Wednesday August 26, 1998 - Newfoundland

Margaree River - rainy and windy.

I woke up early and after breakfast I drove back toward Western Brook Pond to get a photo, then on toward the ferry back to Cape Breton. I stopped at Rocky Harbour and the little town on the peninsula to see if I could get photos of the Tablelands.

It was cloudy and I drove south it got windy and rainy. I stopped in Corner Brook for cash and at a campground whose name I forget just to see what it was like. It's the campground where the highway turns east toward St. John's. There's a mountain there you can climb and a"pond". Large campground and very nice with lots of private sites many of which are right by the pond.

The weather got worse. Just before Port aux Basques I turned off for Cape Ray and parked in a little picnic area by a beach. It was quite windy but not raining when I stopped. However it soon started to rain while I was making supper. Everything got wet. I couldn't put up my tarp because of the wind. I made rice and vegetables and as soon as I could I got back in the truck to the ferry. I ate my dinner in the truck waiting for the ferry.

I boarded the ferry and left Port aux Basques at 5.00pm. The ferry had a lounge with a band playing and a TV with a couple of crappy movies. I read for a long time (Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald), then wandered around the ferry for a while. I was very tired. Finally I snuck down to the car deck and climbed into the back of my truck to get an hour of sleep before we arrived in NOrth Sydney. The door on the ferry jammed in North Sydney so it was a good 15 minutes before they could let anyone off. I got gas for the truck and just started driving toward Margaree Harbour. I had no idea where I would stop to sleep, but halfway up the Margaree Valley there was a very nice provincial picnic park on the river, so I stopped there. Got to bed at 1.30am.

Tuesday August 25, 1998 - Labrador

Green Point - sunny and windy, cloudy later.

It rained all night long. I kept waking up and hearing it. Around 5.00am it let up and I opened the windows a crack. At 7.30 I woke to a clear blue sky and sunshine. But the black flies were so thick outside I had to dig out my bug net to wear while getting breakfast. Even so I got several bites on my face and ankles, and the bites on my face raised great red bruises but only itched a little bit.

Red Bay harbour

After eating I went to the Red Bay Visitors' Centre at 9.00am to see an hour long film about the raising of a Basque ship called the San Juan from the Red Bay harbour, and about the excavation of the Basque tryworks and cooperage on Saddle Island at the mouth of the harbour. In the Red Bay cemetery they found skeletons and clothing dating from the seventeenth century. They would have been the Basque whalers. These whalers came over from Europe every summer to catch whales and render their blubber down to oil that would be shipped back to Europe in the fall. The whalers did not overwinter, but they stayed in the Red Bay area for the whaling season. The San Juan was a ship that was intended to return to Europe full of whale oil, but it got caught in a storm and sank. The work of raising it was complicated; they had to dismantle the ship so that it could be reassembled elsewhere, and they had to preserve the wood as soon as it came out of the water so that it didn't disintegrate. The beaches of Red Bay are littered with bits of red tile that had been brought over from Europe to roof the tryworks and temporary housing.

Normally there would be boat tours of the island but the sea was too rough to cross this day. I walked around the town to get some photos and while walking on the beach I met a local man and stopped to chat. Turned out he had a shed full of collected red tiles from off the beach which he sold to tourists; I went back to his shed and bought a tiny tile, about an inch square, from him. Also a a wooden needle used for making fishing nets and a slice of whale rib bone. The needle looks like a flat shuttle used for weaving.

In Labrador they stack firewood in huge tipi-like piles

Komatiks (dog sleds) are left by the side of the road until needed in the winter

Barrens

Since I intended to return to Newfoundland that day, I set out to catch the ferry. I stopped several times to take photos and as a result I was running quite late. Towards the end I was driving 120 kph on a 70 kph road. I even passed a cop at that speed.

I got to the ferry at exactly 2.45pm and there were two buses still waiting to board. The lady said at the ferry terminal entrance said I had time to buy a ticket so off I went to the ticket booth and then returned to board after the buses. I had to back onto the ferry, and was told that I would be the first car to get off the ferry so I needed to be back at my car in time for that.

