It's been Fun.

Just a heads up, if you want to see the rest of this post (the beginning part) at the bottom of the page is a button for old posts that you have to click. I guess the host only allows certain page sizes.

I'm going to pick through the blog as I get the chance and add comments to the photos so check back once in a while. This blog may be a bit confusing at times since it is written backwards from the end of the trip but you'll get the idea of it.

Sue and I left out of Bay Bulls Saturday morning and decided we better mail back the stuff we got here before the post offices close (a good thing to keep in mind is that there are a number of stores around that even mail on Sundays, but since we didn't know that off we went). This delayed us a little bit for our big meet-up with my second cousin Doug. We were both exited to meet and it turned out to be a fantastic day! Stopped over Doug and his lovely lady Rubys' house around one and Doug took us all around St. John's to take in the scenery and learn a bit more history about the area.

Below is a photo of St. John's inlet and you can just make out the Military fort that is just on the outside of the harbour on the right.

Up on the hill to the left of the harbour exit is what is called Signal Hill where Marconi scent and received his first trans-Atlantic messages. Seems like an appropriate spot to me since this is just about as east as you can get on the North American continent.

And down at the base of signal hill, known as the "Battery" section, are some of the original dwellings in St. John's that are built right on the rock face. I can't for the life of me understand why someone would build a house in this location?? It seems to be a logistical nightmare with water and snow coming down the hill from above, but they did it, and even though I may have a problem with it I WANT TO LIVE THERE~

I would think one of the main reasons for this location is to keep an eye out for incoming vessels when loved ones are returning from the sea.

The streets in this section of town are incredibly narrow and steep, if you wind up face to face with another vehicle - One of you is backing up.

There is no shortage of odd looking vessels in Newfoundland... Of course if I lived there they wouldn't look odd at all but I thought this "Cat" style fishing troller was one of the neatest things around.

After a half day of cruising around with Doug and stopping to see his mom (my Great Aunt Ivy; and I emphasize "Great" (what a sweetheart)) it was off to Doug and Rubys' house for a wonderful BBQ and drinks with the a handful of their friends. What a fantastic bunch, they made Sue and I feel right at home and we couldn't be more appreciative of their hospitality!!!

The next day (Sunday) was another picture perfect day on The Rock so off we went to do some more exploring, a bit of hiking, napping in the sun, finding of salted cod, and taking of more pictures (boy do I have to delete a lot of pictures!). At some point in the afternoon we hiked up to Cape Spear. At this location you would be standing at the eastern most point in North America, and it looked like it to me. This is the newer of the two lighthouses out on the end of the continent.

This would be the other one (sorry you can't see it too well but I liked the shot so much I couldn't resist)

OK, I have NO Idea what the heck this is floating in the water. It was a long way down and out in the water and I used all the zoom I brought and still can't figure it out. It appeared to be a shark (possibly a Great White from the fin layout) that had been cut in half. With the reports of killer whales in the area and there affinity for the whites I'm thinking they teamed up and chomped the poor little sharky;)

If anyone has a better idea I'd like to hear it.

Hear we have Suzie (I guess I'm the Newfie in the blog header) standing in front of what remains of the two large cannons that where placed here during WWII. On a side note; did you know the last German U-Boat was surrendered up here in Bay Bulls?
These cannons were removed from close to where we live, down at Fort Mott on the Delaware river, and placed up here to protect the harbour and coastline from German attack. Yep, they attacked Newfoundland also, as if a two front war wasn't enough...Silly Germans. Nice to have a few guns that could fire over the horizon.

Then it was off to to check in to another place and meet up with Doug and Ruby for another fine dinner of fish and brewis (for me at least, I love that stuff). Thanks again to our fine Newfie hosts for making the end of our trip spectacular, we hope to see you both soon. Come to the states and I'll show you some trout a bit bigger than the ones in your freezer ;)






Here we are at the airport for our early flight out just wondering where the heck the time went? It's been a great trip, and the weather the last few days has been exceptional. Saturday and Sunday we toured around St. John's, met up with family and new friends, and tried to soak up as much of the culture and history as we could. My camera stuff is neatly packed but I promise I will finish this blog within the next couple days and give you all an idea of what went on. I'm not into posting the family photos on the net so any of you family types can get in touch with me if you'd like to see those.

Half the sky is clear as the cloud line approaches, another nice day in NF. Seems the weathermen are even more confused up here than at home since they called for rain on last nights broadcast and then this morning the forecast was bright and sunny (I'd say there are a few more variables to deal with out on The Rock). Every day has at least a 20% chance of rain. The saying up here is "If you don't like the weather, wait 15 minutes" -- Something like that? Seems accurate enough.

