Wednesday, July 29, 2009
St Johns
Our time at St John’s went so fast we had to reup for another week. It is about an hour trip into town from our campsite in Clarke’s Beach, the first day we visited Signal hill and Cape Spear. Cape Spear is the Eastern most point in North America; sure there is a light house there with a lot of history.. On Dec 12 1901, Marconi received the first wireless signal from across the ocean at Signal Hill. The hill has been used to signal the townspeople of ships coming into the harbour, each merchant would know which ship Our week at St Johns went by so quickly with so much to see we decided to reup for was coming by the flag that was displayed on Signal hill. They then would go out to meet the ship and gather their wares. Canons were also fired to announce 12 noon, much to the dismay of ministers on Sundays as they claimed the noise distracted the parishioners.
American soldiers established a barracks there in WW2, to look out for German Submarines. A Newfoundland ferry was blown up during the war.
Next we toured the Marine center which is part of the University of Newfoundland. This center teaches everything you need to know about ships and navigation. Because of this years 100 year anniversary of Perry’s reaching the north pole, there is a special exhibit there to honor Bob Bartlett, a native son of Brigus Newfoundland who was the captain of Perry’s expedition. We were treated to a play and a trip in a simulator that took us to the north seas on the Roosevelt with Captain Bob and Perry. While standing on the bridge we could feel the rocking and rolling of the ship and feel when she crushed the ice and bumped the icebergs. We could see the shore and life in those times. It was a special treat! The school has many other simulators for students to use to practice navigation on the high seas.
Brigus is just about 4 miles from our campsite and we went there for the arrival of the schooner Bowdoin. It was sailed in by students of the Maine Maritime Academy, and will be visiting 11 other ports to celebrate the 1909 exploration of the North Pole. We spent the afternoon listening to local bands and doing a walking tour of Brigus.
On the weekend we played washers and swinging golf balls with the other campers. They are a wonderful bunch of people and have made us feel so welcome, bringing us homemade wine and homemade pie.
The Rooms, is a new museum in St Johns that has panoramic views of the city and Harbour. There was a wonderful exhibit on Dr Wilfred Grenfell a doctor who came to Newfoundland Labrador in the late 19th and early 20th century’s and helped the people, providing medical care and he formed the international Grenfell Association to improve the lives of the people by teaching them crafts, and self sufficiency in agriculture. We’ve seen his name on buildings and it was nice to learn more about him.
We revisited Brigus to tour Bob Bartletts boyhood home, Hawthorn Cottage, his sisters lived there until the 1970s, and ran a tea room in town. When he left Brigus, he lived aboard his ship, skippering more than 40 voyages to the far north.
We also visited a telegraph cable company just several miles from out camp at Hearts Content. Trans Atlantic cable came to land here in 1866, from Valentia Ireland. Western Union operated from here until the mid 70s.
We were able to spot a few whales from shore at several places but we never did see the caplin, a small fish that comes to shore and the people go out and get them with buckets, when they are “in” the whale follow as well as puffins.
On our way back across the rock we stopped at Grand Falls Windsor for 1 night, then on to Corner Brook where we just happened to meet up with the Airstream caravan. We knew 3 people on it, one was on our Baja Caravan earlier this year and the Chellmans from TR.
We also drove to Cox’s cove to visit Paulette and Mike who we met at Clarke’s Beach. They were fishing for cod, and were cleaning them when we arrived. They wanted to take us out but it started to rain and the forecast for Sun was not good either. We had a nice visit with them and Paulettes sister and Brother in law who both work for a mink farm nearby.
Sunday we ate at the Glenmill Inn in Corner Brook, then drove to Big Falls and were so lucky to see lots of salmon jumping the falls, I just wanted to help them they just kept trying!
