Maritimes - Day 19

This was a bit of a stressful day, as we drove out of St. John's to Gander, which we skipped on the way down, as we knew we had to do something on the way back.  The ferry crossing is 880km from St. John's and we didn't want to drive that in one day, so we are taking two days to do it.

Unfortunately, right as we left St. John's, we ran into a decent rain storm that made it hard to drive - when it was raining hard, it was difficult to keep your speed down on the hills so you weren't hydro-planing into a corner, and after the rain stopped, we ended up so high in the hills that we were driving in the clouds, so it was quite foggy.  After about 130km of that, we left the rain behind and it was just overcast for most of the trip.

Upon arrival at Gander, I stopped at a park for lunch, but Gander was under a thunderstorm watch and dark clouds were gathering as we ate, so we ate fast and got into the van quickly.  The clouds all passed around the town, so there ended up not being any rain at that time.

We spent most of the afternoon at the aviation museum in Gander (which is the first and only place so far this trip that has required masks), which had a number of planes outside, including a Catalina that was used as a water bomber.  Inside it had displays and plaques that traced the rise and fall of the Gander airport and ended with a bunch of stuff related to 9/11, when 6700 people were stranded here after their flights were forced to land in Gander.  Gander was, for a short time, a very important airport, as all the trans-Atlantic flights landed here to refuel.  That lasted until the arrival of jet airliners, at which point enough fuel was carried that Gander was bypassed.

The museum had a flight simulator that Evan had read about in the brochure, so I got him setup in that and let him play for his 20 minutes.  I think he had some fun doing that.  We then headed out to a couple of memorials - the first was a memorial to the members of the American 101st Airborne Regiment, who died in 1985 when their plane crashed just after take off.  It was a very nice area, with American flags and a statue of an American soldier and two children (as the troops were on a peacekeeping mission) that is facing towards Kentucky (the home of the 101st).  The second memorial was a Commonwealth cemetery that contained all the kids that died in training accidents at Gander during World War II.  The same gravestones as they use everywhere else (including France).

After that, we drove back to Grand Falls-Windsor (where the Salmonid Interpretive Centre is) and stopped at our hotel.  I walked in, and there was one worker and about 20 people waiting to be served.  After waiting in the car for 15 minutes and then standing in line for 35, we were finally able to get checked in.  Apparently the highway south of here was closed due to a forest fire, so everyone out for the day could not get home and they were all trying to get a hotel room in a fairly small town.

The thunderstorms arrived after we checked in and tried to find a restaurant for supper.  We ended up at an A&W, soaked as we ran in from the van.  After supper, we tried to get unpacked between rain showers, got more wet, but got everything into the hotel.  Tomorrow we head to the ferry and take it back to Nova Scotia, where we will drive to Halifax.