I'll get back to everyone interested and post the pictures SOON.

D.

Still here!

Unfortunately don't even have time to post pictures this time but I'll try like heck to get to it tonight....

Can't believe it's the last day already!!!

Off we go->>>

Guess what we did today...

I'm tired so we have to play the "guess what we did today" game. I would say it was one of the best we had since we got here, so I'll get to the commentary soon.

Eh, all you want is pictures anyway... Doesn't everyone?



OK, Squirrel, formerly of "Moose and Squirrel" has been dead for some time now - I know - I was shocked too!!! I have it on good advice that this is a direct descendant of the original Rocky even though he doesn't look like a flying squirrel.

Tors Cove - La Manche Trail (part of the East Coast Trail that runs down along the eastern edge of Newfoundland. This was an old village that was settled long ago, a couple of the dwelling foundations still remain but not much.

This footbridge was constructed about ten years ago to replace the one previously built and damaged by storms. Can you find the Suzie? If you click on the pictures they get bigger.

I'm going with Golden Eagle with this one although it would be quite rare to see one in these parts. This thing is about two and a half feet tall. I can't see his legs which would be a dead giveaway, the Golden has feathers all the way down to his feet.

Humpback Whales. Much closer than we saw them on the previous day but definitely nowhere near as active.

Did you know that Puffins can't take off from the ground? And from the way they fly I can tell why! They also don't exactly "land", it's more like a controlled crash. But they can swim down to incredible depths, up to 250 feet, and come back up with one minute!
Gull Island (47ø16'N, 52ø47'W) in Witless Bay

/Puffins!!!!!!


You know what eats Puffins?



Black Backed, Seagulls...

These are not puffins, although they live and breed side by side, they are the Common Murres.

The Common Murres are rather incredible that when the babies are born, they jump in the water and hang with the father for months while they swim, paddle, and flop there way all the way to Greenland. Each one has a distinctive cry that, when separated, helps dad to find the little critter.

These are male puffins, they stand at the edge of the rocks looking for a mate and then hook up for life. After they find a mate they burrow about six feet into the grassy hillside and make a two room apartment for the family (one for a living room, and one for a bathroom). I think you can tell by the rocks that they haven't figured out the bathroom thing yet.... Bachelors!

We were blessed with this at the close of the day...

See Ya'll Soon.
Dr.

Off to Bay Bulls.

Spent the night in the quaint little town and after breakfast took a walk down to the wharf, what a great protected little spot. It's like taking a walk back in time looking at the old boats and antiquated equipment.

While there we glanced over the edge of the dock to see an incredible amount of fish (might be a bit difficult to see in this shot but almost everything in the picture is a fish).

Just a shot of the Inn we stayed at from across the harbour (Inn by the Bay)
The house up on the hill is called the George House and is part of the same property, seems to be a pretty famous place around there.

Off we go, down the road... the GPS decided that the rental SUV we got hadn't gotten enough off-road time so it put us on Route 81. Looked like a main road on the map but about ten miles of rough road was all we got.

Along the west coast of the Avalon Peninsula, down what's called the "The Irish Loop" proved to be somewhat of a dud. Just not a whole lot to see since the terrain turns flat and quite boring. One interesting thing I noticed is that this area must be the burnout capital of the world. I don't think there was more than a 300' stretch for about 10 miles that didn't have black rubber snakes burned into the pavement. Most of the area's where 10 or 15 layers deep of nice posi-rear burnouts (I have no idea what that is all about, maybe they own stock in tire companies?)

Once we turned inland things changed for the better, still incredibly flat for "The Rock" but it turned into what looks like a arctic tundra grassland with evergreen shrubs and thick blankets of moss that covers, I would imagine, about 100 square miles or more (have to look that up). The southernmost herd of Caribou are located here and from what we were told, "they are everywhere, just be careful not to run into them". There is only one road that goes through this area and it only covers a small amount of the lower part, I guess the caribou moved north to feed for the summer but we did manage to find one just to prove they do exist.

So Sue says, "turn down here, there's a road that takes us to a light house, it's the site of Marconi's first radio transmission site, and Amelia Earhart's first Trans-Atlantic flight took off from this location". So off we go down this gravel road, this long gravel road, with steep hills and potholes galore. It's times like these that I'm glad it's a rental car!
We get all the way down close to the end of the road - we can see the lighthouse in the distance - and we start to notice a large amount of strange waves in the water. The waves where actually being caused by Humpback whales, LOTS OF WHALES!!! There must have been well over a hundred of them out there. They come in to feed on the Caplin (there are other spellings for these fish), they herd them up and race up through the middle and breech as they grab a mouthful of fish. It's almost impossible to get a good shot of these buggers with 60 MPH winds blowing you around and not being able to decide where they are going to jump next.

