28. St. Anthony, Newfoundland

July 25, 2011. Travel day, Rocky Point to St. Anthony Newfoundland

 ……….”Huston, we got a problem…………….. Well, it’s not as bad as Apollo 13, but it’s a pretty big deal to me. We were enjoying a beautiful ride along the Gulf of St. Laurence coast admiring the rocky coast line and the little villages when a little beyond the half way point a dog ran out in front of me. I hit the brakes as fast and as hard as I could but the dog hit the grill. We thought for sure the dog was dead but to our surprise we saw him on the other side of the road barking at us. We got out and found some broken and cracked fiberglass and fortunately, no damage to the radiator or oil cooler. The owner was there, he said it was his fault and we exchanged names and addresses. He had no insurance, in fact it looked liked he had very little of anything, so I’ll just have to do the repair on my dime. When we got to the camp ground we first had to do some sightseeing then we (me and several of the guys in the caravan) temporarily put things together with plastic ties and duck tape. It doesn’t look too bad but there are fairings behind the exterior surface that broke and broke loose. It will be a bugger to get access and fix these fairings.

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Now for the sight seeing part. We were told there were some ice bergs in a place called Goose Cove we were off to see them. These were much larger than the ones we saw at Twillingate. IN fact a local told us the story that “all the bergs come to St. Anthony first and when we’re done with then we send on to Twillingate” Sounds like there is a bit of rivalry going on.

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There was one ice berg that was really long. One guy estimated it at a half mile long/. It did look like it had two objects on it. From a distance the one on the right looked like a house and the one on the left, like a barn. Up close it was just ice.

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July 26. The next day we went to L’Anse aux Meadows which is the location of a settlement of Norsemen that predates Columbus by about 500 years.

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The site was discovered after years of research and exploring by Anne and Helge Ingstad. There is nothing left of the original buildings other than mounds of soil that outline where the walls stood. They did find evidence of an ironworks where they made nails that were used to repair their ships.

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 There was replica of the type of building the Norse built. The walls were about 6 feet thick, the roof was wood frame covered with sod. There was a fire pit inside with a chimney/vent to let the smoke out.

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There are people dressed in the clothes of the day. I was impressed by the way they explained the site and their ability to tell stories. The guy at this site was really good. He pulled you into the story and kept me there until it was time to go.

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The next stop was a Viking village replica. The buildings were of similar construction and they were staffed with Canada Parks employees. There was one building where a woman was demonstrating how the fried bread. No samples though………………

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After lunch it was back t Goose Cove to see the ice bergs. They are constantly changing shape and orientation as pieces break off and the ice melts. There was one ice berg that appeared to have big cracks. Some one said that what appeared to be a crack was clear ice. I took some close ups but after looking at them I think they look like cracks to me.

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Our final stop for the day was the “Grenfell Experience”.  Dr. Grenfell began hi work int his area as a physician-preacher in 1889. He spent his life working to improve the lives of the fishermen and their families. Tending to their medical needs, he was given an auxiliary steam yacht named the Strathcona. It served as a floating dispensary, ambulance, hospital, magistrate’s court, freighter and passenger vessel. After serving for 24 years, she sank in a gale off Cape Bonavista.

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 Shortly after we returned to the campground everyone’s attention was drawn to a moose that was within 15–20 feet of the RV’s. At first everyone tip-toed to get a look  and take pictures but it became apparent that the moose was totally unfazed by us standing and watching him munching on leaves and plants. It was quite an experience to be so near an animal like that.

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In the evening we went to dinner at a Viking Long House restaurant. It was a buffet but with Cod Tongue and salted Capelin appetizers, with foods like a Jiggs dinner consisting of salt beef, cabbage, potatoes, turnips, carrots.  Brewis, which is hard bread, salt cod boiled together with salt pork, a roast beef and stew.

After dinner mock trials were held. It was an impromptu affair where a person at a table was accused of a crime by his companions and witnesses were called and a judgement made by the group. Guilt or innocence was determined by how loud the noise, made by banging on the tables, was. Great fun. The light was very low, picture not too good but you can get the idea.

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There are more pictures at: http://summer2011jb.shutterfly.com/pictures/3020

Gander, Twillingate and Rocky Harbour, Newfoundland

July 18, 2001. Monday we traveled from Bonavista to Gander where we visited and air museum and went to the Silent Witness  Memorial.

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The Silent Witness Memorial honors the 256 members of the 101^st Airborne Division that died in the crash of an Arrow Air charter plane on Dec. 12, 1985.

