travel dates: July 2023
Remember when I dramatically announced that I was writing my very last Newfoundland post?
Yeah, so then I realized that I totally skipped poor Twillingate.
We went to Twillingate right after Fogo Island, but apparently I was so eager to talk about St. John’s that I just completely forgot to blog about it. Oops!
Twillingate is a little town on the north central coast of Newfoundland known for great iceberg viewing and whale watching. It’s only about an hour’s drive from the Fogo ferry terminal in Farewell, and I found people pitting the two destinations against each other more than once when I was researching Newfoundland. My advice: go to both. That said, Fogo would be my personal pick if I could only do one. But our time in Fogo was pretty much unmitigated magic, whereas our Twillingate visit was marred by mosquitos and rain. So, of course, your mileage may vary.
Where We Stayed: Dildo Run Provincial Park
Dildo Run Provincial Park was our pick for a Twillingate base camp. Yes, I know the name is funny. You might have heard of the town of Dildo, Newfoundland, perhaps because of Jimmy Kimmel’s segments about it on his show. This is not that town, and the two places are, in fact, a four hour drive apart. Fun fact: I once had a long, drawn out fight with Chat GPT about this and finally emerged victorious.
As far as I can tell, the only two options for RV camping near Twillingate are Dildo Run and Peyton’s Woods. Peyton’s Woods is right in town, whereas as Dildo Run is about a 20 minute drive away (but it’s on the way into Twillingate, which means it will save you some driving time when you leave the area). Both have good reviews, though Dildo Run seems to be the more the universally beloved. We opted for Dildo Run mostly because the sites looked tight at Peyton’s Woods and this time we went with great site over location. We don’t always.
We loved most of the things about Dildo Run. The giant, wooded sites, the water views. The laundry and bathroom facilities were…utilitarian, but fine. The price is great (we paid around $30/night US for a w/e site).
The thing(s) we didn’t love was…mosquitos. So many mosquitos! They kept us from taking full advantage of our very lovely site or from checking out the reportedly also very lovely trails in the park. So…this was the downside of hanging out in the woods. Mosquitos weren’t a huge problem for most of our time in Newfoundland, but they were when we got away from the ocean and into the woods. I wish we had been more prepared for them so we wouldn’t have needed to hide in the trailer so much.
But anyway! The park has 55 sites (all w/e I believe) and most of them are suitable for larger RVs. We were there over Canada Day, so it was packed, and there were lots of tent campers as well as RVers. We had site 36, which was a pretty great one. It was very easy to back into because it was right in a curve in the road, and it was about as close as we could get to the laundry and bathhouse. Location is a big deal, because this is a very spread out campground; you could end up walking a long, long way to the bathhouse if you don’t pick your site well.
So pretty! So buggy!
There’s no wifi except right at the entrance, which was about a half mile walk from our site. And very little cell service; we could sort of get a signal if we stood in exactly the right spot in the trailer.
What we did:
Check in at Dildo Run wasn’t until 3, so we made a stop on the way at the Beothuk Interpretation Centre. The Beothuks were a group of indigenous people in central Newfoundland whose culture disappeared in the years after European settlement, and the interpretive center details what we know about their culture and history (and what we don’t know).
It made for a great stop, both because it’s a well-done site that tells a fascinating story, and because it was on the way from Fogo to Twillingate and had room for our trailer in the parking lot! (my notes tell me that a larger RV might have some trouble fitting, but could probably manage it. I think the potential trouble would be more in making the turn to get out than in fitting in the actual parking spot):
This is one of the Provincial Historic Sites and where we bought a season pass to get us into all of the sites. It required some math and foresight to determine if this was a good deal or not, and I think in the end we barely broke even. At any rate, one time admission is $6 for adults/free for kids under 17.
We ate lunch in the trailer and left the dogs to hang out there while we checked out the indoor exhibits and watched the film.
Then we grabbed the dogs to explore the outdoor areas, including a trail out to the site of the archaeological dig.
There’s not a lot to see at the dig site these days:
We made the steep drive up to the interestingly-shaped Long Point Lighthouse twice: once the night we arrived in Twillingate just to look at it and the surrounding area from the outside and then again the next day to check out the exhibits inside and climb up to the tower.