It is Tue the 28 of July and we are sitting in a large lot at Port au Basque waiting for a ferry to Nova Scotia. The ferry was to depart at 1:30 pm and we were told when we pulled in at 11:30am that it would be a bit late and we would be leaving around 8pm. We are lucky to have our home with us! There is a nice terminal with a cafeteria, a gift shop and lounge showing movies, just across the lot. Well we were off by 8:30pm, a long day! We started to drive onboard at 7:30 and the joker was on by 9pm. There was entertainment in our lounge, a singer with a keyboard singing Newfoundland songs, he was pretty good. The ship MV ATLANTIC VISION can take 800 persons and 531 cars, with births for 662. We made the 100 mile trip in about 4 hours, but had to wait for another ship to leave the dock before we could go in. About 1am we pulled into the shopping mall in North Sydney for some much needed sleep
Bye for now, Lois
American soldiers established a barracks there in WW2, to look out for German Submarines. A Newfoundland ferry was blown up during the war.
Next we toured the Marine center which is part of the University of Newfoundland. This center teaches everything you need to know about ships and navigation. Because of this years 100 year anniversary of Perry’s reaching the north pole, there is a special exhibit there to honor Bob Bartlett, a native son of Brigus Newfoundland who was the captain of Perry’s expedition. We were treated to a play and a trip in a simulator that took us to the north seas on the Roosevelt with Captain Bob and Perry. While standing on the bridge we could feel the rocking and rolling of the ship and feel when she crushed the ice and bumped the icebergs. We could see the shore and life in those times. It was a special treat! The school has many other simulators for students to use to practice navigation on the high seas.
Brigus is just about 4 miles from our campsite and we went there for the arrival of the schooner Bowdoin. It was sailed in by students of the Maine Maritime Academy, and will be visiting 11 other ports to celebrate the 1909 exploration of the North Pole. We spent the afternoon listening to local bands and doing a walking tour of Brigus.
On the weekend we played washers and swinging golf balls with the other campers. They are a wonderful bunch of people and have made us feel so welcome, bringing us homemade wine and homemade pie.
The Rooms, is a new museum in St Johns that has panoramic views of the city and Harbour. There was a wonderful exhibit on Dr Wilfred Grenfell a doctor who came to Newfoundland Labrador in the late 19th and early 20th century’s and helped the people, providing medical care and he formed the international Grenfell Association to improve the lives of the people by teaching them crafts, and self sufficiency in agriculture. We’ve seen his name on buildings and it was nice to learn more about him.
We revisited Brigus to tour Bob Bartletts boyhood home, Hawthorn Cottage, his sisters lived there until the 1970s, and ran a tea room in town. When he left Brigus, he lived aboard his ship, skippering more than 40 voyages to the far north.
We also visited a telegraph cable company just several miles from out camp at Hearts Content. Trans Atlantic cable came to land here in 1866, from Valentia Ireland. Western Union operated from here until the mid 70s.
We were able to spot a few whales from shore at several places but we never did see the caplin, a small fish that comes to shore and the people go out and get them with buckets, when they are “in” the whale follow as well as puffins.
On our way back across the rock we stopped at Grand Falls Windsor for 1 night, then on to Corner Brook where we just happened to meet up with the Airstream caravan. We knew 3 people on it, one was on our Baja Caravan earlier this year and the Chellmans from TR.
We also drove to Cox’s cove to visit Paulette and Mike who we met at Clarke’s Beach. They were fishing for cod, and were cleaning them when we arrived. They wanted to take us out but it started to rain and the forecast for Sun was not good either. We had a nice visit with them and Paulettes sister and Brother in law who both work for a mink farm nearby.
Sunday we ate at the Glenmill Inn in Corner Brook, then drove to Big Falls and were so lucky to see lots of salmon jumping the falls, I just wanted to help them they just kept trying!
It is Tue the 28 of July and we are sitting in a large lot at Port au Basque waiting for a ferry to Nova Scotia. The ferry was to depart at 1:30 pm and we were told when we pulled in at 11:30am that it would be a bit late and we would be leaving around 8pm. We are lucky to have our home with us! There is a nice terminal with a cafeteria, a gift shop and lounge showing movies, just across the lot. Well we were off by 8:30pm, a long day! We started to drive onboard at 7:30 and the joker was on by 9pm. There was entertainment in our lounge, a singer with a keyboard singing Newfoundland songs, he was pretty good. The ship MV ATLANTIC VISION can take 800 persons and 531 cars, with births for 662. We made the 100 mile trip in about 4 hours, but had to wait for another ship to leave the dock before we could go in. About 1am we pulled into the shopping mall in North Sydney for some much needed sleep
Bye for now, Lois
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Twillingate to Clarke's Beach
We spent the rest of the morning taking pictures from different vantage points and collecting 10,000 year old ice. We had some in our drinks and it does last twice as long!