A young man from Ontario that I had met earlier in Red Bay said he saw whales spouting. We went out on deck and I saw one whale spouting, many dolphins and one puffin, possibly more. A family I met on the Port aux Basques ferry a few days ago were also on the Labrador ferry yesterday and this ferry today. They are originally from Ontario (the mother actually from Manitoba) but now live in Halifax. The oldest boy, Jesse, did a project on Newfoundland for school this past year and was very excited to actually be in Newfoundland now. Their next stop was l'Anse aux Meadows. It was funny to keep running into them (I saw them in Red Bay too) but I don't expect to see them again. The kids liked Yohan.

I was short of cash when I got off the ferry because I paid my ferry fare in cash, so I bought gas on my credit card, filling up in Port au Choix and taking some photos.

I drove straight to Green Point campground in Gros Morne after that. It was already getting dark when I got there, I took the site next to the one I had before and went straight to bed.

I tried to photograph Western Brook Pond, the fjord I mentioned a few days ago, but it was too dark

Monday August 24, 1998 - Labrador

The ferry to Labrador

Red Bay - cloudy and windy with fog and rain.

I went back to l'Anse aux Meadows to buy a postcard. While there I overheard a man asking about Anne Proulx's house; it turns out that she owns two houses on a bay below the Valhalla B&B, which is where she stayed while she was writing The Shipping News. I saw the houses as I left l'Anse aux Meadows, also the replica Viking ship at Noddy Bay. Oh yes, yesterday I bought a little carving from Stagehead Carvers near there.

I went into St Anthony again for ice and gas, then decided that I would try to catch the Labrador ferry after all. I drove the brand new highway to Main Brook and then across the peninsula and back up to St Barbe.

Roadside vegetable gardens

The new highway was so new it was not yet on the map, nevertheless there were garden patches along side it. This is a feature I've noticed all over the west coast, little garden patches along the highway. They belong to local residents, I suppose being located along a highway makes them easy to access if you don't have a back yard suitable for gardening. It was funny to see gardens along a road that wasn't even mapped yet.

On the road to St Barbe I saw a moose but I did not want to stop to take a photo for fear of missing the ferry. I barely made it to the ferry line-up in time, but the ferry was late so I waited half an hour to board. It was a very rough crossing. I started to write my journal but after a couple of paragraphs felt too seasick to continue. It was cold and rainy outside so I lay down for the rest of the trip.

To get off the ferry you had to turn your car around and drive off the same end that you drove on. The ferry to Labrador actually goes to Blanc Sablon in Quebec, right next to the border to Labrador. Blanc Sablon was completely fogged in, as was the rest of that coast. I drove toward Red Bay in Labrador, the end of the road in that direction. I occasionally caught glimpses of the scenery but was mostly driving in fog. I thought I was on Newfoundland & Labrador time, but it turns out that this part of the coast is on Quebec time, an hour and a half behind. I had thought I had to be back at the ferry to return to St Barbe at 1.15pm, but by Newfoundland time that was actually 2.45pm, giving me a little extra time provided I didn't change my clock.

I drove all the way to Red Bay in hopes that the Basque Whaling Station exhibit would still be open, but it closed 15 minutes before I got there. There was a van of eight women from Maine who were at Red Bay too, they had come on the same ferry and were planning to leave first thing in the morning, too early to see the exhibits. They were following an itinerary that one of the women had put together based on brochures from various tour companies she had written to. They booked lodgings and ate at restaurants cited by those companies, visiting the same sites of interest.

Since it was wet and miserable I bought fish and chips at the one restaurant in town, next to the Red Bay Visitors' Centre. Rather than drive 30 km back to the Pinware River campground, I asked the woman running the restaurant if there was any place nearby to camp overnight. She suggested that I just park anywhere in town. Red Bay is a pretty small town that seemed kind of haphazardly laid out, although by now it was dark so maybe it actually was less haphazard than it seemed. I drove around looking for an out of the way place to park and finally settled on a spot close to the main road. The roads there were hilly and sandy and I was concerned that if I got too far off the main road a sandy side road might wash out in the rain that night and I would be stuck.

