Island Hopping: Twillingate & Fogo, NL

From Gros Morne on the west coast we had a big move over to the Twillingate Islands, connected by short bridges and causeways off the north coast of Newfoundland. Twillingate is part of NL’s Iceberg Alley and calls itself the iceberg capital of the world. When we planned the timing of this trip, we prioritized having good weather instead of seeing icebergs, and while we are enjoying all the hiking we’re able to do in good weather, we are also having some major iceberg FOMO so we may have to come back one day.

We boondocked at an abandoned campground at Sleepy Cove, on the northern tip of North Twillingate Island and the views were absolutely amazing. Some of the best we’ve ever had!

Besides icebergs, Twillingate is also a great place to see whales. We saw dozens of humpbacks from inside our rig and from shore every day. It was truly one of the most beautiful and magical places we’ve ever stayed.

The abandoned campground was also surrounded by the Rockcut hiking trails, a trail system managed by the town of Twillingate and known to be some of the best in the province. The trails were just steps from our door and gave us a great place to walk during the week.

On Friday night we “had a time” at the Twillingate-New World Island Dinner Theatre. Newfoundlanders love to tell stories about their province’s history and culture, play traditional music, and joke around. They are known for their shed parties, similar to the kitchen parties on Cape Breton Island. You can find dinner theaters and live music/shows that are on repeat all season long in multiple venues in every small town we’ve visited so far. Several people recommended this one in Twillingate and it was a lot of fun.

After a yummy dinner, the same people who served the food went up on stage to perform the half music/half skit comedy show, and it was awesome! The homemade percussion instrument wearing a rain boot is called an ugly stick.

Interestingly, most of the people there were Newfoundlanders. As visitors, we really learned a lot about NL from the show and also from the couple at our table from Bonavista, NL.

It rained most of Saturday but we still went for a hike on some Rockcut trails on the other side of the island to Spillers Cove and French Beach.

The next morning we left very early to visit the town’s free dump station and potable water spigot and get ourselves in line for the first come first serve ferry to Fogo Island. We were thankful for calm seas and that no logs fell off that truck next to us.

If you’ve heard of Fogo Island its probably because of the Fogo Island Inn, a famous hotel that was only $3500 CAD/night while we were on the island.

We stayed at the Brimstone Head RV Park, which was also great!

That afternoon we hiked the Lion’s Den trail, one of our favorites of this year’s travels.

Like Twillingate, our Fogo campsite was surrounded by a couple of short but amazing trails. On one side was Brimstone Head, which according to this sign is one of the four corners of the flat earth. I don’t know what this refers to but I’m surprised that we’ve been to 2 of the 4 corners. Hydra, Greece and Fogo, NL are now checked off, with the Bermuda Triangle and Papua New Guinea still to go!

On the other side we had the Fogo Head trail with these stunning views.

The last we hike we did was Joe Batt’s Arm trail. This trail had one of the artist studios that the island is known for well as a statue of the Great Auk, a flightless North Atlantic bird hunted to extinction.

This week was Michael’s birthday week and we celebrated twice! We figured that the fancy hotel visitors could support some decent restaurants on the island and wanted to try a couple. Bang Belly was the first choice, but since it was closed on his actual birthday, we went Storehouse instead. And then decided to go to Bang Belly later in the week, followed by ice cream from Growlers. Everything we had was fantastic!

These two stops were quite far off the main highway with some unknown road, campsite, and ferry conditions for our 5th wheel. But we loved both and they were worth the extra effort.