From Twillingate it was off to the Bonavista Peninsula, taking the long way around routes 330-320 to Gambo and hwy #1 on to Clarenville our base to tour the peninsula. Kay and Frank had left us to gather their mail at Gander and had gone to Lockston Provincial Park halfway up the peninsula. Our first day we went to a very old fishing village called Trinity and took a tour with the local theater company. They led us around town performing little pieces of history at each site. It was a great way to see Trinity. We also visited the filming site of Random Passage which was a TV series around 2001. I don’t remember seeing it but I hope to see it some time soon. Day 2 we headed straight to Elliston which is the best place to see Puffins from land. What a wonderful place! The Puffins cooperated perfectly and I got some great shots. We stopped at the visitors’ center first and I bought a picture of a puffin because I thought I’d never get one that close BUT I DID. It must have been good luck to buy that picture. We both could have stayed there all day, but there was much more to see. There was even an iceberg just out from the puffins. Elliston is the root cellar capitol of Newfoundland and we drove around checking all of them out. Root cellars kept the early people alive because the cellar could keep the potatoes, carrots, turnips, and cabbage through the winter, before refrigeration, and the fishermen needed these provisions come spring to take on their boats when they went to sea for long periods of time. One of their favorite Newfoundland dishes is a Jiggs dinner, which is a boiled dinner with salt pork, and these veggies. We tried one at Elliston and it was delicious. See pictures. We went on to Bonavista where we visited the replica of John Cabot’s ship and the Cape Bonavista lighthouse. There is a Provincial park near there to display the Dungeons, two sunken sea caves where the water rushes in through the caves. We spoke to a young lady (about Jens age) who told us her parents are from the area, and the big thing to do when they were dating was to come out and drive in a circle around the caves. SCARY! Now that can’t be done because there is a wooden viewing deck on the one side. If this were in the states it would have a chain link fence around it and probably a charge to see it! Along the road in there were cows, horses, and sheep grazing next to the ocean cliffs, how picturesque!
Our last day we took road trips on two roads 205 and 204. We stopped to take a picture at another beautiful inlet and I mentioned to a man watering his flowers what a beautiful spot he had. He started talking and kept it up for at least a half hour. He was old enough to remember things before confederation with Canada and was lamenting the changes it made. He said Newfoundland was self sufficient before 1949 and after joining Canada the big stores came and put everybody out of business. He was a boat builder and had several large boats there he had built. He used to go to Florida and the Bahamas for the winter but not any more. He also told us several years ago the power was so bad, on this road, with surges, that every house burned, and that’s why all the homes were new. They have since replaced the lines. On out the road we pulled into a fishery to view another iceberg and a friendly worker stopped his work to talk to us about the cod industry. He claimed “there are lots of cod in the bay and them fellers sittin behind those desks makin laws just don’t know how it is”
We left around 2 and caught up with Kay and Frank at Mountain View Park in Clarks Beach. I think we’ll call this home for a week as it is close enough to see most of the Avalon Peninsula, and the St Johns area.
Bye for now
Lois
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Twillingate
It is a 1 ½ hour ferry ride across the strait of Belle Isle from St Barbe to Blanc Sablon Quebec. We camped 3 nights in the campground at the ferry, not much of a campground but we had electric and a nice building with showers and a room to play joker. The fisherman here still hunt seal and there is an economuseum where you can watch workers making sealskin products that are for sale there, boots gloves and purses. We also saw the church at Flowers Cove that was built from the selling of sealskin boots. The seal eat the fish but the industry is way down now as there is no longer a great demand for the products, we were told now a sealskin can go for $7, but the products at the museum here bring good prices. There is much hand work that goes into them.
