Well, I'll just apologize now for the length of this post. I had no idea that Newfoundland would have so much for us to enjoy!
We kicked off day 20 of the trip (of 49 total) with a 6-hour ferry ride from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland (pronounced new-fund-LAND by the residents). After arrival at the RV park in Codroy Valley, we attended a Newfie "Screech In" ceremony. I don't want to spoil this experience for any potential visitors by giving away the specifics, but let's just say it was "memorable" and involved alcohol!
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| One part of our "Screech-in" ceremony |
We spent the next day on a guided bus tour to see the local Wetland Center (an estuary that features the largest variety of birds in this province), Chaps Garage (a privately owned amazing memorabilia collection), Precious Blood Church (100 year old Catholoc church), the Rose Blanche restored lighthouse, and the Railway Heritage Center (features railway cars and the history of the now-defunct Newfoundland Railroad). Interestingly enough, "we" are considered "CFAs" here -- Come From Away people -- and this is also the name of a broadway show that covers the 9/11 event when inbound US planes were rerouted to the city of Gander.
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| Rose Blanche lighthouse |
The next stop for our RV caravan was Port Au Choix along the "Viking Trail". This was our longest driving day (286 miles) and we hit nasty windy rainy weather en route. The campground was right on the shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence, which added a lovely salty spray to everything and everyone. Thankfully the rain let up but it stayed windy, so the option to ferry by car over to Labrador the next day was scrapped. Instead, many of us used the day to check out the Port au Choix National Historic Site and enjoy fresh buns made in an outdoor french stone oven.
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| French stone oven |
Jeffrey and I also did some light hiking to see the Phillip's Garden excavation site (Dorset Palaeoeskimo dwellings that are over 3000 years old) and saw a large hare along the way. There really wasn't much to see the excavation area, but we still had a nice view of the ocean (see the picture below). We capped the day by enjoying some live Newfie music and watching a Screech-in ceremony for some French tourists at a local hotel lounge and then driving out to the nearby lighthouse where we saw a moose (from a distance) and two humpback whales.
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| Enjoying the view near Phillips Garden excavation site. Chairs like this are placed all over these Canadian provinces to invite you to stop and enjoy the sights. |
We were thrilled when the next travel day was only a short 130 miles up to the St. Anthony area (RV park was in nearby Saint Lunaire-Griquet). That joy was short lived when we discovered it was the WORST road we have ever driven. If the awful potholes weren't bad enough, the "frost heaves" that cause unexpected dips across the road were even worse. Thankfully the traffic is light and we were able to swerve into the oncoming lane many times to try to avoid as much as we could. It helped to have another vehicle in front of us as we could see how badly they bounced around the road and adjust our own speed or angle if needed.
A nice benefit of our new RV park is that they allowed us to wash our rigs -- a very welcome option as we were all covered with dirt and salt from the recent rainy seaside weather. This took most of the afternoon as the water pressure was pretty low, but we ended the day on a fun note by attending the Great Viking Feast Celebration. No surprise from the name that we got a wonderful viking-style meal (which included fried cod tongues as an appetizer), but we also experienced a viking "court" complete with viking king and townspeople. One of the court cases was Jeffrey being brought up on charges of using sorcery (the "Google") to predict weather, tides, etc. He was good sport about it put on a nice show for the crowd, even offering to use an "app" to locate nearby icebergs (no joke, there really is an app for that!). He was found guilty and his sentence was to be tied up and forced to sing a song (he chose a local Newfie song we had learned as a group).
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| Jeffrey being accused of sorcery by one of our tour leaders |
The next day was spent extending our viking knowledge (they lived in this area between 790-1066 AD and disappeared after the Battle of Hastings) and visiting Norstead Village and Viking Port of Trade (a reproduction of a typical viking settlement) as well as L'Anse Aux Meadows Historic Site (an actual archaeological site of a former viking village). Lunch was at the quaint Norseman Gallery Cafe.
