(Continued from Part 1)

Wrapping up things in Grand Falls-Windsor, we still had another night on the road and therefore we pushed east.

Getting off the Trans-Canada and heading towards Lewisporte, I discovered that one of the spots from my old video part had been capped.

I suppose the spot's still there, you'd just need to remove a guardrail and a handrail if you want to one-up my fakie hop. The Scotiabank closed this year, so it wouldn't really be that hard if you're so inclined.

After spending some of the afternoon in Grand Falls, plus detouring up to Lewisporte, there wasn't much daylight left to this late autumn day as we raced towards Gander.

I'm always up for exploring some abandoned buildings on my birthday, so we headed straight to the piggery ruins out by the Gander Airport. It was too bad it was full on dusk by this point, as the cold was settling in and Isy wasn't up for just milling about in the cold for hours. I was savouring the fading light on the nearly bare birches, but eventually it was time to go grab our room at Sinbad's Hotel.

It's at Sinbad's that something occurred to me when I remembered my birthday card from 2020 and Isy's handwritten message promising we would go "at least twice as far as Springdale in 2021!" Doing some math in my head, I couldn't say if Gander was twice as far away as Springdale, so I googled it:

Corner Brook to Springdale: 181 km (113 mi)
Corner Brook to Gander: 360 km (224 mi)

I had no idea she was being so god damn literal. If we end up in Goobies for my birthday in 2022 - 531 km from Corner Brook - I swear I'm done with this relationship, lol.

We weren't going for back-to-back pub crawls, partially because we needed to be up at a reasonable hour. Considering today's sunset was at 4 p.m. and we had an early and quick dinner, we still had lots of time afterwards to check out a couple of Gander's divey spots.

First up was Fraser's Pub, located within Gander's glamourous Fraser Mall.

I'm a big fan of bars located inside malls. Fraser's was great because it was so small that there was no hiding one end of the bar led right out into the bright mall interior.

Isy ordered a Gibson's and water, causing the guy at the bar to remark, "wow, now that's a drink!"

Coming back to the table, she wondered if an alky being impressed with your drink should make you reconsider your life choices. Her life choices brought her to Fraser's Pub on a Sunday night with a Gibson's and water though.

Seems like pretty good life choices to me!

Isy had one more stop in her, so I knew I had to make it count. One way I did this was calling an audible at the last moment to skip over Earhart's Restaurant & Lounge, as I could see on approach that it got the HGTV treatment with grey planks and an open concept.

Instead we headed over to The Oasis Lounge, located in a great strip mall plaza¹ right on Airport Boulevard. A narrow hallway with film photos of patrons over the years led the way back to the bar, so there was no way for me to call an audible here.

1 - streetview screenshot

I couldn't really complain about The Oasis Lounge. Spacious, open pool tables, enough old stuff to feel like it hadn't been hastily renovated in the last three years. I was happy with my choice.

There was a poker game starting up and Isy told me I could stay and she would just walk back to Sinbad's by herself, but that wasn't what I wanted. We had some big plans tomorrow and I wanted to be well rested for them.

About 2.5 hours from Gander and approximately halfway back to Corner Brook, we found ourselves burning through Pilley's Island and headed up to the government wharf to get on the Long Island ferry.

This was all because just three weeks prior to leaving for this trip, I made an incredible and invigorating discovery one afternoon. Stumbling upon a random blog from a woman trying to ride every ferry on the island, I read through her whole website but one of the blog's pictures especially caught my eye, as it had a lighthouse in the distance that looked awfully legit.

Now I'll often come upon AirBNB rentals or tourist attractions that look like lighthouses and dismiss them in seconds, but I'd never seen this faux, replica, or possibly real lighthouse on Long Island before. Then it occurred to me - the lighthouse looked just like the one that I thought was demolished on Long Island back in 2009.