Outside there are a number of somewhat intense looking hiking trails (as you’ll see, we didn’t do a very good job taking advantage of Twillingate’s many trails) and, when we were there, great iceberg spotting:
Inside, the older kids got a little fixated reading the old logbooks from the lighthouse keepers, and we climbed up the tower.
We also checked out the Isles Wooden Boat Builders museum next (there are a number of small museums in Twillingate; we couldn’t make it to all of them). Dave loved this place! The exhibits go into a whole lot of detail about the history and construction of wooden boats, but the part Dave got really into is that they also have someone on site actually building a boat. My understanding is that they are pretty much always building one and then they raffle it off when they’re finished and…start on another.
Fun fact (so many fun facts in this post!): I just almost linked to the wrong wooden boat museum, because apparently there are at least two in Newfoundland. I don’t know anything about the other one; probably Dave would love it, too!
Anyway, Dave spent a whole lot of time listening to this guy talk about building boats and asking him questions about it (recall that, in addition to woodworking, Dave really enjoys Newfoundland accents):
The rest of us spent some time with the exhibits, which included a few hands-on activities:
…but we didn’t really need as much time here as Dave did:
Okay! So I know the sky looks absolutely lovely in that picture of Milo and Gus up there. But, sadly, the rain rolled in pretty much exactly when we finally got around to trying to go for a hike.
There are tons of hiking trails in and around Twillingate, but for some reason we had a lot of trouble settling on one that seemed manageable and accessible. The first one we were thinking of was, I’m pretty sure, Spencer’s Park Trail, which promised “beach access and lava formations” all in a moderate, 1 km hike. That sounded good!
But then we asked one of the guys working at the lighthouse about it, and he seemed surprised. “Do you want to go there?” he asked then added doubtfully, “well…it’s very scenic…” He finally decided we could “probably” make it to the trail because it hadn’t rained lately. This was enough to dissuade me, but Dave thought we should give it a try. We went off in search of the trailhead (with, mind you, rain very much in the forecast), but eventually encountered a very steep gravel road and turned around before we made it.
Next up we decided to try French Beach, a 6 km trail that was supposed to take us to “rugged coastline.” We love rugged coastline! That’s why we were in Newfoundland! After some trouble, we finally located the trailhead, and started off on the very promising looking trail.
Then it started raining. And thundering. So we didn’t make it very far. Next time, Twillingate–we will actually hike in you! Every time I look at the pictures from that aborted hike, I’m sad that we didn’t get to actually do it.
Also we ate at restaurants! Our first night we went to Sansome’s Seafood Restaurant, just about 10 minutes away from Dildo Run. This was a recommendation that we collected way back in Grand Falls-Windsor, from the guy working at the Salmonid Interpretation Centre. We never would have found this place on our own; it involves driving on some fairy steep backroads and through residential areas. The food was good, and the setting was really lovely: right on the water with great iceberg viewing. It was not the most vegetarian-friendly place, however…pretty much fish, fish, and more fish. Poor August ate French fries, a baked potato, and cole slaw. This was the first and only place where I tried a famous Iceberg beer from Quidi Vidi Brewing Company…which they claim to make with water from actual icebergs.
Oh–parking is super tight here, particularly if you have a big ol’ van. It’s a really popular place (again, this was Canada Day eve), so try to arrive early if you want to find a parking spot and avoid a long wait for a table.
And, finally, we enjoyed a Canada Day dinner at Split Rock Brewing Company, right in town in Twillingate. They have a food menu in addition to beer, and I enjoyed a rare chance to buy non-breaded wings in eastern Canada. They also had a band playing traditional Canada Day music, like…a lot of Johnny Cash. And then, my notes indicate, we went back to the campground to do Canada Day laundry!
There you go, Twillingate: I forgot about you but I made up for it with a 1700+ word post!
And now I’m REALLY all finished with Newfoundland!
2023 Newfoundland Trip Posts
Visiting Newfoundland: Overview and General Thoughts
Grand Codroy RV Park and Codroy Valley
Water’s Edge RV Park in Gros Morne
Gros Morne National Park: South
Port Au Choix and the Great Northern Peninsula
Gros Morne National Park: North
Sanger Memorial RV Park/Grand Falls-Windsor
Fogo Island/Brimstone Head RV Park
Twillingate and Dildo Run Provincial Park
Pippy Park, St. John’s Campground Review
Four Days on the Bonavista Peninsula
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