It was very foggy for our crossing and we couldn’t see anything in the water.. Friday was the only day that you could cross and come back on the same day so we were pretty much forced to go in the fog. The fog cleared for our return trip and we had a very nice day. The towns along the coast are very small. A beautiful light house “Port Amour” is there to light the Strait of Belle Isle. These Lights provided a shorter steamship route between Canada and Europe. These are dangerous waters and a lot of shipwrecks have been seen by the lightkeeper. The keeper of the light made a good living here and had a very nice home. The same family ran the light house for 85 years. The lens made so much heat that the lightkeepers shirt caught on fire when he was working inside the lens.
Heading south from St Barbe, the ferry crossing, we stopped just down the road the small fishing community of Port au Choix where there is a national Heritage site with digs and a nice trail by the sea to view the lighthouse, whale and caribou. We had a nice walk but no wildlife to be seen today. We went from there to Deer Lake, leaving Kay and Frank in Rocky Harbour to wait for their mail. We spent two nights there making another run into Corner Brook, and Pasadna where we stopped at Meyer’s Minerals to watch the artists make lovely jewelry and sculpture out of some of the same beautiful rocks we’ve been picking up. Especially beautiful are the pieces made from Labradorite a rock found mostly in Labrador and Newfoundland. They are blue and green with lines through them.
I resisted temptation!
We started east, destination Twillingate, but only got 70 miles down the road when we stopped at a visitors center to check out the area. On the front porch of the center we met John Southcutt, a woodcarver who was producing wonderful fairy houses! I spent awhile talking with him and admiring his work, and to my surprise he invited us to his home for supper. Of course we accepted and what a lovely evening we had! They live in a home overlooking Halls Bay, with a spiral staircase spanning 3 floors. They see whale and eagles when the whale chase the capelin but unfortunately the capelin were not here. Hope we catch up with them somewhere on this trip, it sounds like you can see puffins and all kinds of wildlife when they come into a harbour. They have only lived here about a year moving back from Ontario when they retired. John told us “You can tell a Newfoundlander in heaven because they are the only ones who want to go back home.” Marg couldn’t have been nicer, she gave me what she called a little piece of Newfoundland, it is a birch bark pendent with a beautiful little rock on it, on a fishing cord. She has to be a real Newfie to welcome strangers into her home. We were told this may happen because the people here are so warm and friendly, but we never expected it to happen to us. As we arrived at their home they greeted us on the bridge, this is what Newfoundlanders call their deck. The porch is what they call the section inside their door, where you wipe your feet and remove your shoes. John took us on a tour of his workshop and I did end up purchasing a ferry house. We will think of them fondly when we admire our little house.
We went on to Grand Falls for Canada Day, (like our 4th of July). Each town has it’s own celebration much like in the states. We could watch a nice fireworks display from Casey’s window. The papermill in Grand falls just closed March 31st, leaving 750 people unemployed there.
We finally made it to Twillingate and Kay and Frank caught up with us. There mail still isn’t in Rocky Harbour, the post office there will forward it when it arrives. We sure are lucky to have our Jen take care of ours! Thank You Jen!
There is a huge iceberg here now. It was 1/3 mile long when it arrived about 6 days agio, it split into at least 3 large pieces but they are still very impressive. They have entertainment about every night. We went to a dinner theater Friday. They presented Newfie humor at its best. I got some pictures but I suffered for them, I knelt down in a patch of nettle and my legs and ankles burned and itched like mad for about10 hours!
We toured Prime Berth, a fishing museum where cod fishing ways until 1960 were explained expertly by Bill Cooze who took us completely through the process. Newfoundland put a moratorum on Cod fishing in 1991, hoping that the cod would come back after they became very scarace. The government bought out the fisherman over 55, sent the younger ones to college, and that left only the ones in the middle who took up other kinds of fishing, lobster shrimp, crab. Seems to be working for the fisherman but the cod breeding beds have been destroyed by net bottom dragging and only lots of time will tell if the cod will ever return in numbers.
Bye for now,
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