Our second day there included a whale and iceberg watching boat tour which was AWESOME! After enjoying four humpback whales, we set up to see a large iceberg floating in the distance. As we got close, it became enshrouded in fog and was quite dramatic as it emerged for our viewing pleasure. The boat guide told us that polar bears will ride the iceflows south from Labrador and eat seals along the way. The bears then swim ashore to Newfoundland and wander around the towns before finally swimming back to Labrador by late May. Residents have to be very careful of them and children especially are not allowed to wander around freely until they leave.
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| Huge iceberg off of St. Anthony |
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| Same iceberg, different view |
On a side note from the formal itinerary of this trip, Jeffrey and I went out to a restaurant where I ate locally caught snow crab -- one of the things that has replaced the massive commercial cod fishery since a moratorium was instituted on cod in the 90s. After dinner we went for a scenic drive around the peninsula and picked up 3 hitchhikers I'd seen at the restaurant earlier. They were from Sweden & Norway and leaving on a sailboat the next morning to go to Greenland. They were actually on their way to our RV Park to shower & buy pies (owner is a great cook and had cooked us moose burgers the night before). We brought them over with us and took them back to their boat when they were done. They were fascinated to see Max and we gave them a tour. They gifted us a homemade apple pie and we gave them a giant bag of pre-popped popcorn from Costco for their trip north.
Still with me? Told you this post would be a long one!
It was time to head back south-ish and we suffered having to repeat the same bumpy road for part of the way. We actually got quite the RV butt wobble going at one point after hitting a series of heaves/holes and had to pull over to make sure we hadn't broken anything. Couldn't find anything amiss thank goodness. The town of Rocky Harbor was our destination and we enjoyed exploring the Lobster Cove Head Lighthouse as well as the Marine Center in nearby Norris Point. As a group we took the Bonne Bay Boat Tour and it was a lovely trip, punctuated by some live Newfoundland music and rum-spiked hot chocolate. We had wonderful views of the Tablelands World Heritage Site and some of Gros Morne National Park.
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| View from boat tour showing the Tablelands in the distance -- with spots snow still! |
It seems typical in these parts for Newfies to have a variety of jobs, especially during the summer tourism months. On this day our boat tour guides were also the entertainers at the evening "Anchors Away" show, labeled as a "Taste of Newfoundland Humor". The lead vocalist is also a teacher during the school year. This show has been performed for over 20 years now and the 4 guys on stage are a riot in addition to being talented musicians and singers. They are so popular that you have to buy tickets months in advance and our group was advised to arrive over 2 hours early to get good seats. Thankfully you can get dinner and enjoy cocktails while you wait.
Day 30 of the 49-day trip kicked off with us driving 264 miles east to Twillingate. While there, our group attended a nice dinner theater where the show cast starts the evening by being the servers of your meal before they get on stage and serve up a good dose of humorous skits and Newfie songs. We also went to a Newfie "shed party" which, no surprise, is in a garage type shed and involves live entertainment and lots of audience participation with hats and all of us playing Newfie instruments (ugly sticks, spoons). We felt a bit "Newfie-partied-out" after the last week, but nobody could say they failed to experience the culture of Newfoundland!
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| Our group all dressed up at the shed party |
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| Sunset as we were leaving the shed party |
Our final full group activity was going to the Prime Berth Fishing Museum -- a fascinating little fishing business highlighting the fishing industry from the view of the locals (not the big commercial industry). For those that wanted to watch, we also got a lesson in cleaning an Atlantic Cod. The best part though was getting a chance to actually go cod fishing. Half of us opted to go out -- 6 per boat -- and try our hand at jig fishing. You don't actually use a rod, just a spindle of very heavy grade line with a weight and lures/hook on the end. You drop it in the water (~130 feet) until you hit the bottom and then grab the line with your bare hand and twitch it up and down a few feet until you feel a bite. You then haul up the line as fast you can with both bare hands (letting the line pool at your feet) and bring the cod up. Limits on the cod fishery only allow this fishing on the weekends for a short time in the summer and there is a limit of 15 cod per boat. No joke -- all three boats of six RVers each caught their limit in less than half an hour each! The other 30 minutes was riding the boat to/from the fishing grounds. It was an amazing experience! My granddaddy would have been so proud of me!
