Fire, and Wind on "The Rock" (Newfoundland)

 It is pronounced New-fun- LAND.  Each time I say the word, I have to say it one or two more times because the new-fun part is said fast and the accent is on the LAND.  NewfunLAND.  Old habits and old pronunciations are hard to break.

There are a lot of pictures and stories in this post.  Feel free to skim or dive in, it's your choice.  If you want to dive in, stop here and get your favorite beverage. It's going to take a while.

Why Do I Do This Blog?

I have several reasons for doing this blog.

• I blog to remember these adventures and times.  I need a record of what I have done so I can refer to it in the future or to boost my memory.
• I blog to keep in touch with friends and family.  I emailing and text some.  But I love a lot of people!  And this way you can choose how much you read.  I can't bore you because you can stop whenever you want.
• I blog to share my travels, joys and mistakes with you so you can have some of the fun or commiserate. 
• I blog for history's sake.  Just think if Ann Frank hadn't kept a diary.  A lot of history books and historical fiction novels are based on letters and diaries and digital records.  Not that in the future there is going to be my life on display, but maybe some events and happenings can contribute to someone's research on this period of time.  This is my little contribution.
• I blog to remind folks about my books in case they have not read them yet or have a friend who could benefit from reading one of them.
• I blog to practice writing.  Unfortunately, I don't do it often enough these days because I am rushing to live life while I am still able.  I start out the day and before I know it, it's almost over!  Life speeds up as we age.

Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

Last I wrote to you we were on Cape Breton Island.  It is the northern part of Nova Scotia, Canada.

When we visited our friends Jennifer and Dave in Nova Scotia, Dave made us crepes with plain yogurt and fruit.  It inspired Steve to try making crepes for us.  Yum!

He's not just a pair of awesome legs... lol.  I feel very blessed.

We just had some really awesome days since I last wrote to you.  I am excited to share the pics and stories.

Let's start back in Cape Breton.  Remember the power outage and the sink full of dirty dishes?

At 10 pm the power came back on.  Yay!  We learned with this experience that if the power goes out, fill our water jug asap before the lines are empty.  Campground wells usually rely on well water and an electric pump.

We stayed at the Waves End Campground outside of Cheticamp.  It is a private campground on a plateau with some ocean front  We could walk down some stairs to the rocky beach.  

Each evening a steady stream of campers made their way down past our camper to watch the sunset. 

We went to walk the Salmon River Trail and the trail starts in a campground. We saw this military-style camper in the campground.  Since we saw this one, we have seen three more.  One had a family of five pile into it. 

The hike was very pretty along a river where salmon swim.  We didn't see any salmon.

We biked!  We haven't had much opportunity to bike on this trip.  But last time I wrote to you I told you we drove 44 minutes to do the Celtic Shores Coastal Trail to ride.  We liked it so much, a couple days later we drove an hour to get to another part of the trail to ride some more of it.

The rest stops on the trail were interesting.  Some had musical instruments to play with.  Another one had a hammock and the most pristine and well furnished pit-toilet I have ever seen.  It even smelled nice!

The pit toilet had a working clock in it!

I had mapped us to take the trail to a town to get lunch.  But about three miles before the town, the trail was closed completely.  We chatted with a woman there and asked her about places to eat.  She was very nice.  

She told us that back close to where we got on the trail was a Celtic Music Interpretation Center that serves food.  We rode back and went to the center.  There were traditional dancers doing Nova Scotia's version of Square Dancing.  What fun!  And the musicians were very good.

I took a video to share with you.

Newfoundland

We took the Ferry to get to Newfoundland.  There were a lot of tractor trailers, RVs, and Travel Trailers on the ferry.  

We reserved some seats on the ferry.  It felt like first class.

We were surprised to learn that there is a 1/2 hour time zone change between Nova Scotia (NS) and Newfoundland (NL).  I had never heard of 1/2 hour time changes.

The ferry ride is about seven hours long. I kept searching the water, hoping to see signs of life.  A whale or a shark or a porpoise.  No luck, but we had great weather for the trip and that is worth a lot! There was a full service dining room on the ferry!

