Travels with Gunther and Kara

With two days left in Quirpon NL…we just had two remaining Fun Stuff© things to take care of…so on Monday we took care of the first of them…a visit to the Viking…or more properly Norse…settlement site…or more properly base camp…at l’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site…which is also designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 10 klicks northwest of Quirpon on the coast…I’ll discuss both of those “more properly” statements in a bit. Then on Tuesday we’ll do laundry as our hamper is getting full…when it’s cold you need to wear more clothes and most of the time we’re in a jeans with a t-shirt covered by a sweatshirt/rugby shirt and then a hoodie over the top of that…it’s not the temperature as much as the wind and the wind chill it causes. After laundry…we’ll head back down in late afternoon for a return visit to Fisherman’s Point where we were yesterday to attend the Viking Dinner Theater.

Ok…let’s talk about first those two “more properly” things and then about the settlement a bit.

First up…Norse versus Vikings…let’s straighten that out first. As the guy in the movie at the l’Anse aux Meadows (it’s pronounced like lance ah meadows…hey, it’s French) World Heritage site said…Vikings sounds so much more cool than Norsemen that the term Vikings is generically used. But here’s the deal…they were Norsemen first and Vikings second. Norsemen…and Norsewomen of course…are a Germanic strain of European stock that populated the Scandinavian countries. Most people think that they’re Norse because they come from Norway…but they actually inhabited Sweden and Denmark as well as Norway…and like most people everywhere…they were farmers, herdsmen, hunters, smiths, ironworkers and all the other occupations a culture needs to survive. However…they also invented the famous Viking longboat with the dragon prow, shields on the sides, and red and white striped seals in about the year 850AD or so…and like a lot of people back at that time they went on raids…and called themselves Vikings when they were on their raiding trips. They pillaged along all of the northern coastline of Europe and the UK as well as the Baltic Sea and into the Mediterranean all the way to the Middle East…while others went on first exploration journeys and then settlement journeys to Iceland about a week or so’s travel from Norway, then on to Greenland, and eventually on to North America as I’ll talk about in a bit. So Norse was their nationality and Viking is kind of a period term for what we would call SEAL Teams today I guess…they were raiders but also explorers and traders. So that’s the first “more properly” taken care of…you should use either term for them depending on what portion of their culture and activities you’re referring to.

The second “more properly” is whether the building site here at l’Anse aux Meadows is a settlement or not…and there it’s really a matter of semantics. Settlements are intended to be long term colonies with a permanent presence and hence have fields to farm, livestock, women and children and all the other accoutrements of what one would call home. A base camp is a temporary living arrangement so you don’t have to sleep on the ground while you’re temporarily in a location for whatever reason.

So…why in the heck would anybody want to settle here in northern Newfoundland…it’s cold and windy…but we know the answer to that question now. After the successful establishment of colonies on Iceland and the southwest corner of Greenland…the guy in charge of the Greenland was a guy you’re probably heard of…his name was Erik Thorvaldsson…also known as Erik the Red. Turns out that the colony in Greenland was short of a few things they really needed…wood for one and iron for another. Wood to make structures and boats and iron to make most importantly nails for doing boat repairs and secondarily weapons to defend the colony. So Erik the Red decided that instead of the long voyage back to Iceland…which had some wood but no iron…or back to Scandinavia…which had both…to undertake a voyage to the west to see what he could find. Old Erik mounted, manned, and equipped an expedition…but then on the way down to the pier to leave his horse stumbled. He decided this was a bad omen…why no one is really sure as by this time most of the Norse had become Christians but they still devoted a lot of time to pleasing Odin and the other gods I guess…anyway as it was a bad omen he decided not to lead the expedition but to send his son instead…another guy you might have heard of named Leif Eiriksson. His last name was different because he was Erik’s son…hence Eiriks-son or Eiriksson…don’t ask me why dad’s first name and son’s first name are spelled different…it’s just because. The Old Norse spelling is Eirikr…so that explains the son’s spelling but dad’s name has been Anglicized over the years I guess.

So old Leif headed out with the expedition…and since the Norse mostly operated along the coastline and followed currents…and since he didn’t really know what was to the west of Greenland at all…left port in Greenland and proceeded up the west side of Greenland a bit until they saw land to the west according to the Norse sagas anyway…but the land is about 300 miles away so he must have had an inkling it was there…anyway they went up the Davis Strait a bit then west to what is now known as Baffin Island…and turned south along the coast. At the southern end of the island he continued south across to the northern tip of what is now Labrador and continued south until about even with the north end of Newfoundland. There was plenty of timber available on Labrador…but they could see land across the sea to the east and wondered what was there…so they crossed over to Newfoundland and landed somewhere around 1,000AD.

