Week 660 · September 2026 · Newfoundland, Canada
From St. John’s we had a couple of different options as we had 2–4 days to cross Newfoundland. We decided to stay in Bonavista and Twillingate, skip more east coast trail, stop at the exhibit in Gander (skipping the show), and do a shorter bike ride in Deer Lake.
This is one part of the trip where we had some time and didn't plan the details. We saw videos where people took a week for this part of the trip, so we knew we would have to trim the options. We had a couple of different options to get across Newfoundland:
Bonavista sits at the northern tip of Newfoundland’s northeast coast and was the first land sighted by John Cabot in 1497. This is the farthest from home we got on the trip — a perspective: 1,350 miles as the crow flies, almost halfway to Iceland; actual miles driven 2,280 — same as driving to Barstow, California.
We went to the end of the peninsula and were looking around while scouting out the free camping situation. Very scenic and signs indicate places you could definitely camp in an RV, places that you could maybe camp — but had roaming cows, horses, sheep, and goats. After doing some hiking, we decided maybe not the best set up for our first night camping. We got a cabin and walked to a decent place for dinner for more fish and chips. One option was to visit the town of Dildo — we passed.
On June 24, 1497, Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), a Venetian navigator sailing under letters patent from King Henry VII of England, made landfall in the New World after nearly two months at sea. The name Bonavista is thought to derive from his exclamation “O Buona Vista” — “Oh Happy Sight” — upon sighting the coast. Local tradition strongly identifies Cape Bonavista as the landing site, though the location cannot be confirmed from surviving sources. Bonavista is one of the oldest communities in North America, established on the flat rocky plain southwest of the cape in the late 1500s by English West Country fish merchants.
The Cape Bonavista Lighthouse, built in 1843, features a working set of lamps and reflectors slowly revolved by a clockwork mechanism; guides in period costume lead visitors through the restored keeper’s quarters and up the tower. A thriving puffin colony occupies a craggy island just offshore, separated from the Cape by a narrow channel. Queen Elizabeth II visited in 1997 for the 500th anniversary of Cabot’s voyage; a full-scale replica of his ship, the Matthew, is moored in the harbour.
From Bonavista we drove through heavy rain to get to the fishing village of Twillingate. Right as we got into town, the sun started to peak through. We checked into the AirBNB and were assigned “The Maxwell Suite” (which is my mom’s maiden name) and headed out for a hike. The guy checking us in pointed us in a different direction for a hike towards a lighthouse — it was awesome with dramatic cliffs and great sunlight.
Twillingate is one of Newfoundland’s oldest seaports and during the 1800s was the most active and prosperous community in northeastern Newfoundland. The name derives from the Breton place-name Toulinguet; Twillingate was a French fishing station until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and before that a summer base for the Beothuk people and the Dorset peoples before them.
Twillingate is famous as the Iceberg Capital of the World — over 50% of all icebergs passing Newfoundland drift through the Twillingate Islands. The icebergs originate from southwestern Greenland’s glaciers, calving into the Davis Strait and drifting south down “Iceberg Alley” along the Labrador and Newfoundland coasts. Peak viewing is May to July; by September most have melted or moved past. Long Point Lighthouse sits on a rugged cliff at the tip of North Twillingate Island and is one of the most photographed viewpoints in all of Newfoundland, with panoramic views over Notre Dame Bay.
Newfoundland runs on its own time zone — Newfoundland Standard Time, +1:30 from the East Coast — a half-hour offset that catches most visitors off guard at least once. The island is large: driving from St. John’s to Twillingate is roughly 340 kilometres and takes 4–5 hours; to Gros Morne another 3–4 hours beyond that. Cell coverage on the Trans-Canada is reasonable but drops off quickly on the peninsula routes to Bonavista and Twillingate. Fuel up whenever you see a station on the peninsulas — the gaps are longer than they look on the map.
The next day leaving Twillingate, it started raining again and we stopped in Gander. The North Atlantic Aviation Museum had a nice exhibit on the 9/11 passengers stranded for over a week when the planes in flight were forced to land. Over 7,000 people showed up with nowhere to stay and the townspeople took them in and took care of them.
Long before 9/11, Gander was the world’s largest airport — initially a strategic post for military planes in WWII and then as a refueling stop for transatlantic flights up until the 1970s. By the time we got to Deer Creek, it was still pouring and we drove straight through to Gros Morne.
Gander Airport was the largest airport on the planet in 1940. Built in 1935 on an undeveloped patch of boreal forest as a strategic transatlantic hub, it became the primary node in the RAF Ferry Command’s link to Europe during the Second World War — more than 10,000 North American-built fighters and heavy bombers transited through on their way to Britain. Winston Churchill called it “the largest aircraft carrier in the North Atlantic.” So secret was its role that it did not appear on wartime maps, and train passengers passing through were required to lower their blinds.
After the war, Gander became the busiest transatlantic refuelling stop in the world — virtually every transatlantic commercial flight stopped here through the 1950s and into the jet age. On September 11, 2001, when North American airspace was closed, 38 aircraft were diverted to Gander carrying approximately 6,600 passengers from 95 countries. The town’s population of 9,651 essentially doubled overnight. Residents transformed schools, churches, and community centres into shelters and took strangers into their homes for nearly a week. That story became the Broadway musical Come From Away, which has played seasonally in Gander each year since.