I stayed up long enough to feed Yohan and write a couple of pages in my journal. There were lots of mosquitoes and it continued to pour rain. Two locals drove by several times and finally stopped to talk to me. I was afraid I was parked in their driveway and they were coming to tell me to move along. But while they did live down that road they did not mind me parking there at all, they were just concerned because it was a poor night to be out camping. I told them I was okay, I just wanted to get in out of the rain and go to bed. I assured them I'd be okay and so they drove home.

Sunday August 23, 1998 - Newfoundland

Pistolet Bay - sunny and clear.

I woke to a clear morning quite early and made breakfast over a fire which started much quicker than the night before. I had a nice hot shower at the comfort station and then drove around the shore through Onion Cove and Raleigh toward l'Anse aux Meadows.

I visited the Norse viking settlement site. The settlement has been recreated and there is also a little museum of artifacts and explanations of the site. I watched a very good film about the discovery of the site by a Norwegian couple, Helge and Anne Ingstad. 

In the recreated settlement site itself several local people played the original Viking inhabitants. One woman was a domestic slave and a man was the "captain". There were buildings partially dug into the ground and covered with sod roofs. The roof in the main building was high enough to stand up in comfortable but apparently the roof would have been much lower in the original building for ease of building and to conserve heat. The captain played a Norse board game with a young woman and the "slave" woman demonstrated one-needle knitting. She maintained quite a quick-witted humourous patter, answering questions about lifestyle and making jokes about everything.

Yohan inside the sod house

While I was there I met a fireman from Richmond BC who was travelling with his two daughters. He said that his wife worked for an airline and he used her flying dscount to visit a different province or territory each year with the two girls. One year they went to Nunavut and were billeted with local people on their stay there. This year was Newfoundland and Labrador. Lucky kids! He said he was spending their inheritance, I said these trips were their inheritance.

After visiting the Viking site I went on to St. Anthony and out to Fishing Point where there is a view of Iceberg Alley, but there are no icebergs there at this time of year. June and July are supposed to be the good viewing months.

In St. Anthony I visited the Grenfell Centre and the Grenfell home, both of which were very interesting. Dr. Wilfred Grenfell  came to St. Anthony early in the 20th century as a missionary, but quickly became almost exclusively a doctor because of the great need. He started an orphanage and a handicraft industry co-op where hooked rugs, parkas and so forth were made. The parkas were made of "grenfell cloth", which is water-resistant but not waterproof. he wrote several books about his experiences in this part of the world. 

I toured the house that he lived in. In his bedroom there was one of his books by the bedside, I sat down to read part of it, in particular a harrowing story about being stuck on an ice pan overnight in the winter. He had gone to see someone who was ill and was returning to St Anthony on the sea ice in the evening. His dogsled went through the ice. he and the dogs managed to get out of the water, but they were stuck on an ice pan out at sea. It's a moving story, I was quite rivetted by it. Obviously he survived, but he had to kill one or more of his dogs to do it. He loved the dogs, it was not an easy thing to do.

Grenfell made a film about the Mission hospital and orphanage to show to Americans to raise funds for his work. While he made it as a movie, he usually presented it as a slide show. I watched the film at the Grenfell Centre, it is quite funny and obviously deliberately so, to appeal to his intended audience.

After St. Anthony I returned to Pistolet Bay for a second night. Again the fire took a long time to get started but I eventually got dinner and went to bed. It was a clear starry night so I expected it to be cold but in fact it was quite warm, probably due to clouding over later in the night.

Saturday August 22, 1998 - Newfoundland

Pistolet Bay - rainy, cloudy.

I didn't know if I wanted to stay at Green Point another day, but in the morning it was cloudy and a bit rainy so I decided to head up the coast towards l'Anse aux Meadows. The couple from Ontario had recommended the boat trip up the Western Brook Pond, a steep-sided fjord, instead of going to Labrador, so I was thinking about that, but only if the weather was good. I passed the Western Brook and it was cloudy and rainy. I could see the entrance to the fjord (it is actually quite a ways in from the coast), with steep cliffs on either side cut into the Long Range Mountains. I continued on, the weather didn't seem good enough to make the trip.

