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
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