Tuesday we had a short travel day…only about 120 miles so we didn’t really get going on departure preparations until 0830…which saw us pulling out of Pine Hills RV shortly before 1000 for the trip. We had an easy time early…heading back down to the Confederation Bridge back to the mainland…where we paid a toll of $71 for the rig and  $47 for the car to get back across the 12 km long bridge. Once across we continued on NS-16, then NS-15 and NS-11 until we got off the exit to Richibucto with fine roads all that part. Once off the highway…it got a little dicier for the leg down NS-505…it was a bit bumpy as it had a lot of patches on the roadway but overall it wasn’t too bad and it was only the last 10 km or so before we turned onto the beach road Cap Lumiere for the last km or so until we arrived at Camping Cap Luminaire for a 5 night stay. Again…as we were in Cow Head NL…we’re right across from the beach although this time instead of overlooking the harbor the view is straight out into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. There’s a bluff about 40 or 50 feet high down to the beach and it’s a sandy beach for a change so hopefully we’ll be able to get out there one morning so Connie can catch a couple of rays.

The closest civilization is Richibucto Village…which has like 12 people in it I think…with the next closest being Richibucto itself…at least the latter is big enough for traffic lights, grocery stores, and a few more amenities that we might go take advantage of. Luckily…we knew ahead of time that we would be out on in the near boonies so we brought enough beer and groceries to make it.

We quickly got settled into site 37… a nice level grass pull through site…and after lunch went about our setup chores. Neil had found and corrected a slight problem with our water supply shortly before we left PEI…although we had good pressure and flow at the spigot the inside flow and pressure were lacking…they started off when you turned the faucet on at poor and got worse from there as the pressure in the system bled off…there was a flow restriction somewhere. We have a dual water filter setup outside…first is a sediment filter that gets changed on a 3 month basis and second is a charcoal filter that’s normally a 6 month change. He had changed the sediment filter shortly after we arrived at PEI…which improved the situation just slightly…and it was about due anyway…but hadn’t done the charcoal one as the sediment one while looking like it was time to be changed wasn’t really that bad. But with the continued lack of pressure and flow he started at the spigot and connected one thing at a time checking flow to see what might be up.

Regulator on spigot only…good. Added hose to filter…good. Connected filter and checked filter output…no good so he says to himself “there’s the problem.” Since he had already changed the sediment filter he temporarily removed the second filter and it’s canister and checked flow…good. So it was something with the second charcoal filter. It looked fine and there was nothing else in the canister or head to cause an issue so he replaced the charcoal filter, screwed the canister on and checked again…filter output good. He skipped the hose to the softener and softener and checked the final hose output where it connects to the rig…good so problem is solved. Hooked back up and voila…pressure and flow inside restored. He still needs to back flush and regenerate the conditioner as they’re due August 1…but will leave that until next week when we’re on city water instead of well water…well water is fine for doing the job but he feels better about the extra usage for the operation when we’re on city water instead of a more limited flow/capacity well system. From an engineering standpoint doing it on a large well system like a campground has would most likely be perfectly fine…but it just seems more courteous to wait to him.

We didn’t do anything the remainder of the travel day…took a nap and had leftover pasta casserole for dinner…although we did walk down and look at the beach.

Wednesday we drove into Richibucto and went to the visitor center then drove out to Kouchibouguac (pronounced coochee-boog-wack) National Park Visitor Center to check the lay of the land…Connie found a hike we’ll probably take later in the week and a soap making operation and beach boardwalk we’ll check out as well. We then sat outside under the awning in our recliners with a cold drink and our iPads most of the afternoon…it was quite pleasant in the shade with the breeze blowing…before heading inside for leftover grilled chicken, stuffing, freshly baked garlic knot rolls, and grilled green beans for dinner.

Wednesday…it rained in the morning as scheduled…so after coffee Neil made us a nice open faced bacon and fried egg sandwich for breakfast then chilled out…we had mostly planned this week as rest period anyway with another a whole lot of Fun Stuff© scheduled…we’ve been at it pretty steadily since we got into Newfoundland and a few days doin’ nuttin’ seemed like a great idea to us. Of course…we’re doing pretty much the same thing next week although she does have a few more things scheduled…but nothing really strenuous at all, sunrise at the lighthouse, sunset at the mountain…Happy Hour on the veranda at the beach bar…really hard stuff like that ya know.

Neil grabbed a few photos around the campground…used only his iPhone today.

A couple of views of our site 37…the first was taken with a new iPhone camera app he’s trying out named Obscura 2 and the second with the stock iPhone camera app…he needs to read the manual on Obscura and figger out ‘xactly how it works…as the sky in the second one is much more true to what it looks like this morning.

