Four Days on Newfoundland's Bonavista Peninsula: Beyond Puffins. RVing Newfoundland with Kids and Teens

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travel dates: July 2023

The Bonavista Peninsula, on Newfoundland’s east coast, seems to fly a bit under the radar, tourism-wise, compared to some of its flashier counterparts. It has plenty of stunning ocean views, but lacks the dramatic peaks of Gros Morne. It doesn’t have the “getaway for the rich and famous” vibe that Fogo enjoys these days. It doesn’t have a biggish city like St. John’s and it’s just far enough away from the capital (around 3 hours) to keep it from making sense as a day trip destination.

We never really considered leaving Bonavista off of our Newfoundland itinerary (because, hello….PUFFINS), but we were a little surprised and very impressed by just how much there was to see there and how much we loved this stop.

Where to Stay

Honestly, this is was the tricky part for us. Picking the right campground for an RV trip to the Bonavista Peninsula is complicated both by the facts that it’s a sprawling place, with the top things to see scattered around the peninsula, and that every campground seems to have some kind of fairly substantial drawback. Such drawbacks, according to reviews we read, range from really terrible roads to get into the campground, to horrifyingly disgusting dump station, to “owner is a creepy racist.” Which drawback to go with?! I don’t do this often, but I’m actually not going to make a recommendation at all for Bonavista. I’ll say that we stayed toward the western side of the peninsula, in a place that was…mostly okay, and that that meant for long drives out east to see the town of Bonavista and puffins. But if we’d stayed elsewhere there would have been long drives to see other things! There is no perfect solution.

My in-laws were with us for this leg of the trip, and they had a lovely little rental house on the northern side of the peninsula, so parking the RV for a few days and renting somewhere is always a possibility as well

One more tip about location: if you find yourself staying on the western side of things and heading out to Bonavista and/or Elliston, you might look at the map and note that there are two east west roads: 235 on the northern side or 230 on the south. You might be tempted to make a big, scenic loop and drive one way on 235 and the other on 230. Don’t do this. Really, I don’t know if the road has been repaved at all since we were there in 2023, but 230 was TERRIBLE. I don’t remember if it was scenic or not (I mean, probably, because it’s Newfoundland), but it was the worst by far of many bad roads that we encountered in Newfoundland. Unrelenting roughness, an hour spent trying and often failing to dodge potholes. We were very relieved on the way home to find that 235 is just a regular bad Newfoundland road rather than an extraordinarily awful one like 230.

Things to Do

The big hits (or at the least the things we made it to) on the Bonavista Peninsula are concentrated in two main areas: the far eastern side where the town of Bonavista and the puffin-viewing site in Elliston are, and the southern side where you’ll find the Skerwink Trail and the town of Trinity. The drive between these two areas is around 45 minutes, and the place where we were staying was around 20 minutes from the Trinity area and an hour from Elliston….so it was a very driving intensive few days. But all the driving is very much worth it! We ended up spending two days out in the Bonavista area and two in the Port Rexton/Trinity area. My only tip for cutting down on driving would be to spend one long day seeing things in Bonavista and the puffins rather than making that drive twice. That kind of thing is tough for us since we travel with our dogs, though; we have a hard limit on how long we can stay gone at a stretch.

Skerwink Trail

Back in 2003, Travel and Leisure named the Skerwink Trail one of the “top 35 walks in North America and Europe” and Newfoundland doesn’t want you to forget it! The trail does live up to the hype, but there are tons of less popular hikes in Newfoundland that are just as amazing. By Newfoundland standards, the Skerwink Trail is very crowded. Which is to say you’ll see a good many other people, but not so many that your own hike will be unpleasant. It’s just not the same mostly solitary experience as with many Newfoundland hikes.

The trail is a 5.3 km loop, and takes you up and down mostly along cliffs overlooking the ocean, with view of sea stacks and, if you’re lucky, whales (we did not see whales). We found a lot of different assessments online about the difficulty of the trail. Newfoundland’s tourism material calls it “moderate to difficult” as does AllTrails, and I think that’s probably right. As fairly regular hikers, we didn’t find the elevation change overly challenging (though there are a lot of, mostly short, steep up and down parts), and the length is pretty reasonable; what makes the trail tricky is that it can get very slippery when it’s wet, and, being in Newfoundland, I imagine it’s usually wet. So my in-laws opted to join us for this hike, and everyone made it fine, but I’m not sure if they’d do it over again or not. We managed to remember a couple of pairs of hiking poles for once, and they were a good idea. You’ll also definitely want shoes with good tread.

The trail is well-maintained and has plenty of gorgeous views.

Port Rexton Brewing Company

We checked out quite a few breweries in Newfoundland, but Port Rexton was our favorite. We ended up going here twice, in fact: once after our Skerwink Trail hike (it’s very close to the trailhead) and another time after going to Trinity. The beer is great, the atmosphere is fun, and there’s a fancy grilled cheese food truck out back so you can grab lunch or dinner here as well as beer.

Trinity

So I suggested earlier that we could probably have spent a little less time in the town of Bonavista (but not less time with the puffins!)…we wished, on the other hand, that we had more time in Trinity. There was a lot more to see here than we really expected. Trinity is a real town–as in, people live there year round and seasonally–but it’s also so full of historical buildings that are open to the public that it functions much like a living history site like Colonial Williamsburg or the like (albeit on a smaller scale). Trinity’s history as a fishing village dates back to the 1700’s, and the assorted buildings plus the Trinity Pageant do a great job of taking you through that long history.