Now the climate was warmer 1,000 years ago…and the land here at l’Anse aux Meadows was lower as it hadn’t finished rising back from being depressed by the last ice age…so the beach was a little farther inland than now and the bay was a bit deeper than it is now. What they found was a nice little bay protected by a couple of islands offshore…and to the west was what they thought was a fjord that was closed by land at the southern end. This body of water is the Gulf of Saint Lawrence which connects…unbeknownst to the Norse…to the Atlantic at it’s southern end. They named this area Vinland after wine…but since wild grapes have never grown on Newfoundland they must have had another reason for the name. Between that and the remains of butternuts that they found in the what I’ll call the base camp as it’s currently understood…the Norse must have explored further south into Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

There’s another story about the discovery…in the second one Leif sailed back to Norway in 999AD and converted to Christianity…and was given the mission of taking Christianity to Greenland where he lived. On the return voyage he was blown off course and came into Newfoundland from the east…sighting the entrance to what he thought was a fjord at l’Anse aux Meadows and landing there…naming the area Vinland. From the scholar’s interpretation of the two sagas…the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders…these were written down in about 1,200AD after being passed down as oral tradition for about 200 years…and from what Neil understands about the prevailing winds and currents in the Davis Strait…which are basically north to south…and based on the fact that Baffin Island off he mainland is about 300+ miles from Greenland and hence out ofd sight…the later explanation makes more sense. According to the most literal translation of the two sagas…a merchant named Bjarni Herjólfsson sighted land to the west of Greenland at an earlier date…but he didn’t land as he was hurrying home for Yuletide ale. Like much of ancient history…it’s a lot of tea leaf reading and using a very few actual facts, a few more generally supported ideas without factual evidence to back them up, and general cultural and technology capabilities to come up with a most likely scenario. According to the sagas…Leif landed first on a land he named Helluland or Flat Rock Land, likely Baffin Island, then proceeded south to a forested place he named Markland, likely Labrador, and then on to a location with a milder climate and abundant salmon he named Vinland, definitely l’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.He wintered over where he landed then headed home with knowledge of the discovery and a cargo of timber and grapes…the grapes had to have come from New Brunswick so he know he explored that far at least…and the sagas talk of explorations to the south.

So Leif and his band of probably 3 ships as there are 3 houses and Norse usually lived with one crew per house…established a base camp here to gather wood to take back to Greenland and sell…and to make at least one batch of iron to make nails to repair their ships. They were here for for awhile…long enough to build buildings at least…before sailing back to Greenland. Subsequent voyages were also made by other Norse merchants…perhaps as many as 4 in total over a period of approximately 10 years although the exact number is undetermined except for analysis of levels in the middens or garbage dumps…at which point the Norse abandoned the settlement permanently. They continued to harvest timber from Labrador for about 300 more years but the sagas talk about relations with the local indigenous people souring…in any event they left and their structures were burned…it’s not clear whether they were burned by the Norse or the natives and the sagas have no information on that.

Along in the early 1960s…a Norwegian fella had an interest in proving that the first Europeans to set foot on North America were Norse and not Christopher Columbus some 500 years later. He sailed up the Atlantic coast asking anybody who he could if they knew of any ruins in the area. He found nothing until he got to the small village of l’Anse aux Meadows…we’ve been there and it’s really small…and he found an old local man who offered to take him to what the locals called the “old Indian camp”. On arrival and seeing the remains…he immediately recognized them as Norse in character and he and his archeologist wife spent the next 7 years excavating the site to try and prove it was a Norse site.

They eventually found several artifacts that confirmed this was a Norse settlement…first up was the remains of an iron forge and since the local natives didn’t have any iron that proved it was Europeans…and then they found a Norse style cloak clasp and Norse metal tools…thus providing convincing evidence that this was a Norse settlement and it must be Leif Eiriksson’s as the sagas indicate.

The site has been completely excavated and then the original buildings reburied…3 of them have been reproduced using period Norse techniques and construction methods. It was named a World Heritage Site in 1978 and was the first Cultural World Heritage site designated…that requires a bit more explanation…don’t worry…Ima getting to photos eventually.

Some 250,000 years ago Homo Sapiens developed in central Africa and about 150,000 years ago they started migrating northwards through Africa. Once north of the Mediterranean Sea they ended up migrating in both directions…those that went east eventually populated Mongolia, China, Asia and then across the land bridge into North and South America and became the indigenous peoples of those areas. Those that went west eventually became Europeans but the Atlantic Ocean prevented humans from encircling the earth until Leif Eiriksson came along. Somewhere along these shores…probably not at l’Anse aux Meadows as although it’s been occupied for the last 6,000 years or so there were not indigenous people in this area during the time the Norse were here. They were north and south of this area…and since the Norse were both north and south of this area somewhere along the line the eastward migrating people from Africa eventually met the westward migrating European people and finished the task of humans encircling the planet.

Probably didn’t happen right at the settlement…but since it’s the first known Norse settlement in North America…it happened somewhere around here…hence the first World Cultural Heritage Site designation.

