Corner Brook

It’s been a great trip, but it’s time to go home. We are not the youngsters that we used to be, and 17 days is enough. Can’t believe we did a full six weeks in Australia in 2016!

We can highly recommend this the Holiday Inn Express in Deer Lake. It’s clean and bright and very clean. It’s got a selection of DVDs in the lobby for lending, with both children’s and adult titles. It’s got a huge pool with a slide which we didn’t not explore but it seemed to be a hit with all the kids in the hotel. The breakfast buffet that is included has both hot and cold items and provides little shopping bags for taking items on the road. Taking food away from the breakfast area is highly discouraged at a lot of hotels that we have been at. The hotel has guest laundry.

The hotel is located less than 10 minutes from the airport and checkout is at 11:00 a.m., so it’s ideal for us with our 12:55 p.m. flight.

Our Air Canada flight has been delayed by two hours. I hustled down to Reception and asked for a late checkout which the kind lady gave us. We can leave as late as 2:00 p.m. Not sure if our membership in IHG (the chain of hotels of which Holiday Inn is a member) helped, but we got what we needed. If the flight goes as planned, we’ll be out by 1:00 p.m.

Well, that didn’t happen. The flight got delayed until 4:30 p.m. We didn’t feel like sitting in a hotel room on a nice day for hours and hours, so we packed up quickly, checked out and went to Corner Brook. It’s about a 40-minute drive south along the Trans Canada Highway. It’s a pretty drive with Deer Lake (the body of water) along one side and then soaring mountains flanking both sides of the road. Felt as if we had driven to the Rockies!

We found the Margaret Bowater Park in Corner Brook. It’s a lovely setting with Corner Brook (the body of water) flowing through it into a pond where ducks and swans were swimming. We did one of the walking trails (thought we were done with walking, but no….) and then had lunch in the warm sunshine. We still had time to use up, so we did another trail that looped all the way around the pond. It’s an easy, well-maintained trail if you’re ever in Corner Brook. Then we headed to the airport. Time to head home.

We each got a $15 food voucher to use any time within the next year as compensation for the late flight. There is not much to choose from in the departures zone of the Deer Lake airport. My cholesterol and blood sugar levels both took a hit.

We got home safe and sound about 7:30 p.m. after a fairly smooth flight. It's a lot warmer here than in Newfoundland. These temperatures would make the province grind to a halt.

We flew into St. John’s and are flying out of Deer Lake because Doug does not do well on boats, so neither the ferry from North Sydney, N.S. into Port aux Basques at the southwest tip of the island (7-hour trip) or into Argentia about 1.5 hours southwest of St. John’s (16-hour trip) was out of the question. We absorbed a fee for picking up the car in one location and dropping it in another, but we felt it was worth it rather than driving across the province again (6-7 hours drive).Read more