I turned off at Port au Choix which has an Archaic Maritime Indian burial ground and a Dorset Eskimo site, as well as a current archaeological dig for an Archaic Indian habitation site. The Dorset Eskimo site is on a trail along the coast through arctic alpine "gardens"—orange lichen on grey basalt rocks, juniper, wild flowers, dwarf birch—many different textures of green. The site is in a grassy meadow.

I was at the meadow, but since I didn't know what I was looking for, I didn't see the house sites, which apparently were rock circles. I couldn't see the burial site either, but I got a quick tour of the dig directed by Priscilla Renouf of Memorial University of Newfoundland. It's in someone's backyard and so far they've found some arrowheads and fire hearth sites. Also a more recent piece of pottery.

I continued on up the coast and iadvertently ended up in the 5.00pm ferry for Labrador line up at St Barbe. Since I had previously decided not to go to Labrador I turned around to get out of the line up and out of town. I sort of regretted it, but decided that I didn't really have time for it with the ferry schedule being what it was.

I got into Pistolet Bay around 6.30 or 7.00pm, another tuckamore campground on the edge of a bog. I found a fairly private site and split some firewood with the good splitting ax at the camp firewood pile. This is the first provincial campground I've been in since BC that provides free firewood. They also have a "comfort station" with showers and washing machines. The firewood was wet so it took a long time to get a good fire going and cook dinner. It was dark before I finished and quite cold.

Friday August 21, 1998 - Newfoundland

Green Point - sunny and warm.

The Trout River campground was OK but I didn't like it so much.

Tablelands seen from a distance

I decided to go on the 10.00am Tablelands guided walk. I was a bit late getting there but it was very interesting. The Tablelands are flat-topped mountains of yellow rock and hardly any vegetation. Across the road are mountains of grey rock and lots of vegetation; it's quite startling.

Our guide, Fred, told us that the yellow rock is actually rust, the rocks are peridotite and something else derived from the Earth's mantle. They were thrust up by tectonic forces when the North American and European plates first collided to form the Appalachian Mountains. There are remains of the mantle all along the Appalachians, but only here are they so extensive and undisturbed by human habitation.

Fred pointed out interesting plants such as dwarf "bonsai" birch trees, insectivorous pitcher plants, butterwort, a rare plant that makes its own compost, and another plant whose name I forget that accumulates heavey metals in its leaves. He showed us a mysterious colony of leeches in a stream with no known source of blood meals, and an old growth stand of larches and juniper over 300 years old and a half meter tall at best.

Fred pointed out one tiny tree and said, "This is larch, or tamarack or hackmatack, which we in Newfoundland call juniper," and then another tree and said, "And this is juniper, which we in Newfoundland call juniper." He showed us calcium springs and a place by a waterfall where new rock is being formed: travertine. Only 5 minutes old.

5 minute old travertine

Yohan kept up with the walk pretty well but at one point he slipped on a muddy path into a hole and didn't want to go any further.

I got back to my campsite just after noon and packed up to continue northward, to try my luck in another campground in the park. The scenery was beautiful and the weather great.

I eventually arrived at the Green Point campground right on the ocean shore facing westward. I found a really nice campsite in the "tuckamore" with a path down to the beach. I talked to a man at the next site and another couple, all from Ontario. This campground is uncrowded and quiet.

Yohan and I walked a trail through meadows and tuckamore along the beach. We came to a stream which Yohan would not cross, he waited for me there while I continued on a ways.

Yohan wouldn't cross the water

Later when I put him to bed I saw that his paws were red and raw. I collected driftwood from the beach for a cook fire and later after dark took a rug out onto a nearby meadow to lie down and watch the stars coming out. The sound of the breakers on the beach is soothing. It's a rocky beach with lots of driftwood and old lobster traps.