The base camp was mostly men…but there were clearly some women involved as loom weight stones have been found in the ruins…and it was only temporarily occupied by each successive timber harvesting voyage until it’s eventual abandonment. From the excavations…the camp had a maximum population of 160 or so…given that the Greenland colony in 1,000AD had a population of only 2,500 or so…it’s unlikely that multiple base camps or additional settlements were made as they just didn’t have the people to do so.

Ok…another of that blather…let’s have some photos.

One of the excavated houses…it’s a typical Norse longhouse…what remains are the outlines of the foundation walls. The walls were 6 feet thick…2 feet of peat on the inside and outside with 2 feet of sand and gravel in between them. The roof was a layer of wood, then peat, then wood, then sod. There were generally 4 rooms…starring from the entrance there was the women’s work area, the men’s work area…both doubled as their sleeping area…then the kitchen, then the private sleeping quarters where leader and/or the women slept. You’re looking at about a 45 degree angle from the front, the stone plaque at the left side is about half way along the long dimension of the building.

The larger longhouse…this one is differentiated ty a couple of things. This is more of a view down the length of the longhouse…the plaque is in the center of the short dimension and the grass humps leading back and to the left are the foundations. Off to the left side there’s a 3 sided attached boat house…you are looking at the back wall with the open end on the far side…and along the right side of the main building are storerooms. Since the storerooms would have been used to store the materials they were gathering to take back and sell…and since this is the biggest building…the archaeologists have concluded this was most likely occupied by Leif Eiriksson himself.

Yeah…I know that the remains of them ain’t much to look at…so here are some rebuilt ones. They were built to the same dimensions inside and out as the originals and the top parts are constructed largely as the Norse settlements in Greenland and Iceland are constructed…all the buildings were burned so there is some divergence probably. They were built using original construction materials and techniques though…so they are as authentic as possible.

Leif’s house with a tent containing a bowl turning lathe inside it on the left. The guy walking towards us next to the building is dressed as a Norse of 1,000AD would be dressed…he was working on stripping the bark off of the log leaning against the building with a spokeshave.

The smaller of he reconstructed houses in the back and the slave/servant quarters in the foreground.

Connie doing her best Viking impersonation/reenactment…she’s of Swedish heritage ya know…so her ancestors coulda been here.

Cooking and sleeping area.

Period dressed woman doing some sewing.

The bay where the longships entered and landed…the ocean is out of frame to the right, the beach to the left and there are a couple of islands sheltering the bay entrance offshore.

Smithy and iron maker building…they smelted at least one batch of iron here to make nails…from the amount of slag remaining they produced about 5 pounds of raw iron which probably made 100 or so nails…including the one that was lost and found in the 1960s archeological dig.

Inside construction…you can see the peat inner walls and the roof supporting structure.

Couldn’t pass up a couple of small waterfalls on the creek that runs through the site and provided both drinking and bathing water for the Norse.

After we finished at the National Historic Site…we headed a couple of clicks down the road to the end of the point where the little village of l’Anse aux Meadows is located. Nothing much to be found there, one craft shop, one restaurant and a couple dozen houses maximum. They did have a statue of old Leif situated looking out over the bay near the end of town…so Neil pulled over and Connie got some photos. The plaques to the left detail the origin of the statue…the original was sculpted for the Seattle Century 21 Exposition in 1962 and replicas were given to Trondheim in Norway (the ancient capital of the Nordic region) and Brattahild in Greenland (the location of Erik the Red’s farm)…followed by this one in 2013 which is dedicated all Nordic immigrants to North America. We’re glad ‘round these parts for Nordic immigrants…other wise we would have any blondes and in particular we wouldn’t have Connie…Neil wouldn’t like that.

Interesting things found on the net.

Connie found this image of Carrigafoyle…which according to oconnorclans.com is “Carrigafoyle was the stronghold of the O’Connor Kerry. It was built in 1490 by Conor Liath O’Connor Kerry. It is made with limestone and stands in a strategic position on the edge of the Shannon Estuary, in an almost impenetrable position on what was originally an island. It is five stories high. One of its interesting features is the wide spiral stairs of 104 steps which leads to the battlements. The location enabled the O’Connor Kerry to intercept ships as they passed along the river and to extract a ‘tax’ in the form of a portion of their cargo. The castle was a target for the Elizabethan forces and was finally breached by Sir William Pelham in 1580 when all of the occupants were massacred.”

So what’s important about it? Neil is descended from the Connors…you remember his 5th great grandfather Richard Connor who founded Detroit from a couple years back and his 12th great grandfather Conor O’Connor who was born in the old country of Ireland in 1530 so about another 3 or 4 generations back you would find his something or other great grand father Conor Liath O’Connor Kerry who built Carrigafoyle. Pretty darned cool I think. So his ancestors basically built a toll booth on the estuary…which worked pretty good until they were massacred in 1580…but obviously either Conor Liath or one of his children survived or Neil wouldn’t be here.

My kind of gun control.

Say this slowly and think about it.

Titles…well, they’re hard I guess.

Cyas.