Then it was off to Bay Bulls for the night - I'm tired of typing so you'll have to imagine the rest until tomorrow.

See Ya,

Dr.

Found it!!!

We found Cod Tongue on the menu!!!
I would describe it as a weird, kind of slippery stuff, that melts in your mouth. Actually it's pretty darn good.
Who would have thought a tongue could taste good (I wonder if the fish was thinking the same thing). Along with that we had Ramaki (ra-mah'-kee), which is scallops and bacon, Cod and Halibut for the main course and Figgy Duff for desert. Figgy is what they call raisins and duff is steamed bread pudding topped with molasses (damn that's good stuff....right).
Every place we go they play Newfie music which is fine with us since it's basically bluegrass and Irish music melded together with Newfie humor and songs of the sea.

Stuffed Squid

We stopped in Badger for gas and lunch, luckily not visa versa. Delicious squid stuffed with stuffing, turkey stuffing. Tonight, perhaps the delicacy cod tongue.

Dildo..........What?

OK, We're back. Today wasn't all that exciting since we had to drive from Gros Morne this morning to........................................................are you ready for this? Dildo (WHO NAMED THIS TOWN?)

Anyway, after about 6 hours of driving we made it to the Avilon Peninsula. While the scenery, and especially the clouds where amazing along the trek, I'm not going to focus all that much on todays adventure.

But all is not lost for those few interested in our adventure; since Sue didn't have access to the pictures last night when she made the post, I'll just go back and add a few.

All is well here!

Some Newfie Flora...

Gros Morne: Day Two

These people up here are MAD hikers. Their calf muscles are the size of Volkswagons. We're a bit hurting after yesterdays hikes so today "Susie" gets to shop! Newfy by the way should be Newfie... We toured the Marine Station today, it was very informative and hands on. The tours were led by students, that was cute and nice to see kids turned on to their environment. If we learned anything aboot (Newfie speak) Newfies is  they are a very proud people. More than a handful refer to Labrador and Newfoundland as accepting the rest of Canada in 1949, rather then them being accepted as part of Canada. They prefer to be an entity onto themselves!

Pictured below is next to the Marine Station.

We went to a site of a 1919 shipwreck, all survived and a baby made it to shore in a mailbag. 90 years later remnants of the wreck are still strewn about the shore. The rocks there were amazing! Some were perfectly round, others an amazing mix of colors.

Shipwreck...

Shipwreck. Amazing to see the engine block here as well as the crank laying inside.

Check out these rocks. The amazing thing is that if you zoom in to look at the smallest of rocks they all have the same charactoristics - just smaller...

We also toured a former summer fishing site. Three brothers, 3 wives, four children came to Brooms Point every summer to fish Salmon and Cod and trap lobster. They all stayed in a 4 room house, (3 bedrooms and a main living area). It was a family business that was described as viable. The summer garden on the beach had cabbage, beets, carrots, parsnips and turnips. They also brought chickens from the winter home so they could have eggs. The family fished for 34 years, 1941 til 1975. Before roads existed the cod was salted and the salmon canned on site; the lobsters were shipped live.

Somewhere in between we stopped and checked out a lighthouse, just thought I should add it...

Tomorrow we head to the western part of the Avalon Peninsula or the Irish Loop. If we haven't mentioned it, the Irish/Scottish influence is everywhere- terrain, food and language.
We came across and interesting phrase for CRS, "His head is like a brewis net". It is the same as saying a mind is like a sieve. They soak the hard tac or hard bread in a net so in the morning they can pull up the net and drain the bread. Then the bread  is added to cod, pork fat and butter to make the classic fish and brewis or fishermen brewis (brooze).A truly great "peasant" dish!

Sunday and Monday... Glovertown to Gros Morne.

Ok, so I missed a day. I'll start with Sunday and make it quick (you would be amazed how much time it takes to do this blog with converting the pictures and........ahhhhh Shut Up and get to it).

We left pretty early Sunday out of Glovertown with the intention of getting to Gros Morne just after noon since the weather forecast didn't look promising for the next couple days. This way we could get in a decent hike or something before checking in at the inn. The first place we took an interest in along the route was a pull off called Joey's Lookout (pictured below) that overlooks the town of Gambo. It's a shame the pictures don't really show the depth of what a wide expanse this lookout covers (can't wait to get home and work on the panoramas I took). The center of the picture is about a mile away.