I had booked us a campsite within 30 minutes of the Ferry in Codroy Valley.  We were impressed with the campground.  Though it was a private campground, the sites were very roomy, there was a little hiking trail, and the showers were in good repair.

The campground manager told us about a scenic road loop we could ride on our bikes around an estuary and out to a lighthouse.

The owner/managers of the campground are ancestors of the farm family that used to work the land where the campground is located.  

They had a nice shelter where convoys and tours could gather.  While we were there, about two dozen huge RV's pulled in and parked side by side in sites lined up and less roomy than ours.  The sites were probably designed for tour groups like this one.  

The shelter is lined with empty bottles of Screech.  It is a rum that is the drink of Newfoundland.  

Yes, Steve bought a bottle and we are enjoying it with fizzy water.  

This was a good first stop.  They put out a newsletter each season.  This year an article listed why Newfies should be proud.   I hope you can read the picture I took of the article. First to vaccinate for smallpox, first to host a transatlantic flight.  And let's not forget the Newfies that took in stranded passengers when flights had to land elsewhere after the twin towers were struck on 9/11.

Codroy RV and Tent Campground is right on a river that ends in the ocean so it has some tide.  We went upstream and kept hitting bottom.  But when we turned and went down stream, some of the sandbars had disappeared.

We were told not to miss Gros Morne National Park.  It is huge.  When I was planning I looked for a National Park Campground with Services and found Shallow Bay.  It is at the north end of the park.  Some of the sights are an hour away on the south side of the park.  So we did a lot of driving during our time in Gros Morne.  But boy is the park beautiful!  I am glad Canada saved it.  

Our campground had a lovely sandy beach.  It was cool and windy when we arrived.  The black flies were biting in the campground, but on the beach it was too breezy for them.

Shallow Bay is sandy and has a very very gradual slope so that when the tide is out, you can walk a long way without the slope that can cause hips and backs to start hurting.

We liked the campground.  It had nice showers and roomy sites and easy access to the beach.  The wifi wasn't strong enough for the number of campers using it.  I used the clubhouse to use the wifi to practice Spanish and Italian.  I also used the clubhouse to exercise twice because I would have gotten so bit up if I tried to do it outside.

Last I wrote to you I showed a picture of some poop we found on the trail and puzzled over what produced it.  In the visitor's center the mystery was solved.  It's moose.

Moose are not native to Newfoundland.  About a dozen of them were introduced in the late 1800's and early 1900's from different locations to ensure a broad gene pool.  Now there are over 120,000 Moose on the island.  They don't have any predators on the island.  The government finally started to manage their numbers as their foraging was damaging the natural order of things.

This was outside of a restaurant/gift shop we visited.

I was eating my lunch at the counter and thought someone was sitting next to me.  It turned out to be a human-sized moose.  I told her I loved the shoes.

Newfoundland is where Vikings had a settlement over 1000 years ago.

We took a hike to a waterfall.  It was a beautiful hike.  The trail went over lots of peat bog and through boreal forests.

I tried to learn the trees the kiosks talked about.  Black Spruce?  Larch?  It didn't stick in my brain.  But it was interesting because some trees grew only in the wet bogs and some grew in just the area next to the bog that was a bit dryer.

The boreal chickadees are reported to be shyer than their cousins.  But we were visited by a couple on the trail.  I took a video.

The park had made a moose barrier to demonstrate what the forest would look like if there were no moose.  They eat a lot!

We got a flyer of things to do in Gros Morne National Park and one of the things was a boat ride on Western Brook Pond to an ancient Fjord.  Steve said, "Let's do that!"  

We got really lucky. We got tickets for when we were there AND the morning we booked was perfect and hardly any wind.  (The island is a windy place!)

To get to the boat ride you park and then walk 45 minutes on a trail.  There are some educational plaques along the way.

Even during the hike down the views were stunning.  For those who can't hike, it is only $10 to get a ride down on a golf cart.

One of the kiosks on the path to the boat explained how the Fjord was made.  Over 40 Glaciers passed through over millions of years.  This particular pond does not go all the way to the sea, so technically, I guess, it isn't a Fjord.  It used to be, but over many years, after the last glacier retreated, the land in front of the pond had less pressure pushing it down and it ... what... puffed up/rose and blocked off the pond.

