Images,

As we researched NFLD prior to the trip, we became aware that in the not too distant past, the people here have to a very large extent lost a lot of their way of life. 

1949, there was a vote to join Canada or not..  51% to 49% yes!!  this is still highly emotive here, and clearly a lot of resentment and debate. Then, in the last couple of decades or so, the cod fishery was shut down, which effectively ended the lifestyle of almost everyone here.

The almost forced shutting down of a large number of "outports" (little fishing villages with only sea access) that had started a generation or two ago is still a shadow as well.

We visited the local (and national) Museum today, (WAY better than Te Papa)  and one of the most poignant displays was some simple images of the recent past, with "PostIt" notes added by visiting folk (clearly locals) commenting about all of the above. Pretty gutsy messages about losing their liviehoods, culture and family.

This first image and note kind of sums it up.  And they really did tow their houses behind ships, or pull them across the frozen sea with the resettlement.

This next photo, shows a house above the Twilligate bay area, it was pulled up there manually after having also been pulled over the frozen sea..  it took 500 men a number of weeks to do it!

Amazingly, this house was pulled manually, across frozen
sea, from it's original site, and somehow,
 hauled up this very steep hill!

Battery Hill..  and Ali, balancing in the wind!!

Pretty basic sighting system. But the targets
were large!

King Lear,  by the locals,
with the national museum building in the background.

Last day in the West!

Rain, basically..  pretty much sum's up the day!  Still went for an educational tour with the Parks Canada geologist lady and a bunch of folks into the Tablelands which is one of the best places in  the world to see a chunk of the earths mantle (normally under the earth's crust) and have the rock stuff explained to you in "geology for dummies 101".  It worked!  I now know a teensy bit about a teensy bit of the earth's rocks.  And, then..  we were off to do the boat trip up Western Brook pond (landlocked fiord)  but that got cancelled cos of..  rain, low cloud, fog and all that wet grey stuff that you don't want when you are sightseeing.  We did see a moose, up close and personal this time, and also an Arctic hare. The last was lucky the .22 wasn't with me, or it might have been "jugged" tonight for dinner :)

Anyhow..  we are now all showered, dressed in our best crumpled up travelling and living in a suitcase clothes and off to the local diner for moose burgers, or moose stew or even possibly moose soup!  Will report later.  In the meantime, here is a few more photos of recent highlights and sunsets.

Rocky Harbour from the lighthouse.
Gros Morne rocky mountain, left . 

Lovely little fixer upper for fisher folk
 at Green Point

Nice spot, Green Point
Geology World heritage site

What's to interpret??

a gizzillion Gannets and other sea birds
with some of the team counting them!!

About 9:35pm at St Brides, Southeast coast.
 Avalon Peninsula

Catching Caplin

Two cast's to fill the bucket. Jigger the dog.

Caplin after spawning mostly die on the beach.

The boys catching caplin,
cheered on by their Dad

Another tourist shop.
 Nice that most of the stuff was really localAdd caption

Very typical West coast Newfoundland 

Do Not Mess with Moose!

Happy moose.

Arctic "could have been jugged" hare.

Last Sunset 

Highs and Lows

The team made it to the top of Gros Morne yesterday despite high winds and a complete lack of AliVin.  Impressive really, as without our input they seem a little aimless. Well, ok, that might be a little overstating it, but as we know they will likely read this, it is nice to wind them up, and one or two are a lot more aimless than the rest :)  They reported stunning views, and winds  that made it difficult to stand up in. They thought Ali may have actually been blown off. Ali thought that very kind of them!!!

Getting up that mountain is technically straightforward enough, but not for the faint hearted or unfit.  The signs make it very clear (Strenuous to Very Strenuous) that unless you are prepared, and have all the right gear it really is not a good idea to head on up. A bit like Egmont really, easy to access, pretty steep, and if you are unlucky, it just might turn into the last thing you do, should the weather change.
Also, just like Mt Egmont, there were people going up who were either clearly not the bodyshape one might expect to be climbing a seriously big hill, or who had totally inappropriate gear. Of course the continent of North America is where the Darwin Awards were invented, and it is visible on the horizon.