We kept driving until we just about got to the entrance of Gros Morne NP (about 4 hrs. or so). Just a side note; the drive itself is rather incredible with scenery everywhere, The Rock is one giant Boreal Forest that is so thick you would have a hard time crawling through the brush.

Just before the park entrance we saw an info center and we thought, yeah we could use some info.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my rain jacket is more a sponge than anything, so I asked the info girl where I could stop and get some packable rain gear since the forecast looked dismal. She said that the closest place would be in Corner Brook about a half hour out of the way at a place called Canadian Tarr. So off to Corner Brook we go. Found the place and it's called Canadian TIRE, and it's a ripoff - $200 bucks for some rain gear??? I saw a Wally World (Walmart) when we pulled in so as much as we hate to go there - Sam Walton saved me about $100.

Back to Gros Morne we go, what should have taken 5 hours took about 8. Stopping off at the overlooks in the park (pictured below) proved amazing and our Burnside host must have been watching over us again because the weather broke as we entered the park and the sun came out for the rest of the day.

This is where we caught a glimpse of our first Moose! He was bedded down among the pines waiting for the sun to drop a bit more before venturing out onto the roadways.

Then to our destination for the next three days, Neddies Harbour Inn in Norris Point. The picture below is an overlook of the town. The next is the view from the front of the Inn.

Day Two (Monday)

Up early to find a good place to hike. First place we stopped was called the Table Lands (pictured below). Very interesting area of The Rock, the only place other than the cities that I haven't seen dense forest. This is the area of NF that the plate tectonics are alive and well. OK, it's not alive but very active as you can see from the earths mantle being pushed up. This is actually part of the Appalachian Mountains. We hiked to the end of the trail and headed off to find greener pastures.

You would think that greener pastures would be at a place called Green Gardens, well, it is greener but you have to hike a mile or so to get over the mountain and mantle (shown below; the little things in the background would be the parking lot with a dozen or more cars) and then down into the forest along what is termed a "moderate" trail. The Canadian definition of a moderate trail doesn't equate to the US Webster edition. 

This trail leads to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and some beautiful worthwhile views. The nice green slope in the background is loaded with sheep (probably can't see them in this shot but I took some closeups and not only are they on the slope, but the rocks below have some fuzzy white things laying around also). One hiker we passed told us about a couple moose that are laying below the falls on the beach, apparently they had fallen off the cliff also. 

Enough for now, tomorrow is a new day

See ya!

Terra Nova - Burnside - Glovertown

Found some of my roots today, kind of a strange feeling to stand in the spot my Grandfather stood when he was a boy. Born just after the turn of last century, the view he saw as a child probably wasn't much different from what we saw today. A small fishing village nestled among the rocks and regrown trees. As history goes, the town of Squid Tickle burned to the ground, along with all 24 of the resident homes, back in 1924. The government gave the people of the town a huge gift to get them started again under a "Fire sufferers relief fund" all toll it included $12, a stove (not sure if it was a new stove or not) and a "bedstead". No wonder it was time for most of the residents to pick up and leave.

The town was renamed Burnside after the fire (I like Squid Tickle myself). Just for clarification, a tickle in this case would be a small cove protected from the large open water.

We talked to a number of folks from the town and local area and even met a women who said her Godmother was a Brown (my mothers side of the family), I'll have to do a bit more research to see if it's the same Browns but seems strange that more than one group with the same name would be in the area. Also found the original cemetery with a couple tombstones with the name Brown on them.

Left town after a few hours and hit the road again to make it to Glovertown before the moose came out. Seems a good idea since a judge we met, Shamus from St. John's, told us that there are 200,000 moose in the country and 500,000 people. Figuring in body mass and shear size, I think it's only a matter of time before the moose take over.

On the way to the place we were staying we stopped in a little place to eat on the water, Whimsical Cove Rock Cafe, where I was able to try a dish I've heard my Mom speak of since I can remember - Fish and Brewis (pronounced "brews"). I could live on this stuff!!! They let salted cod and hard tack (also known as hard bread up here) sit in water for about 24 hrs. after which they add salt pork and bring it to a boil. It might not sound that good and I'm sure I didn't get the recipe perfect but I'll tell you that it is amazingly tasty, especially with a bit of molasses drizzled over the top. Sounds like it might stop an average mans heart but from how old the folks in the cemetery were, hard work and good living should counteract any ill effects of salt and pig fat.

Well, we have a long ride tomorrow heading out to Gros Morne and the weather may take a turn for the worse so we have to go early and try to get a few good pictures. The weather has been a bit of a struggle but the sun came out the whole time we where in Burnside so I figure someone must be watching over.

Thanks Grandpa!