Our guide told us that in 1911,a fisherman came down to his boat to fish and it was gone.  It turned out that a large chunk of a cliff broke off into the pond and sent up a tsunami, 300 feet high.  It wiped out the trees along the shore and sent them over the boggy land at the end of the pond.  He said our cars up in the parking lot would have been swept into the sea.  Sailors at sea noticed a lot of trees in the cove and knew something significant had happened.

At the far end of the ride is a dock where the boat let off four through hikers.  A zodiac had brought out about eight day hikers for a guided tour in the wilderness.  The trail isn't marked, our guide said, you need to use a compass and be a very experienced bush-whacker.

As of this writing there are four wildfires in Newfoundland.  Two of them are out of control and some communities are being evacuated.  We saw some smoke in Gros Morne.  

Later we learned that the back country trails are closed because the folks who normally provide search and rescue are being used to fight fires.

The picture below will give you an idea of the size of that cliff in the Fjord.  Down at the bottom you will find a red and white boat.  The cliffs are 700 meters tall.  The pond is 1K meters wide.

We chatted briefly with a local residen who used to live on the Eastern side of the island.  She said there isnt enough snow there to ski, but on the Western side she is able to ski.

We have gotten advice here from several locals.  When it gets dark, park.  Don't drive because the Moose can surprise you.  These are the signs on the road.  They had replicas for sale at the boat landing.

After walking 45 minutes to get to the boathouse to start our tour, there is a really nice building with flush toilets and a cafe and gift shop.  Our boat guide explained that they brought the boats to the landing in pieces.   There was an article about it in the gift shop.

We saw a small deciduous bush that looked like it had tiny pinecones on it.

Gros Morne is interesting Geologically.  It has all kinds of rocks.  Gros Morne mountain is quartz from an ancient beach.  Table Rock is sea floor pushed up.  Green Point is a location that helped provide proof for the theory of plate tectonics.

First we visited the site by ourselves and it really peaked our curiosity.  

Then we learned of a walk with a geologist so we made sure to return to the site for that.  

Shallow Bay is by a very small fishing village with a small museum set in an old home.

There is a migration of seals that come to Newfoundland in March each year.  Since ancient times it has been a destination for those wanting to harvest seals.

This seal coat reminded me of one that my mother had for going to church and very special occasions.

In the early 1900's the residents raised sheep and made their own clothes.  In the picture below is Hand knit woolen long underwear.  There was no road that went to this town until the 1960's.

A local invented or participated in the invention of the gas mask that was used in WWI.

Our biggest question for the geologist when we went on the walk was what made these ripples.  There are several layers with ripples followed by flat slate layers.  Know what she said?  "It is still a mystery.  No one knows."

Fishermen settled their camps on rocky beaches.  They had to clean and dry their fish and a sandy beach would blow sand onto their drying catch.

We visited a site of a ship wreck.  We expected it to be out in the water a bit, but this one wrecked on the rocky shore and all the passengers survived.

More lovely rocks to look at.

Table Rock is at the southern end of the park.  We were told by a fellow traveler we met at a restaurant,  "You gotta go there!  It is incredible."

So we drove over an hour to get there.

After Gros Morne we went a short distance to Ocean Side Campground in Port Au Choix.  (Port Oh Shwah).  I am always pronouncing it wrong.  Sorry, I didn't take French.

There is a lighthouse in town and some caribou hang out there.  Pictures of the caribou are further down.  

Steve sometimes is making drawings of things we see.

We were told by a few travelers that we shouldn't miss the French Bread Oven in Port Aux Choix.

After the bread and hot chocolate and stories with accordion music at the French Bread Oven, we went for a walk on a trail that starts right by their parking area.  

It was a beautiful hike!

The picture below is looking at sea weed in crystal clear shallow waters.

Here are pictures of the caribou we saw by the light house in Port Aux Choix.

In one of the children's books that Steve bought for his daughter's classroom, it talked about Newfoundland traditions.  One is the mummers.  They dress up and visit the neighbors (I think it is something fun to do during the long cold winters here.)  We saw one in a gift shop.