So we left Twillingate a couple of days ago, and at high speed, headed over here on the TCH (google it!) Luckily, the number of RCMP (again, google!!) are low, and in fact we never saw any, maybe we were just going too fast.
At one of the diners we stopped at, I asked the woman behind the counter how one could win the "Trucker of the week" referring to her whiteboard sign. "Well, first you have to have a truck" was her reply, which was another of the very fast responses; with humour, that we have had to what might be considered silly questions.
The people here really do like a good joke. "oh, that, well it's a vapmire cow" was the answer to the "what is that statue thingy up there on the hill beside the santa statue!!!  Apparently the old bloke who made the wooden statues thought that the run of the mill animals that accompany santa were a little dull, so he added a little something extra.

On the other hand, this sign isn't a joke, and clearly the locals are not about to modify an historic name just because... well, maybe they should!



 They probably get a giggle out of it as well as the rest of us! I mean, how many times have you seen people running hold one? Maybe it is an annual event, with prizes and everything, possibly even local dishes named after it, a beauty pageant..  oh dear, I think I better stop!





So Ali and I went on one of the Ranger guided trips to a geological site on the coast that is world renowned as a benchmark against which all other fossil finds of similar type are compared to assess age. These trips are free (or included in the park entrance fee) and are brilliant. I won't try and regale you with all the detail, but the strata in the photos are around the 500 millioon year old mark, and every step we took, was around 500 000 years!  The fossils were easy to find amongst the shale. Sadly, we were not allowed to take our findings home.

Old seabed getting younger from right to left at
about  1000000years per metre!  Oh, and Ali :)

Dave, the head ranger, showing us the animal,
the fossilised mouthparts of which are famous
 amongst the scientific folk.

Anyway, I now have to get ready to get wet,
as it is finally raining. A few of us are off to check out another
little walk, with a ranger, to have a look around some of the
earths mantle!  should be interesting.  will report later. after we  get back from a boat trip on Western Brook pond!  This is actually a huge inland fiord.

“It’s English Jim, but not as we know it”

Sorry, but if the text on some of this seems to be in a white highlight!!!  I have no idea why  :)  and we have to get going, as Beck is cooking dinner and we'll be in trouble.  We are in a little cafe in Twillingate. Just been watching locals catching Capelin in the surf..  and it is unseasonably hot!  Look up capelin on google  :)



Bear Cove is a nice place to stop and take int the view of yet another lovely rocky bay, dotted with brightly coloured square two storied houses and a few small fishing boats moored to various designs of wharf structures. I was taking all this in when up walks Mr "I’ve lived here all my life and now I am retired". 


As far as I could tell, there was no “good morning” or “hi, where are you from” he seemed to just launch into a low muttering cascade of what were clearly words being strung together with quite a speed and such an accent as to make it almost impossible for me to pick up on more than a small percent of  what he was saying. I had to just stand there and drop in the odd “oh really”,  “yes”  or “I’m sure”  just to try and be polite. However, the longer he talked (and he did a lot of it) the more I began to  pick up on what he was conveying.



Apparently, he’d grown up in the little settlement of Ferryland (no kidding, that is a real place!!) and had had to move away once the fishing was stopped, and then I got some history about the Catholic church being banned, and Mass being a covert operation behind the church in a grotto somewhere, people processing (again covertly) and then about the lack of capelin (a small fish that used to arrive by the gizzillion annually to spawn on the rocky beaches) and I am sure I missed quite a lot of other interesting information, when after about 15 minutes, he quietly mumbled a goodbye, and wandered back to his car.

 I did get that he always drove out there in the morning for a little walk and to watch the sea.  No names exchanged, no handshake just a wee break in his probably predictable day. Pity I couldn’t get past his extremely strong Irish sounding accent.

We have been, for the past 4 days in the “Irish Loop”, and Ferryland was first settled in the early 1600’s, then the French destroyed it, and somewhere along the line, Lord Baltimore (yes, of the state of same name) set up a settlement, and in some form or other it has managed to continue until the present day.

Yesterday Ferryland was  doing a lot more than “continuing” as the annual fair was on. The main attraction was the music, which is definitely Irish in origin. Apparently (I actually missed it) on of the highlights was a young bloke who won the “Accordian Idol” and had a voice like Johnny Cash!

I did walk out to the very pretty lighthouse, and saw a few minke whales. They are not my favourite, as they don’t really produce a spout, and mostly, you just see their back and small dorsal fin as they cruise along chasing dinner, as opposed to the humpback which seems to be a lot more visible, produces a large misty spray with each breath which is powerful enough that you can here them from quite a distance.