Thursday August 20, 1998 - Newfoundland

Trout River Pond

Trout River - clear and sunny, then clouding over and rainy

I got up early, around 5.20am Nova Scotia time (5.50am Newfoundland time) to get ready to debark. I spent a few minutes in the onboard museum reading excerpts from a diary of a family in which several generations worked on the ferry and kept notes. Once off the ferry I made breakfast for Yohan and me at the Visitors' Centre just outside Port aux Basques. There are no trees for miles, I suspect long since cut down for firewood.

I drove up the west coast and turned off on the road to Shallop Cove to follow the shore to Stephenville and then out on the Port au Port Peninsula. I took the backroad around Port au Port Bay to Lourdes and then turned around and went back. It is a very poor road, hilly, windy and not a lot to see. The weather was alternately rainy and sunny.

Getting back on the main road I drove into Corner Brook to get some cash and gas. It is the biggest town on this coast, a regular city centre. After leaving Corner Brook I continued on to Red Deer and then turned off on the road to Gros Morne (rt. 430). I reached Gros Morne around 3.30 or 4.00 pm.

On the advice of the Visitor Centre I decided to stay at the Trout River Pond campground. It took an hour to get there and it was rainy most of the time. The campground is set on a hill above the Pond, looking down the Trout River valley behind the Tablelands. Yohan and I walked down to the Pond, saw moose and bear tracks and a bog moose poop. "Ponds" here are lakes anywhere else. The Trout River Pond is actually two ponds, the campground being on the lower one. It is quite a spectacular view down the valley.

I went to bed early because of the rain.

The whales of St. Vincent's

I am back from a whirlwind trip to the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland. In 1998 I travelled up the west coast of Newfoundland, visited Gros More, l'Anse aux Meadows, and Red Bay in Labrador. It was a great trip but Newfoundland is a big place and I did not get to St. John's then because that would have doubled the driving time and I was nearing my deadline for returning home. I always intended to go back and I thought that after moving to the east coast of Canada (I was living on the west coast in 1998) that it would just happen. But it didn't, I had to make it happen. Funny about that.

Anyway, a fellow blogger has an Airbnb on the Irish Loop just outside of St John's which she plans to give up this year so it seemed like Now or Never. I would have driven with Hapi, but with another road trip in mind for later in the summer it seemed like all that extra driving (and time!) was not on. So I flew, leaving Hapi behind with a friend.

It was truly a whirlwind visit, I basically skimmed what was on offer and probably wore out my host. The highlights were long chats, whales and an archaeological dig on the Irish Loop. We did a drive-through of St. John's and while I would have liked to have seen more, I realized I didn't have the energy for it and was just going to have to make a mental note of 'what to do and see if I ever have the chance of coming back here'.

On the same day we visited Signal Hill, Cape Spear, and Petty Harbour. I saw a humpback whale doing backflips below the lighthouse at Cape Spear: it leaped into the air and fell backward with flippers spread like wings several times. I have no idea what it was trying to do, it could have been just for the sheer joy of being there. I also saw icebergs at both Signal Hill and Cape Spear.

Signal Hill

Petty Harbour

Every summer humpback whales migrate from the Caribbean north to Newfoundland (they come to Nova Scotia as well). They don't eat at all on their trip so they arrive hungry, when the capelin are spawning off of the Avalon Peninsula coast, in particular at certain beaches. Just down the coast from where I was staying is St. Vincent's beach, a popular spawning site for the capelin and feeding site for the whales. My host took me there twice in hopes of spotting the whales. It was very foggy both days and we saw nothing the first time but the whales arrived the second time. The conditions were very poor for taking photos but I tried.

It was a truly amazing sight. At least half a dozen whales, I couldn't count, leaping about and swimming back and forth not a hundred meters from the shore. They seemed to be working in groups, I saw three whales surfacing simultaneously several times, they were in a formation that looked like a giant three-petalled whale-head flower.

Colony of Avalon archaeological dig at Ferryland

The Colony of Avalon was one of the first permanent settlements in North America, in an area of Newfoundland that was frequently visited by European fishermen even before Christopher Columbus set sail. It is being reconstructed at the town of Ferryland (the name is a transliteration of the old Portuguese name).

I could go on and on, it was a dense and intense visit to an amazing place. I only hope I did not wear out my friend and host who guided the visit.