With our work at Gros Morne National Park finished…we were ready to head on to Quirpon NL which is way, way on the far northern tip of Newfoundland…all the way up to 51.5 degrees North Latitude…the northern limit of our travels for this season…so it’s pretty much all southward from here I guess.

Neil had dumped our waste tanks and filled our fresh water tank the afternoon before…we were warned at Cow Head that the water farther north was less than fully satisfactory…so we brought on a full 100 gallons before we left Seabreeze which had really good water…and decided to just live on internal supplies and our water pump for the 4 nights at Quirpon and the one night in Deer Lake as we head south back to the TCH (Trans Canada Highway) and east across the island to Eastport and then Saint John’s. With the relative scarcity…or so we had been told but there is actually plenty here but at a higher price…of diesel fuel…we had filled up halfway through our last travel day to Cow Head and this will give us enough to easily get to Quirpon and back down to the TCH intersection at Deer Lake…there’s an Irving there which is the Canuck equivalent of Pilot or Flying J. The only thing we really should have done in addition was get more propane…but when Neil checked we still had a full 40 pound cylinder and the other one was reading well over half…but when he looked on arrival in Quirpon the partially used one is down to about 1/4…but then we used a bit in Cow Head on a couple of cold mornings. No worries though…with our limited use what we have will be fine and if we are running short we’ll toss a cylinder in Little Red when we head down to St. Anthony on Tuesday afternoon for the Viking Dinner Theater.

Anyway…we were up and getting ready to get on the road early as we anticipated a slower than normal average speed due to roads…and we were definitely right although it wasn’t just the roads. As you get farther north in Newfoundland…the roads get even more Alaska like…as I discussed before they have issues with roads, snow, and snow plows and have just accepted a lower standard than we’re used to in the lower 48. They patch the potholes as best as they can…and put up these little warning signs with a black bar with a sinusoidal up and down top part indicating the rough patch ahead…basically the sign means “Rough Road…Tough Nuggies”.

That wasn’t really the only problem though…the weather didn’t cooperate either. It was foggy enough that we had to slow well below the speed limit of 90 kph (56 mph) several times and it was cold, rainy, and windy all day…which made driving in it a real joy. There were no rest stops…so whenever we had to pee we just pulled off into whatever wide spot we found and ran inside the rig. Then there was the short stop for an emergency repair on one of our slide seals…although Neil actually accomplished a complete proper repair instead of a temporary fix. RV slide seals have two parts…a set of wiper thingies sort of like wide windshield wiper blades that rubs along the edge of the slide as it goes in and out and seals the water with a secondary seal on top of it facing outwards so that when the slide seats fully in it contacts the secondary seal and keeps it weather tight. The wiper part is glued/screwed to the wall and the secondary seal slides into a track attached to the wiper part…with just a little plastic catch to keep it from sliding down and off. Well…the catch wore out and the secondary seal slide down…luckily Connie saw it and we pulled over to fix it. The fix is simple…just screw a small sheet metal screw through the secondary seal into the fiberglass wall to hold it permanently in place…we were only stopped for 10 minutes while he fixed it and while it was still windy on the side of the road at least it wasn’t raining at the time.

The last 30 miles or so the weather cleared up and it was just cloudy although it remained cold and windy…and we arrived on schedule pretty much at Viking RV Park in Quirpon…it’s right down the road from l’Anse aux Meadows which is a National Historic Site in Canada…it’s the location of the first European settlement in the New World around 1000AD by the Vikings. We quickly got checked in and backed into site 15…I’ll get Neil to grab a photo for ya when he’s next outside…but it’s pretty much like an Alaskan or Yukon campground…gravel sites pretty close together. Water and power are provided to the site but no sewer…again we’ll just use our tank for the 4 nights we are here are and visit the dump station on the way out.

We had leftover spaghetti bolognese sauce that we were originally going to eat…but instead headed up to Skipper Hot’s Tavern just a couple of klicks up the road…that’s Army speak for kilometers. We had a couple pints each of Rickard’s Red Ale…mighty tasty…along with a burger for Neil (that they actually left slightly underdone by Canuck standards…it was gray all the way through instead of pink but at least it still had some juices in it…Connie had home made chicken strips. We ran into the same Canuck couple MJ and her husband that Neil had met walking along the dikes at the campground in Hopewell NB and chatted with them for an hour or so…and fellow NHOGers the Garafolos are also here in Viking RV Park.

So…it turns out that June and July in northern Newfoundland is what the Newfies call Iceberg Season…we had really not thought about them being here until the past couple of days and it turns out that there are a goodly number of them in the area. Not surprising really…when you look at the map immediately north and west of Newfoundland is Labrador and immediately east of there is Greenland with the Davis Strait separating Greenland from Labrador…the exit from the strait into the North Atlantic is only about 450 miles north of Quirpon. Since something over half of all the icebergs in the world come from the glaciers on the western side of Greenland and since the current and prevailing winds in the Davis Strait are north to south…guess which way the icebergs go. Despite the distance though…it typically takes 2 full years for a ‘berg to make it’s way from the western side of Greenland down to Newfoundland and thence into the Atlantic…they’re big, heavy, and don’t have much windage so they really don’t move very quickly at all.