It had stopped raining by the time he went out there…but the clouds haven’t broken up and were still providing a pretty dramatic background. You can see in the last one out on the horizon how the overcast is. beginning to clear and turn into a blue sky day.

A shot of the still operational Cap Luminaire Light…it’s right opposite the campground entrance and marks Cap (or Cape) Luminaire.

The private beach owned by the campground and the tiny harbor here at Cap Luminaire.

In the afternoon…we headed off for a couple of activities. First up was a visit to the Olivier Soapery…which makes hand made cold process soap. Basically you melt some fat…they use a combination of olive oil, cocoa butter, and beeswax which makes the resulting soap last longer…and melt it. Then they add a solution of sodium hydroxide mixed with dye and it undergoes a chemical reaction with the oil making soap. They also add essential oils or fragrance oil…the difference being whether they’re naturally produced or artificially produced in a chemical process…and then pour it into molds. We watched a demonstration of soap making and then Connie…naturally…bought some.

Next up was the Richibucto River Winery…we had a nice tasting…and again naturally…Connie picked out 8 bottles to take with us…strangely enough Neil will naturally help drink it. They were only about $150 Canadian or a little over $110 US which for 8 bottles of wine including 3 bottles of the expensive fortified wine…it would be Port except it’s not made in Portugal so they can’t call it Port. 

After the winery…we headed home where Neil made a gourmet meal…it was warm so he cooked it outside on the camp stove…pork cutlets with lemon, garlic, wine, and caper sauce…mashed taters with roasted garlic, butter, and Parmesan cheese, corn casserole with shallots, cheese, and green chiles, and the remainder of the bottle of Clos Du Bois Chardonnay wine that we opened to make the sauce on the pork. All was amazingly good…we ate outside as it was still warm. We’ve had the windows open but it was in the lower 80s this afternoon…so we turned the A/C units on for a couple of hours to suck out some of the residual afternoon heat.

More Fun Stuff© is scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday…I will report on that later.

Interesting things found on the net this week.

Typical progressive/liberal idea here…let’s ban plastic straws because they’re single use and bad for the environment…then let’s individually wrap our bio-degradable paper straws in plastic that will get tossed into the same place the plastic straws that were banned used to get tossed. Yeah…that’ll help.

Spoken by a person who knows the true value of alcohol.

How does one get elected as a Senator without passing basic high school civics and understanding the definition of the word treason.

No Senator Dumb Ass from Oregon…but maybe being from Oregon is indicative of something…here’s the definition of treason…and it ain’t your sore loser BS.

The truth about this whole collusion thing…is actually pretty simple…despite both the President’s continual tweeting about the “rigged special prosecutor” and the other side’s defending the righteousness of Mr. Mueller and his charge…all of that is primarily a bunch of political BEP (bovine end product as I’ve mentioned before).

First off…the sole idea behind any political campaign…especially these days…is to win the election…and it’s been proven far too often that mud slinging works. Sure…Trump did it…but so did Ms. Clinton…and while two wrongs definitely don’t make a right…handicapping yourself and handing the election to the other side is political suicide.

Second…and let’s look at this from the other countries point of view…I’m sure that from as the Russian government sees it they have a preference who wins our election…just like we have a preference who wins theirs. And while Russians don’t get to vote in our elections…as Americans don’t get to vote in theirs…in any political process it’s certainly not illegal for anybody to advocate for the candidate they prefer. While it is illegal under US campaign and election law to disguise funding sources for political action committees promoting a specific candidate as opposed to general committees promoting any particular agenda…those groups doing the latter are subject to the same limits, requirements, and scrutinies as the former groups are. All politicians have PACs that both support them directly and those that support particular agendas and hence have fewer legal requirements…and all politicians and their political professional operators understand the laws…and pretty much all of them bend the requirements and go right up to the line of legality…I’m not justifying that, just recognizing that politicians are first and foremost self serving scum.

Finally…and most important…not a damn bit of any of that actually fricking matters…the only thing that matters is votes cast on Election Day. It doesn’t matter if the Russians wanted Mr. Trump to win or if the any other country wanted Ms. Clinton to win. What matters is the number of votes…and unless Mr. Mueller and his supporters on the left have some proof that the Russian government actually interfered with and changed the vote totals…then all this talk about collusion is primarily a case of sore loser griping…just like it was primarily a case of sore loser griping when President Obama won election and reelection with all the BEP the other side said about him.

Sorry ‘bout the rathole…I started just to call out the idiocy of Senator Dumb Ass.

And finally…Neil really likes this one.

Cyas.