From Port Au Choix we drive 2 1/2 hours to St. Anthony to take a boat ride looking for whale and other marine mammals.  The day was lovely.  There was smoke that the guide said made it harder to spot whale spouts.  We saw some pretty cliffs, a beautiful Gannet, and an eagle, but no whales, no porpoise, no sharks.

The guide told us that the road to St. Anthony wasn't put in until the 1960's.  He said that when they put the road in it opened access from the town to forests and fertile peat soils.  So an agreement was made.  First, People from St. Anthony could purchase a certificate that would allow them to harvest a set amount of wood to heat their homes.  On the drive up there Steve had pointed out several wooden sleds used for hauling wood along side the road, and piles of wood.  The wood is cut in the winter and hauled to the roadside to be picked up and taken to their houses in the summer. 

The second part of the agreement was that people from St Anthony (where it is mostly coastal rock) could set up a garden on the roadside where the soil was good for gardening.  We had seen the fenced in gardens on our drive up the road.  They grow root vegetables, he said, potatoes, turnips, carrots...

After our morning boat trip we drove to the site where Vikings had stayed over 1000 years ago.  The approach to the site was stunningly beautiful. 

There is a nice visitors center, nice trails to the building remains and next to the remains is a reconstruction of the buildings and artifacts.  It was a very enjoyable visit and worth the long drive to get there.

The walls of the buildings were constructed of peat.  And when you think of 1000 years, that is a long time.  And yet there are still lumps on the ground where the Viking buildings had sat.

This is a picture of the reconstructed walls.

Inside the peat building.

We got to put on helmets and hold swords and shields.  Fun!

Below is a picture of the outlines of the Viking buildings that still can be seen.  That peat is good construction material!  One of the staff dressed in period costume told us that this site was closer to the beach at the time.  The land has risen.

On our drive home we stopped and took pictures of the gardens along the road to St. Anthony.

Oh, I forgot to mention.  One of the trails at the Viking center had fairy houses along it.  I took pictures and sent some to Jennifer and David.  They have a fairy trail in their town of Mahone Bay, NS.

This one was special.  It had a line man on top!  Hey Steve!  (Steve was a line man for many years.)

The plants along that trail by the Viking center were alpine in nature.  Small, even the lilies are small.  Some of the plants are very old, but still small due to the harsh environment.  Evergreens creep along the ground and can be over 100 years old.

I had never heard of Bog Iron before, have you?   It is facinating to me that the Vikings were able to use it for their nails.

We stopped for lunch at a cafe and I got a partridgeberry latte and Steve got a bakedapple latte.  I thought the baked apple came from regular apples.  But in this low landscape were these low-growing berries called.... "Bakedapple Berries"!

We moved on from Port Au Choix and are making our way over to the other side of the Island where we hope to see whale and puffins.  

After a long day of travel we are camping four nights in Grand Falls at Sanger Memorial RV Campground.  It has been hot and breezy.

I have stories from here, but they will have to wait until next time.  This is enough for now...  Well except...

We went to the Salmonoid Center here.  They have a power dam and have constructed a ladder for the salmon.  We got to see nice size salmon jumping up the ladder into a resting pond.  I made a video for you.

 Yesterday I stopped in the office and asked where we might go for a swim.  She said that the locals go to Leech Pond (That sounds inviting doesn't it?)  It was awesome!  I will tell you all about it next time.

Right now it's time to pack up the kayaks and the bikes because tomorrow we head out for another place... Terre Nova Campground.

***

Before I leave I want to mention the Point US study that is similar to a study done in Finland.  It has shown that over two years, cognition was improved through modifying five behaviors.  

The intervention targeted modifiable risk factors for dementia, such as diet, physical activity, cognitive engagement, social interaction, and cardiovascular health. 

***

It is so good to hear from you after I post! 

Thanks to Mark and Jane, Sandy and John, Kathi, Jim and Ann, Ruth, Ann, Charlotte, Mary, Jennifer and all of you who reached out via comments, emails, and comments on Facebook.  I celebrate you when I hear from you.    

It is fun to learn what is happening in your worlds.

 

Until next time...