With that in mind…we headed out this morning for a drive down to St. Anthony…that’s another strange thing about NL…St. Anthony is usually referred to with the St instead of Saint…weird…anyways we headed out as the website Connie checked…icebergfinder.com…who knew…said that there were a couple down there in some of the bays. First up was Mass at the church down there…well actually it was really a prayer service since no priest was available. Their local parish priest is on vacation so the fill in guy only gets there every other week for a full Mass. In the alternate weeks…one of the parishioners does a service which looks and sounds strangely like an actual Mass would be…except he skips the parts that only a priest can do like the Consecration of the bread and wine and the blessing at the end…lay people can’t do that part. What they do is make sure that when the actual priest is here he Consecrates enough bread to cover the service the following weekend. Never been to a Mass like that before…but it works. After that…we stopped by Tim Horton’s (Canuck Starbucks but really more like a Dunkin Donuts in atmosphere) for a couple of sandwiches for lunch and a couple of pastries for breakfast tomorrow…maple pecan danish…yum.

Then it was off to Fisherman’s Point for our first iceberg sightings…and man was the wind cold whipping off of the North Atlantic…brrrr.

A couple of views from Fisherman’s Point.

And the iceberg right off the point. All of the icebergs in this post are no longer drifting…they’ve run aground. They generally are drifting south in the Davis Strait and then southeast into the open ocean…but some of them get caught up by wind or tide and shoved into the bays and inlets along the coast where they run around and stay there until they melt enough so that the draft is less then they drift a little farther into the bay…they never get out as that would be upwind and up current…and eventually they just melt away…or get so rotten with melt that they collapse like the edge of a glacier does when the iceberg originally calves from it.

Slightly wider shot of the same ‘berg for scale…that’s about a 16 or 18 foot boat at the far left side of the frame…so this one is probably 200 or 250 feet wide and 60 or 70 feet tall. Don’t forget…these are just really big ice cubes so most of the mass…about 90%…is underwater and the maximum draft of an iceberg is about 5 to 10 times it’s height above the water…no wonder they run aground.

Connie got a shot of the Fox Point Light with it’s associated loud sumbich fog horn…seems they have a lot of those up here. We saw several fog banks drift across the points and bays during our day so it can go from this clear blue sky to pea soup fog in 5 minutes then back to bright blue sky 15 minutes later after the bank passes.

A smaller iceberg…this is probably what would be classified as a bergy bit based on it’s size…ti’s off to the right from the big one above and in a smaller cove next to the point. It’s only about 40 or so feet wide and maybe 15 tall…although you can see some of the light green areas that are shallowly submerged portions of the berg.

Neil got another shot of the Fox Point Light with the big one in the background…it’s actually only about 100 or 120 yards from the shore.

The big one again…but the sun came out and highlighted some of the areas…take note of the bright spot at the center of the bottom edge…it’s in another photo later.

Turning around 180 degrees from the above shot…this is the reconstructed Viking Longhouse where we’ll be attending the Viking Dinner Theater on Tuesday.

This is the bright spot from a couple photos back…zoomed in. We originally thought it was a hole melted through but it’s actually just a piece sticking out from the side and illuminated as it comes out from the shadow of the top part. Icebergs actually melt from the bottom rather than the top…the heat transfer ice to water is much greater than ice to air so throughout it’s life a berg keeps flipping over as the bottom melts and it becomes top heavy. I’ve seen videos on youtube and such that show the flip and it’s a pretty quick thing…one minute this huge chunk of ice is sitting there and in the next 15 seconds it rolls completely inverted.

Next we headed another 10 or 12 klicks south to Goose Cove where there was an even larger iceberg. On the way out to the point…we passed Redneck Santa’s abandoned sleigh…

The entrance to the harbor at Goose Cove…the marker marks the rocks on the near side of the inlet with the ocean out of frame to the left and the harbor to the right.

The largest one we saw today…the pillars are about 120 feet high by our estimation and it’s over 100 yards wide. It used to be much larger but the center section between the two remaining pillars has completely melted except for the shallow submerged greenish section you can see in-between the pillars.

Neil was able to zoom in a little more on both the whole thing and each of the pillars. Nice detail in the surface…definitely too big to fit in our cocktail glasses.

Bill…we found you a plane. This is a WW-II era US Navy amphibious patrol plane known as a PB-Y Catalina. This one was re-purposed by the Canuck Forest Service into an aerial tanker for fighting forest fires…it’s here as a memorial to the crew of another PB-Y that crashed and killed the crew during fire fighting operations. In flight…it would come down like it was going to land on the water and open a scoop on the front of the boat portion…then skim right over the surface and scoop up a plane load of water in 10 or 15 seconds.

