After two and half weeks, we're sad to say that it's time to leave the beautiful island of Newfoundland. The last couple days were filled with more fun memories made in the house where we spent much of that time. It has a three-story glass view out the back windows.
Very early on our last morning, Mark saw a fox in the yard on the other side of those glass windows.
Mark didn't have a zoom lens, just his cell phone to record this close-up encounter.
At first, Mark thought the fox was eating an apple beside the plate glass window. Later we would find the remains of the red rubber ball that was masquerading as an apple.
This was also the same day that Alexia baked a home-made peach pie. Even with all our hiking, her good cooking has meant that we have gained weight on this vacation.
On our last day we had to stop off at a medical clinic to get our Covid test before our flight back into the United States. While Canada required the longer molecular Covid test, the United States will accept the faster test for our return trip. We had our negative Covid results within 15 minutes. We used this information to complete the pre-flight questionnaire, but no one ever asked to see our official test results when we went through customs to enter the United States.
Even though we didn't have to wear masks when we first arrived, we have to wear them now. That's because a recent outbreak of Covid has led to reinstating mandatory masks inside public buildings. That means that our school-age relatives are also having to wear masks all day at school. While the entire island had only 7 Covid deaths since the beginning of the pandemic a year and a half ago, we heard of two more deaths while we were visiting. (As we write this blog, we see that the number of Covid deaths in Newfoundland is now 17. There were nine in the first month after the border opened and activities started again.) While most of the Newfoundlanders are now vaccinated, they have no "herd-immunity" since the herd has been locked down for the last year and a half.
It was very dark at 4 a.m. when Alexia drove us to the airport. It's a 15-minute drive from their house, and we appreciated her getting up at that crazy hour to get us to our airplane on time. We were in the air by sun rise. Because we are flying straight west, we got to enjoy the sunrise for a very long time out our airplane window seat.
We have three flights today, but we won't have to spend the night between them this time. We even got to sit in business class for one of those flights. We feel pretty fancy sitting in those wide seats at the front of the plane!
We even got breakfast on that flight. We remember when even coach passengers got food, but this was more formal with cloth napkins and real glasses and plates.
The catering company didn't deliver enough breakfast meals, so we got one lunch and one breakfast. We have to say that the breakfast was much better than the lunch. It was a little scary eating the raw salmon lunch entree this early in the morning.
We changed planes in Montreal, Canada, and again in Chicago, before we touched down on the final flight in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mark's brother and sister-in-law were there to greet us and deliver our pickup. We'll need it as we are heading right away to Oklahoma City for an important race. After saying good-bye to Newfoundland, we're saying hello to more adventures down the road.
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