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| Prime Berth Fishing Museum |
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| Maren catching an Atlantic Cod |
On our own we checked out the local Long Point Lighthouse which housed one of the best Titanic exhibits we've seen in addition to having fabulous sunsets. They even let you walk up to the top of the lighthouse to see the fantastic 360-degree view.
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| Long Point Lighthouse near sunset |
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| Panorama view from the top of the lighthouse |
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| Cute fox along the road to the lighthouse. |
The target for our next RV drive was further east to Bonavista. Along the way we all stopped at a Walmart (yup, they are up here too!), disconnected our cars, and went to see the Atlantic Aviation Museum in Gander. This town and its airport played a giant role during the world wars as a refueling stop for troops and airplanes crossing the Atlantic ocean. It also became the safe haven for 38 U.S.-bound planes who were diverted from landing in the "states" during the September 11th terrorist attacks, almost doubling Gander's population with the addition of 6700 passengers. Gander pulled out all the stops to get everyone fed and housed safely for most of a week until they could continue home. Also nearby is the Silent Witness Memorial at the location where 256 U.S. servicemen from the 101st Airborne division died in plane crash shortly after takeoff at Gander's airport in 1985. The cause of the crash was never confirmed.
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| Silent Witness Memorial |
After returning to Walmart and reconnecting the car, we completed the journey to Bonavista. Our visit there included seeing the Ryan Premises (national historic site of a preserved large scale merchant operation), the Matthew Legacy (a reproduction of the ship that was sailed here in 1497 by John Cabot), the Dungeon Rocks (an amazing formation of rocks from sea erosion), and the Puffin Sanctuary. As much as I love bald eagles, I gotta say that Puffins are pretty darn cute. We were lucky we got to get within 15 feet of a nesting pair. While at the campground near Bonavista our tour leaders treated us to a grilled cod dinner from some of the cod we all caught. Yum!
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| Puffin pair |
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| Same pair, whispering about us looking at them |
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| Dungeon Rocks (much larger in person than this picture implies) |
Our final stop was St. John's on the eastern-most point of Newfoundland. We were treated to a guided bus tour of Cabot Tower Historical Park on Signal Hill (site of the first transatlantic wireless transmission), the Cape Spear Lighthouse (eastern most point in North America) and the active waterfront. We also enjoyed a group lunch and a Puffin and whale watching boat tour. We saw two humpback whales (mom and calf) and many more in the distance in different directions. The Puffins on nearby Gull Island are the largest Atlantic Puffin colony -- this year estimated at over 300,000 breeding pairs. We couldn't get as close as we did in Bonavista, but it was still fun to watch them fly and swim around us. We closed our visit in St. Johns by walking/shopping the downtown area and having a beer tasting at the local Quidi Vidi brewery. Had we realized that you can only get this crafted beer on the island, we would have bought some to bring back!
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| Us at the eastern-most point in North America |
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| Cabot Tower |
Our Newfoundland visit drew to a close as we all drove to Argentia to board the overnight ferry back to Nova Scotia. It was another nail-biting loading/unloading experience as the vehicles are so close together. We were not permitted to stay in our RVs, so we were each assigned a sleeping cabin aboard the ship and treated to a nice dinner buffet once underway. We docked the next morning and were off the ship and situated in the Nova Scotia campground by 10am.
Ta da! All done!
Well, almost... On the "RV Lifestyle" front, we have already made an appointment at the Frieghtliner facility in Bangor, Maine, to have the chassis inspected and look for suspension damage from the rough roads we drove on. We haven't found anything broken in the "house" part of Max yet, but we sure are glad we upgraded his shocks a few years back!
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