When we arrived mid-morning, there was still plenty of parking in a large central lot in town, but we noticed that it filled up later in the afternoon. We started out at the Trinity Visitor Centre, which has an exhibit about the history of the area:

And that’s where things got a little confusing. We had bought a pass earlier in our trip that was good for admission at all of Newfoundland’s Provincial Historic Sites. Including Trinity. But only parts of Trinity. Our pass was good for admission to the Visitor Centre itself, the Mercantile Premises, and the Hiscock House. But the Trinity Historical Society maintains a number of other buildings in town, and you need a separate admission for those. Or maybe there’s a joint pass to everything you can buy? Only it got complicated because we’d already paid for the provincial pass. “I hate trying to explain it to people,” the woman working at the Visitor Centre told us mournfully. Anyway, we decided to just stick with what was included with our provincial sites pass, but it was a little painful passing by all those other historic buildings and not being able to go in. But also we wouldn’t really have had time for more. Hence…I kind of wish we’d had two days. Or maybe done the Skerwink Trail (which is nearby) one day in the morning and done part of Trinity in the afternoon. ANYWAY.

After the Visitor Centre we walked over to the Mercantile Premises. Half of this building is set up as an 1820’s counting house and the other half as an early 20th century general store. The store half of things had two “shopkeepers” available for questions and information, and we talked to them for a long time both about the store itself and about Newfoundland and the Bonavista Peninsula. At one point Dave asked for restaurant recommendations, which surprised me a little, since we’d already made plans for that day. When I questioned him about it, he admitted sheepishly that he had just wanted to keep the woman talking so he could listen to her accent more.

Next we went to the last building included with our pass, the Hiscock House, where we learned about the fascinating life of Emma Hiscock and how she raised her 6 children on her own after she was widowed in 1893. I appreciated this wallpaper/paint color combination:

But the best part of the Hiscock House is…the hat room! We spent a lot of time trying on hats. Here are too many pictures of us in hats:

And then on to the main event (and the reason we didn’t really have enough time to see everything): the Trinity Pageant! Put on by local theatre company, Rising Tide Theatre, the Trinity Pageant is an outdoor performance that takes the audience all over the town and reenacts events in Trinity history, sometimes in song. Performances happen twice a week all summer, and tickets are $25 for adults, $15 for students, and free for kids 14 and under (as of 2024). We weren’t entirely sure what to expect, but we all loved this and were really impressed with how polished and professional it was. Highly recommend timing your visit to Trinity so that you can take in a performance (Rising Tide does a bunch of other shows throughout the season as well).

Cape Bonavista Lighthouse

We saw a lot of lighthouses on this trip, but I think Cape Bonavista’s was the prettiest of the bunch.

The lighthouse is in the town of Bonavista, so on the eastern edge of the peninsula. There are a number of site and museums there, and we made it several of them. It’s also just a pretty little town, particularly the waterfront

The lighthouse is about a 10 minute drive from the center of town, and the site itself is easy to get to; tour buses go there regularly. We spent a little time walking around outside and admiring the (foggy) views:

And saying hi to the puffins (I talked about this in my puffins post, but there’s a small puffin colony here in addition to the much larger one in Elliston.We found puffin viewing significantly better in Elliston, but you can also find some here in the summers):

The lighthouse is another provincial historic site, so admission was included with our pass (the admission fee just for the lighthouse was $6/person in 2024). There’s an interpretation centre with a small exhibit about the lighthouse, and then you can tour the lighthouse itself.

We thought the tour was really well done here. There are interpreters stationed in various rooms to give you an overview of things, and there were a number of hands-on activities for kids:

Then you can climb the tower for a rare chance to see an original 19th century light:

Ryan Premises National Historic Site

This sprawling historic site, spread out over 5 buildings in the heart of town, tells the story of the rise and fall of cod fishing in Newfoundland, and probably does it more thoroughly than anywhere else we encountered on the island. The site is administered by Parks Canada, so admission here was covered by our Parks Canada pass (without that, admission is $4.50 per adult and free for youths). We started at the orientation centre and then spent a long time in the extensive “Cods, Seals, and Survivors” exhibit hall. So much about fish!

This is John Cabot/Giovanni Caboto, who was the first European to explore the coast of North America since the Vikings; he landed in Newfoundland in 1497, and there are statues of him all over the place. And, you know, likenesses like this, too:

I just looked it up; there are actually only two John Cabot statues in Newfoundland. Anyway.

Also Abe got to pretend to gut a cod for the third time in his life and the second time on this trip:

We also checked out the adjacent Bonavista Museum, which is more generally about the history of the area, and is one of those old school giant jumble of artifacts type of spaces. Abe settled down in the part where you can color maps:

The Matthew Legacy

The Matthew Legacy was our last stop in Bonavista. This a replica of John Cabot’s 1497 ship, only not exactly a replica really because no one’s sure what that one looked like. It was built in the late 90s for the 500th anniversary of the voyage, and it was a really big deal at the time. The Queen came! You can watch a video of it in the museum. But the ship has fallen on hard times now; it’s kept in its winter storage building all the time now because it needs extensive repairs and can’t be out in the open water right now. They’re working on raising money for repairs, but in the meantime you can still go on board…you just can’t see the ship in its natural setting.

Before you get to the actual ship, there’s an exhibit gallery that takes you through the voyage from the perspective of a young boy who was on the ship.

Puffins!

I’m not really going to talk much about puffins again, because I wrote a whole post about them. But anyway, definitely go see puffins!

Root Cellars in Elliston

The other big thing to see in Elliston, aside from puffins, is root cellars. For some reason, Elliston is the “root cellar capital of the world,” with dozens of root cellars built into the hillsides right by the puffin-viewing site.