Sure enough, they saved the pieces and reconstructed it in 2015! Inexplicably, I somehow hadn't heard about this in the past six years. What an incredible birthday surprise that would really spice up my Central Newfoundland Birthday!

It's been a number of years since I've had a lighthouse that I could drive and easily see on my own without the help of a fisherman taking me out in his boat. To pore over the details and try to solve the puzzle of how to see these last Newfoundland lighthouses has consumed so much of my time, that it was really weird to return to the time where I could simply drive a bit off the main highway and check a Newfoundland & Labrador lighthouse off the list.

I had my usual worry that Newfoundland was going to screw me over and the ferry would be cancelled for the day or they had moved the departure point or whatever, but after rushing up to the passenger deck, the ferry roared and pushed off from the Pilley's Island side. The only way I would be stopped now is if our ferry sunk during the five minute crossing, haha.

Oh buddy.

Newfoundland & Labrador lighthouse #64 and the first new one in three years. 17 more to go!

Long Island East End Lighthouse!

The Long Island East End Lighthouse was built in 1904. The Encyclopedia of Newfoundland & Labrador states, "the waters are infested with many rocks and shoals necessitating a lighthouse that has operated since 1904 at Southern Head, the eastern extremity of Long Island."

This lighthouse was on my radar soon after moving to Newfoundland as Long Island isn't all that far from Corner Brook. At its former location, reaching it would have been 8km (5mi) of bushwhacking each way, which seemed like a lot, but not impossible.

Visiting in October of 2010, I pushed forward on all the gravel roads I could find, to see how close I could actually get and to size up the forest which you would need to penetrate.

Thankfully I learned that the lighthouse had been demolished prior to driving back to Long Island and setting off on a trying excursion into these woods. This was especially true as the Coast Guard demolished it in 2009 and I didn't learn this until 2011 - leaving me plenty of time to have set out on a pointless trek.

At that point I struck Long Island East End Light from the list and moved along.

In 2021, Long Island East End Lighthouse was added back to the list!

We had close on two hours to enjoy Long Island and seeing as the main road is only 9.1 km/5.7 mi long with very few offshoots, there was plenty of time to hang out at the new-to-me Newfoundland lighthouse.

We also hiked some of Long Island's Beothuk Hiking Trail as it was just a glorious bluebird day.

Even if you don't care about lighthouses, Long Island's lone trail is quite lovely and it's a fun day trip compliments of a measly five minute ferry ride.

Back on the main island of Newfoundland, it was time to celebrate our new lighthouse conquest with scallops, poutine and a hot turkey sandwich from Fudge's Restaurant in Triton.

This was also a consolation prize as we actually headed to Triton so that I could finally ride their skatepark. This would have checked another park off the list, but it was also one of those Newfoundland skateparks made of boat fibreglass, so you just know there would be fun grinding opportunities like in La Scie.

Except that the Triton Skatepark wasn't there. It was a bit rundown last time I saw it, but I didn't think it was that bad. At the same time, it didn't feel like and I didn't realize it had been 12 years ago, in November of 2010, that I'd seen it. Whoops!

Looking at Triton's Wikipedia page a couple of years later, I discovered a new state of the art skatepark had been installed at the Maple Ridge Campground/town Swimming Pool: "Triton also has a state of the art swimming pool and skatepark and a small basketball court, there are trailer campsites nearby too."

I guess I'll have to go back for that one day.

Instead, I rode this abandoned gas station along the Trans-Canada that I've wanted to ride for years.

It's funny and sad how much I'd kill for this to be closer to Corner Brook.

Over the years, I've had to have ridden with 150 different Essex County riders back home. Some of them would probably see how my tolerance and positive attitude towards meagre Belle River spots has led me to hanging on to BMXing here.

At the same time, I enjoyed riding this spot along the highway probably as much as yet another Canadian Ramp Company clone skatepark, which is what the satellite imagery seems to indicate is now in Triton.

Anyway, a solid birthday trip.