With that our day was mostly done…so we headed back for the 40 or so klick trip back to Quirpon. Passed Triple Falls along the way…literally right alongside the highway and Neil took these from the shoulder.

Another small berg we passed just before reaching Quirpon again…this one is only about 10 or 12 feet high and 50 or so wide.

Everybody heats their homes with wood up here…this is the wood pile at one person’s house…and it was not the largest one we say today…and this is what’s leftover from last winter’s pile unless he’s already started working on next winter’s pile. There are numerous piles of firewood out along the sides of the highway that folks are in the middle of cutting…so more likely this is starting to build up for next winter. 

Cyas.

Wednesday and Thursday were devoted to the remainder of Gros Morne National Park…while Western Brook Pond is in the park that was a longish day so we ignored all the other stuff we passed on the park road both coming and going. Wednesday we did the southern and central portion of the park on basically a drive around tour with a couple of short hikes…while Thursday we did the northern section and went to the visitor center.

Both days the weather by the time we got out was really windy…and cold in addition on Wednesday…50s and 25+ knots of wind. Thursday dawned calm and with a forecast high of about 70…that remained true for the morning when Neil was airing up truck tires but by the time we headed out it was still warm but blowing hard again…which made for a difficult drive as most of the park road is right along the shore of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and with that much wind coming directly in from your side poor old Little Red was gettin’ blown all over the road…especially as it wasn’t steady but a really gusty wind instead.

We had chicken and rice for dinner Wednesday night…but Thursday headed out to the Gros Morne Theater Festival to see a dinner theater performance of The SS Ethie…a shipwreck just south of here. The Ethie was a coastal steamer that was wrecked in December 1919. It wasn’t the storm that caused her downfall but rather the build up of ice on the hull in combination with the storm pushing her toward the lee shore…with the ice she was unable to turn into the seas and hence get farther offshore for safety. At the last minute…the captain decided that instead of foundering on the rocks he would go full steam ahead onto Point Martin…by doing that she would still wreck but would be close enough to shore for passengers and crew to be rescued via high line to the clifftop instead of being too far offshore to reach. The plot was basically a comedy about the passengers and crew on the ship for it’s last voyage. 

Before I get into the photos from our drive…here are a series of shots taken from just in front of the rig on the bay shore at both low and high tide…they’re in pairs with the view at low tide followed by one at high tide. Don’t know what the tidal range is…but as you can see it’s a pretty significant difference between the two.

On to photos from our drive.

Looking west across the East Arm of a large fjord in the southern part of the park…Bonne Bay is the seaward portion and it splits into the East and South Arms. 

South East Brook Falls.

The Tablelands…you can see why they get their name as they’re flat on the top. According to the explanation signs…they’re actually part of the magma of the earth instead of the crust but were thrust upwards through the crust. Really moonscape-like…almost no vegetation on them as the soil is too acidic for anything to grow.

The wreckage of the SS Ethie…a little of it is still in the water but most of the remaining bits you can see are on the rocky beach.

Lobster Cove Head lighthouse…the light tower is steel instead of masonry and is attached horizontally to the keeper’s quarters in the foreground.

Steps and hatch leading to the tower…they wouldn’t let me in.

We headed out to the Gros Morne Theater Festival for dinner and a play…dinner was pan fried cod, mashed taters, veggies, and cheesecake with Partridge Berries (what Newfies call Lingonberries) for dessert. The play was a historical comedy-drama based on the actual wreck of the SS Ethie I discussed above…including the saving of baby Hilda who went ashore in mail sack. The play was essentially about a play about the shipwreck…with the director keeping interrupting the action for various cast instructions and plot changes. Not the best play we’ve ever seen…but certainly entertaining with a cast of 6 playing about15 different parts…they started the play before dinner and announced no intermission but they did take a half hour break or so to serve the meal…and the actors were the waiters and waitresses.

After dinner we came home…and the house is really rocking and rolling…according to the weather app it’s only 17 knots but it’s really at lest 30 and more than that in the gusts. 17 knots my ass sez Neil…sitting in our recliners it feels like you’re sitting in Big Red towing the rig down one of the highways here.

Tomorrow we’re just lazing ‘round…nothing planned although we may go back to Neddy’s Pub for some more brewskis and dinner since it is Lobster Festival Weekend, eh…here in Cow head. Then Saturday morning we’re off to our next stop in Quirpon at the northern tip of the island…where the Vikings established the first European settlement in North America about 1000AD…or 1000CE if you’re not into the religious suffix for the date.

Interesting things found on the net.

Not really what I expected.

Beautifully put.

Nuttin’s getting past this woman.

Another headline somebody waited his whole life to write.

And finally…wait for it…wait…

Cyas.