There is a statue of and unarmed American soldier holding the hands of a boy and a girl, who at one time, each held an olive branch. The olive branch signifies the peacekeeping mission the soldiers were returning from in the Sinai peninsula.  The boy and girl now hold American Flags and the girl has the remnants of the olive branch. The statues are looking in the direction of Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

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Gander pictures are at: http://summer2011jb.shutterfly.com/pictures/2984

July 19. Tuesday morning we were off to Twillingate, NL which calls itself the “Iceberg Capital of the World”.

They really do have ice bergs here. As we were setting up one of our group started hollering about an ice berg, we could see it from the campground although it was a good distance away from us. The next morning as we were driving to see a place called Prime Berth we saw a couple more in the bay

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Prime Berth is a fishing museum created by David Boyd, who is also a fisherman. Due to quotas set by the department of Fisheries, he makes his quota in just a few days fishing and so has plenty of time to run the museum.

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  He works at getting the message out about what is happening to the fisheries. He told us about a fish called the Capelin. It is a member of the smelt family and is an essential part of the food chain, eaten by whales, seals, cod, squid, mackerel and seabirds. Besides being used for fish meal and fish oil products, apparently the roe of this fish has become a delicacy. The roe is mixed with wabasi and sold as wasabi caviar. Huge numbers are caught and his fear is that the schools will be decimated as the cod were. If that would happen it would impact all the other fish that depend on the capelin for food.

The museum has many artifacts, one being a 50 foot whale skeleton. Boyd found it dead and now has the skeleton on display. There was another man there who told stories, sang a few songs about Newfoundland and played an instrument called an “Ugly Stick” which, when used properly, could find it’s way into a percussion section of a band.

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The baleen from the whale was quite stiff, Boyd also demonstrated how to prepare a cod for salting, which preserved the cod for long periods of time. Salt Cod was a major industry before the fishing ban went into effect.

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Our next stop was the Durrell Museum which is situated on a hill with the name of “Old Maid”. It over looks a harbor and many of us took the time for pictures before we went into the museum. 

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The museum had many displays, one that caught my attention was the story of polar bears that found their way to Twillingate. The first one had to be put down while it was possible to tranquilize the second and move it safely away.

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The final stop, not counting the one for ice cream, was at the Long Point Light House.

The terrain is extremely rugged but there are many hiking trails for those with strong legs and good  knees. At the base of a cliff we could see a chunk of ice from a former ice berg.

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Thursday was our last day in Twillingate. We went on a whale / iceberg watching boat and had what was probably, for us, a once in a lifetime experience. We came up to a small ice berg, circled around for pictures.

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Notice how the water has melted the ice causing an overhang.  As the boat turned away we heard a loud sound, something between a long cracking and a bang. As we all looked toward the ice berg we could see a big chunk of it breaking off and falling into the water. None of us were fast enough to get a picture of the chuck falling but here is a sequence that shows what happened after. These first two show the ice berg before and just after the chunk falls into the water. The chunk is submerged and some of the spay is seen.

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Having lost the weight of the chunk of ice the ice berg rocks backward and forward as the chunks of ice now float away. By the way, the boat captain wasted no time in moving further away.

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Later as we were inbound we saw that the iceberg had changed positions owning to the change in its center of gravity and buoyancy. Shortly after that we did see a small whale.

 

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We went to another ice berg that looked like a solid block from a distance but surprisingly changed shape as we went around it. There was even a face looking at us. There are more pictures of this ice berg on line.

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We ended the day at a small theater in Twillingate where we saw a group of seven women called the “Spit Peas” play their instruments and sing, several song being folk songs about life in the Maritimes and Twillingate. One of the members wrote several of the songs. We enjoyed their music so much that we bought one of their CD’s.

July 22, Friday. We drove, while tapping our toes to the Split Peas CD, to Rocky Harbour, a town in Gros Morn National Park. BTW the most expensive gas, so far, has been $5.14 per gallon for regular.

Twillingate pictures are at: http://summer2011jb.shutterfly.com/pictures/2863

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We are here for three nights and will leave here Monday, July 25 for St. Anthony NL. We did some sight seeing in the park, stopped at the Visitors Center to watch an excellent movie about the park and did some cleaning of the motor home, washing clothes and relaxing. This area was settled by the French and name Gros Morne. Gros Morne translated is supposed to mean “Big Hill”. Here is a picture of it.

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 July 24. After dinner we took a ride to look for moose. There are supposed to be about 5000 in the park. It was approximately 8:45 PM when we spotted two of them.

 

Tomorrow we leave for St. Anthony. That will be our furthest point on this trip. After that we start heading back toward Hermon Maine where the caravan will disband.