Isy's birthday was approaching and with that, a scheduled week off of work. There kept being promising talk of an Atlantic Bubble allowing free travel between the provinces of Atlantic Canada, but then this scuttlebutt was always followed by depressing news of another COVID outbreak in some random place.

As the calendar flipped into June, it had been a few weeks since a major outbreak and it seemed like the Atlantic Bubble was finally imminent - but we had to make our vacation plans and couldn't keeping leaving people in a lurch, waiting on us possibly coming, or maybe taking off for Nova Scotia instead.

Hilariously enough, we left Corner Brook and accepted heading across the island on June 20th, only for the Atlantic Bubble to arrive quicker than anticipated on June 23rd. By then though, we couldn't race back to Port-aux-Basques and take the ferry for only 3 days of the mainland, plus Isy had wanted to see her friends in St. John's anyway. I also had a couple of action items, like checking out the dam at the old Campbellton Pulp Mill.

I've covered the Campbellton Pulp Mill before, and I knew there was a dam upstream on that and subsequent visits, but it wasn't until recently that I learned that the dam was actually substantial. I discovered this fact online; while my friend Shelloo had also sent me a picture of the dam after recently stopping here.

"Mon citrouille, now I know it's no Dieppe Taco Bell, Miramichi Skatepark, or any of the other fabulous Maritime things that an Atlantic Bubble birthday would've brought you, but it's still pretty great. No?"

The owners of the Campbellton Pulp Mill, the Horwood Lumber Company, built this dam to power a small hydroelectric plant for their mill.

The dam would fail in back-to-back spring seasons though, and along with the falling price of pulp, this led the Horwood Lumber Company to abandon the entire Campbellton site after only two years. In the end, they managed to sell a grand total of one boat load of pulp to some interest down in New York State.

This dam would channel water into a penstock that went down towards the powerhouse, where it spun two turbines. It's this powerhouse that's the only building left standing here in Campbellton, not the actual mill.

Also of note, if you've seen the video part I put out about 8 years ago, it's this penstock that I'm riding like a fullpipe (before reaching the end and having to stop at a grassy chamber).

I was enjoying myself and ready to explore this ruined dam for a good while, but there were also all of these weird flies landing on us.

They were totally harmless, but Isy still didn't care for them and didn't like them on the dog, so I was left to my own devices as the two of them headed back to the car. I cut my time short and we kept it moving.

It was good we didn't dawdle in Campbellton anyway, since our camping plans involved parking and carrying our stuff a kilometer (~0.6mi) down a quad path.

Once in the Twillingate area, we drove through Tizzard's Harbour to a short, gated path I'd scouted, where it looked like we could hike down and have a cove to ourselves for camping. (MAP). Except now that we were driving out of the small village, the gate was open and the rough road wasn't as rough as the internet had shown. We drove forward and down to the cove with relative ease.

This meant that we were early enough to make camp without the setting sun for once, with time to spare here in Webber's Bight. I'm not sure if there was ever a settlement here, especially as I can't find anything online and Webber's Bight isn't listed in the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador.

A local did come by later and told us there's a couple of headstones in that cut off to the right, but we never got around to walking over there due to it being so wet and boggy.

An especially exciting thing about tonight was that it was the maiden voyage for our new Cabela tent! Isy appreciated this on the ground, and I know she now appreciates it even more as recent BRN updates have left her wondering, "when is he going to stop complaining about the god damn windsail tent? Can he catch up to the new tent already? Enough about the windsail tent!" LOL.

The best part is that tonight, even in this exposed cove, the winds were close to null. The windsail tent would've been totally up to this easy task!

There wasn't much of a sunset, but following dinner and having a chat with some friendly and welcoming locals, I still loved that we could use the handy cove side picnic table to our advantage as we lounged and watched the sun disappear into the west.

Off in the distance we could see Berry Island, which thankfully saved us from watching the sun set over Cuckold Rocks or the Toadasses.

Continue to Part 2...