Today’s fun Stuff was a trip over to Western Brook Pond…which is actually a lake despite the name. Way back during the last ice Age…what is now known as the extinct Western Brook Glacier gouged out a valley leading basically out to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence…at that time the glaciers went all the way to the Gulf. Then the ice age ended and the glaciers melted…and what resulted some 12,000 years ago was a fjord. For those of you who don’t know what a fjord is…it’s a valley that was gouged out as a result of glacial action and is connected to the ocean and hence is salt water. See Norway and places like that for further examples. So what happened was that 12,000 (or so…I’m not sure on the precision of that time estimate)…years ago there was this fjord. Unfortunately for the fjord…the land near the mouth of the fjord into the Gulf had been depressed by the weight of the glacier…so over the next some thousand years the land…no longer being depressed…rebounded and rose above sea level…thus isolating the fjord and turning it into a salt water lake separated from the ocean by about 3 miles of land…except for what eventually became known as the Western brook draining it to the sea. Over the next some thousand years…the salt water drained out to sea…the now lake being constantly refilled by melting snow and glaciers…and it became a fresh water lake known now as Western Brook Pond.

Some pond though…it’s about 10 miles long and 2 miles wide at it’s widest point. Sheer, almost vertical cliff walls…at one point we were within about 20 yards of the shore and the depth finder in the cabin still showed a depth of over 200 feet. It’s surrounded by sheer rock walls that average about 1,800 feet or so tall with a highest elevation of 2,200 feet…and the lake…despite being slightly below sea level…has depths ranging up to about 800 feet deep with most of it being in the 350-500 foot deep range. The temperature of the lake today was 4 degrees Celsius…about 41 Fahrenheit…due to the constant feeding of snow melt water into it. By the end of August the temperature will be all the way up to 20 Celsius or about 68F as the sun warms it after the snow quits melting…although Ima thinking the deeper parts will still be closer to 4C than 20C.

Anyways…we drove down about 18 kilometers (12 miles) south and parked…ready for our almost 2 mile hike from the parking lot into the boat dock. The only troubles were that the temperature was only about 50 F…and it decreased to the low 40s by the time we got to the lake due to the cold water in the lake…and the wind was blowing right off of the Gulf at about 25 knots.

The good news was that whenever we were in the trees on our hike…which was essentially down the gravel road that gets fuel, parts, food, and other necessities to the boat dock area…was that the wind died down and the walk was actually not all that bad. The bad news was that about 2/3 of the hike was out in the open. Fortunately…the wind was at our backs on the way in…which meant that it was in our face on the way back to the parking lot…but by 1500 when we were heading back it was a lot warmer and the winds were down…not much but less than in the morning.

So at the dock…we had a sausage dog for lunch…that’s very similar to a hotdog except it was much longer and fatter, cheaper, and actually tasted good. A little mustard on it and it made a pretty darned good lunch. After lunch we sat out in the sun…protected from the wind…for awhile and then got in line and boarded the boat…about a 60 foot standard tour boat.

We then spent the next two hours boating to the far eastern end of the lake, dropping off a couple of hikers that were hiking 5 days eastward through the park, and coming back to the starting point. Fortunately…once we got into the narrower portion of the lake…it was in between the walls of the former fjord and the wind died down. So we spent most of the time out on the bow of the boat taking pictures…Connie had to keep going in for a few minutes to warm up but overall we had a pretty good tour…the photos and views were excellent, we met a couple of people on the boat and talked to them, and it was a great day overall.

After the ride…we hiked the 1.65 miles back to the parking lot for a total of about 3.3 miles total on the day…and headed home. Being as it was now 1600…we declared it to be 5 o’clock in Tel Aviv and headed off to Neddy’s Pub…the only drinking establishment in Cow Head for a beer…and a fine and excellent place it was sez Connie…me and Neil too.

Short aside here…Neil invented a cocktail today…but then this is the second time this week he’s invented one so let me give you the details on both of those.

First one…everybody (well, almost everybody) has heard of a Black Russian and a White Russian. These are made of Kahlúa (which is a coffee flavored liquor), vodka…and in the case of the White version cream. The Russian in the name comes from the vodka which is the traditional Russian drink. So the other day…Neil made himself a cocktail of Screech Rum (standard golden non-spiced rum), Kahlúa, and cream…hey, we don’t keep vodka around…and it was delish. So good that we figured we would make it again…which means it needs a name…and since rum is a Caribbean thing we (actually…Neil) decided to call it a White/Black Cuban instead of Russian. We thought about calling it a White/Black Jamaica-mon (pronounced with a Jamaican accent of course)…I think we’ll let the two alternatives percolate a bit and see which one sticks.

But I digress…back to today’s invention. The only draft brew they had was Black Horse which is a lager style beer…and hence doesn’t have a whole lot of flavor…so Neil ordered a shot of Captain Morgan’s Dark spiced rum on the side. After a couple of sips of the beer…he split the rum between the two pints and it really, really improved the taste of the lager…making it taste much more like a craft brew than it did before. Now you’ve probably heard of a drink called a Boilermaker before…it was invented in the western PA steel mill area and is a draft beer with a shot of whiskey dumped into it. Since this was a very similar concoction…we thought on it a bit…and continuing the riff on Caribbean culture decided to name it the Sugarmaker. It was so tasty that we’ll do it again whenever we’re forced to have a light lager style beer.