Also, visited Cape Race which is famous for being the first place to hear the distress call from the Titanic, and also the closest land to the ship.  At pretty much the same spot we walked across what is pretty much tundra, to a site where some of the oldest fossils ever found are clearly visible. We got to wear special little slippers and walk around the site. I guess if you were really into fossil’s, it would be a real treat, but quite frankly, being that there were no huge dinosaur teeth or suchlike, I would have preferred a nice coffee! Well, at least while I had a look at the fossils!

RK news..  Not much really. Just one hare, and some unidentifiable small rodent thingy! Not quite as interesting as the USA squished things!  We did see a large bull moose, but he was not inclined to get near the road, which is a good thing, as the outcome of hitting one of those is not good!

No Whales or other large mammals!!!

Ok, first day we've been here and not seen a whale!  Darn.  still it's been a nice day, with breakfast being the start of many moments of hilarity with someone burning the porridge! and Bill being as always very hard to fill up! "That bye can eat"  (an attempt at Newfie slang.  not good!)

Guess??? There were 1000's of these,
and a handful of Bald Eagles at an Island we  went past.  Fast Food for Eagles!

Photo essay today...

Heading out to see Puffins, and NOT whales!!

All untreated wood!!

Very typical coastal scene. 

Was a home, wrecked in a storm.

hard photo to get!

Once the site of a small fishing community. Destroyed by storm 1966?

A Local!

Atlantic, Meet my feet!  COLD!

One to take home :)

Where are those whales???

Excellent rooms at the Brown Rabbit.

"Hi Ali"

We walked through LOTs of this 

Whales, wheels, puffins, moose and mice.

The thing about driving on the wrong side of the road is that you seem to be the only one who realises it is wrong.  All the other drivers have no trouble at all staying on that other side, which is where you would like to be, but as they are all coming towards you, clearly it is not a good idea. Also, despite knowing the steering wheel isn’t in the passenger seat, one cannot help but instinctively head for that side of the vehicle. At least, being as I am the nominated driver of one of our cars, I do not have to sit in said passenger seat, gripping the sides as if I am trying to remodel the upholstery, and stomping on an imaginary brake pedal while some other poor sod tries to stay in the right hand lane. Anyway, so far, so good, haven’t hit anything or anyone, and the car is still unmarked! Scary thing is, we’ve hardly driven anywhere yet!
 Looking out the window of our very cosy cabin here at the Brown Rabbit Camp site, I can see that today, I will have to figure out how to get the windscreen wipers going. I have managed to get the rear window wiper; wiping, but that was a mistake, and I had to enlist the help of co pilot Wayne to get the darn thing to cease it’s unnecessary dancing!

So we are out of the big smoke of At Johns, and now some distance (not great) south. Had an epic shopping trip with Beck’s in charge of the “List” while Wayne and I skilfully drove two huge shopping carts around the Scoby mart. To ensure someone would find me in the event the inevitable happened, I lifted a perfectly innocent Helium filled love heart ($5) on a long sting, and attached it to the cart. “Hey Becks, if I get lost, just look for my heart”  how sweet. Totally lost on her, as chef was busy ticking off items on her really loooong list!  Ah well!

Shopping done (about $400) and stuffed into the vehicles (really no room left anywhere, even had a lb of butter in the cup holder) we headed for this place.

This little camp is excellent. Compared to all other accommodations, this is 5 star. We may never leave!!!

A Little walk, after demolishing some of the shopping, and we are definitely in the Newfoundland that we had all expected.  Small bay, fog, thousands of seabirds, the most primal sound of a whale breathing close inshore but invisible in the mist, bright coloured old houses surrounded by tall grass and wild flowers and to top it off, out walks a moose!  Whew!

This excellent photo was taken by the legendary
outdoors photographer and all round handyman..  Kieran  :)

                                                         


On the way down here, we stopped at Cape Spear, where we had the pleasure of watching humpback whales milling around not far offshore. Whale watching like this is completely addictive. All of us agree that we could just sit at a place like that for hours, and as long as someone provided tea, coffee, sandwiches, cakes etc, we wouldn’t move! Sadly the fog horn didn't sound!










This little character had everyone excited for a bit as well.

and we finally had some real RK new to report. The car in front of us, hit and killed two , yes two in one incident..  innocent little dragon flies!!  I know this, as they sailed over it's roof to land on the road just in front of us.  I don't think anyone else noticed!  Also, there was this!!! which we decided was genuine RK action, as it was on what could be used as a road!  The fun is endless!

And today, (all that stuff above is yesterdays news)  we saw puffins!  go look them up on google..  very cute, can only just fly, live about 30 years, and swim like penguins. photos  later  :)