Into St John's

Back to reconnect with Bonnie and her family - a day of rest and then into the big city ...














Lots of colour all over St John's ... and we all loved the Rooms ... their museum on the hillside over looking the town.

  Window shopping and good food but no music

"Home" to CBS ... Conception Bay South

Leaving Botwood we headed straight to Bonnie's Steep Nap home .. 2 animal related sites on the trip back were ... the moose fatalities had gone up by 1 while we were gone, we had some fox pups who wanted to get in the van with us, well perhaps it was just food that they wanted, and we got to see a lynx streak across the road in font of us!
 
Once at Bonnie's we contacted other ex-Island friends to arrange a couple of trips into St John's and down the Avalon ...
 
In the meantime we did local trips  ...
This is the hard winter martimes  ... how long would you guess this grounded vessel has been in Conception Bay?

 

These are not dirty icebergs but some very dramatic rocks off the coastal road.

 

We hiked and geocached the beautiful Manuels River Trails system.

Walked the beaches looking for treaures and enjoying the sun and the views. 

And more  views

and more to come when we go further south.

That ship grounded around the first World war ... perhaps the small tides help. 

To Botwood

Now we know we are heading back to St John's, but where should we break the trip ... we had heard about a nice Hostel in Botwood and it wasn't far off the main road so off we headed.

Botwood has an amazing air history ... visitors who flew in were Lindberg, Churchill, Roosevelt, Bob Hope as during the war it was the terminal for trans Atlantic crossings; now it is the headquarters for travellers wanting to enjoy the Bay of Exploits a beautiful kayaking area.

We managed to get out to do a bit hiking in this area

 Only later did we hear one story of this area, from Bonnie's pal, Donna .... we were close but didn't know it.

  Donna's parents [her 18 year old mother was sent to the Black Islands Outport to teach ... and her father watched as the young teacher scrambled off the boat - he knew she was the one for him ... he was right, they married and began their family] Then with wee kids in tow they were moved from the outport to the "mainland" of the Harbour, where they struggled to get shelter for the growing family, get in gardens and earn a living. The first winter the roof blew off their house!
It is hard to understand the resilience of these Newfoundlanders, even today! Donna now travels to the old place for much of the summer. We are so thankful that Bonnie shared her family and friends with us.

A word about signs in Newfoundland  ... they have lots, some tell stories about the area, some tell you how many traffic fatalities involving moose, some give road directions and then there are the trail signs, often beautiful but distances given were often confusing ... 2 k. to go or have have we 2k. perhaps it was just we islanders, who have no trail distance signs!

To the Outport community of Ramea, Sept. 2013

Our first marine adventure in NFLD, originally there had been the possibility of a day trip with Bonnie on Eb tide  [but a freak accident and near disaster changed that].

We had the schedule and just enough time to fit it all in ... a 2 hr trip [very rough] from Burgeo to Ramea then a tour of Ramea .... overnight at a hostel then back to the mainland [even though NFLD is an island]. Very fast trip but very small place.

 Since Joey Smallwood days the move as been afoot to close down the outports and move folks to the towns ... cheaper, easier for services! Apparently many folks took the buy-outs to relocate but go back in the summers on holiday.

This is a small community of about 500 .... a great place to summer but maybe not to winter!
They have great boardwalks and trails around the whole island and make there own power! The wind blows a lot in Nfld.

 We had a rolling sea for our return to Burgeo ... where we landed and headed back to return a motel key in Deer Lake, an inland community, east of Grosse Morne, and then on to Botwood.

Burgeo ...

After a stop at Walmart, on Labour Day, looking for shoes ... a failure not open in NFLD we continued on to Burgeo and on the wide southern coast line ... this was to be our jump off to one of the few outports left.

We loved Burgeo; the town itself was charming

We did not see at lot of sand in Newfoundland but what we did was great ... Sand Hills Park ... with lots of trails ... both wooden, across the dunes or on the beaches.

 Pitcher plant ... the provincial flower were in the lowlands behind the beaches.

Berries ... some were familiar ... along many trails we ate partridge berries  [lingonberries/cranberries] blueberries, raspberries ... didn't eat these bunchberries.

 This is an old historical part of North America ... Canada was just a few months old when William died

 Now we are ready to head to Ramea, an outport island town about 2 hours away via this provincial coastal ship ...  cost about $15.00 for the van and 5 passengers!

Northward to St Anthony's and Ice Berg Alley

Weather forecast showed that the weather would worsen, so off we head up the Northern  Peninsula ... in heavy mists and threatening rain.

Our destination is St Anthony and a visit to L'Anse aux Meadows .... the first Viking settlement on the continent.  We were very lucky as when we pulled into our wonderful Lyn's B&B she encouraged us to go right away as the weather was great at that moment ... so after negotiating our beds off we went.

The  Iceberg Alley part of St Anthonys is its location on the tip of the Northern Peninsula and the jumping off spot for Labrador. We were there on the Labour Day weekend ... no late bergs and no early ones either but we were able to succeed at the Iceberg Alley geocache, having walked the trails and read all the signs.

 After our very best breakfast was at Lyn's B&B where she regaled us with stories of her and her mother's connection to the Grenfell family; our next stop was the Grenfell Museum. Lyn also shared with us some $96.00 a gallon Bakeapple jam [there had been a local crop [cloudberries] failure so it had to be imported from Labrador]

The Grenfell Society has created a wonderful museum complex to celebrate this amazing man's life and a snapshot look of the area during his lifetime ... to learn just a little read his story Adrift of an Ice Flow ....

Now we are retracing some of our trip as we head back down the peninsula then past Cornerbrook and on to Burgeo ... this was Bonnie's reccomendation ... thanks so much for this advice.

Grose Morne area ...

After leaving the Bonivista Penninsula we head, in our very fancy van, [it had to shut its own doors!] with George driving and Pat as co-pilot and moose spotter ... loaded with junk food, to the west ....

On our way to the theatre we stop at the beach ... beaches there are different from ours, shapes and colours, tides, etc.! At the terrific theatre performance we met folks who had lived in Sewell and seat mates who knew locals in QCC!

 Arches Park was one stop on the way northward .. can you tell where the name came from?

 Geocaching took us to some great spots ... they have geocaching listed in their tourist magazines
















We drove around this large inlet where you can almost see the amazing headlands surrounding the area.

Unfortuneately the poorest weather we had was in the Grose Morne area ... we missed one of the most impressive views which was looking inward towards the cliffs while heading northward on the coastal road to St Anthony's. But we did finally get to see a ........

Would love to go back to this area in particular ... as it was a bit rainy so we took the opportunity to do their terrific Visitor Centre, even had the staff singing for us, we went to Woody Point and saw great local arts etc., had great conversations, the locals are so friendly.

Next we head upward to iceberg alley ....