was in Isle aux Morts, where I usually take a look at the giant lot where a fish plant used to stand, but which was now home to a new-to-me skatepark.

I didn't bring my bike since it was rainy and windy, but man oh man was "new skatepark" not a checkbox I expected to tick when I was forced to celebrate a West Coast Newfoundland birthday.

(I wouldn't come immediately back to ride this park with winter closing in, but I eventually checked if off in the summer of 2021.)