After our brews…we made it the last 500 yards back to the RV park and had dinner…which consisted of leftover fish/bacon/corn/potato/orzo pasta/shallot/roasted garlic/chopped chili/cheese/cream concoction…we call it fish chowder but it’s basically a cream type soup with whatever leftover protein we have, potatoes, bacon, and corn soup. So I gotta tell ya about one more invention we’ve come up with…although this one is a long standing one and not recent. You’ve probably noticed…assuming you eat leftovers anyway…that soup, stew, or pretty much anything tastes much better the second day than it did on the day you originally cooked it…and if you’re of a curious mind you’ve probably wondered just why that is.

Well…the proper culinary term for it is oodling…yes, oodling I said…and it’s the process by which things always taste better the second day. Just thought you should know what to call it…almost anything improves with oodling we always say.

Ok…enough of that blather…let’s have some photos.

A couple more shots of that cute l’ill black bear from yesterday…

Panoramic shot taken from behind the parking lot…this is the Long Range Mountains…which again are part of the Appalachian range from the old Pangea days as you recall from yesterday’s post…just left of center you can see a notch between the left and right sides of the fjord with the back of the fjord in-between them.

What the well dressed Sweetie…that’s how Neil has addressed Connie for 40something years now…wears on her hike in 40 degree 25 knot wind weather…jeans, heavy hiking socks and boots, t-shirt, sweatshirt, hoodie, Scottievest, headband to cover her ears, and gloves. The couple in the background turned out to be one of the ones we (well Neil actually) met and chatted with on the boat…her husband along with Connie kept succumbing to the cold and going inside to warm up while she and Neil stayed out on deck because…of course…we could always warm up later but we wouldn’t be in the fjord on the boat later.

Mostly…I’ll let the photos from within the fjord speak for themselves…except for those that deserve a little better explanation.

Closer up view of the notch of the fjord with the center section being another 3-4 miles back…the fjord itself curves to the left after it starts and goes mostly to the left of the background piece you can see.

The bog on the way to the boat landing.

Our boats…the larger one to the right had about 2/3 of our group and the smaller one to the left was what we rode. Our tour guide Colin said that it was the Fun Boat©…and while I don’t know if there was any fun on the larger boat Colin and his partner in crime (sorry, didn’t get her name, Megan maybe is the best we can remember…Colin spoke with a Newfie accent and was a bit tough to make out)…along with our skipper Randy…made our trip fun and informative. I asked Colin shouldn’t his name be Gilligan since we had a Skipper…but he said the hat didn’t look good on him.

Entering the fjord proper…south side.

And north side.

Hanging valley…formed when a smaller glacier comes in from the side and joins the main glacier…in this case the Western Brook Glacier. The side glaciers are smaller and hence lighter and therefore don’t cut the land as deep…resulting in the hanging valley once they recede.

Looking inland on the fjord…our companion tour boat is at the bottom…those cliffs are 1,800-2,200 feet high. 

The wall of the north side…we’re about 20 yards max from it here and the water is more than 200 feet deep.

Taken immediately after the above shot about 30 degrees to the right…we were on the port side of the bow. You can see the steepness of the side as it enters the water…that slope continues quite a ways down resulting in the depth close to the shore.

The first of many waterfalls…they told us the name but I forgot all the names but one…I’ll get to that one later.

Overview of the above falls…remember the cliffs here are on the order of 2,000 feet tall…so this one is probably 200 feet tall…and it was really the smallest one we saw.

Result of a landslide back in 2010.

Another landslide from 1994…they told us the exact date and time but I didn’t write it down…anyway one of the tour boats was about 500 yards to the left (west) of where several hundred thousand tons of rock fell into the lake. Scared the crap out of them Ima thinking.

Probably 30 yards wide and 500 feet tall.

Same falls as the above but wider view…at about 2,000 feet from lake to rim you can see the size…it’s really hard to appreciate just how large these are…but this shot was taken from probably 4 miles from the falls.

Looking back to the west…better photo of this later without the boat wake after we turned around.

The other named falls that I remember…Pissing Mare Falls. I’ll explain the significance later.

Pissing Mare Falls showing both the top and bottom sections. The lake surface is just out of frame at the bottom…google says this one is 1,148 feet tall and among the highest in North America. I’m not sure whether the 1,148 covers just the main drop or also the lower portion…but given the height of the fjord walls I’m guessing it’s just the top portion.

While I’m not sure why it was named that…there’s a lot of spray coming off of the top portion as the wind hits it…my guess is that female mammals of the equine variety tend to spray when they dispose of excess fluid from their bodies.

The Old Man feature. Just left of center you see the rim curve downward onto the man’s forehead, followed by his eye socket and nose, then mouth. He’s looking up at about a 40 degree angle and you’re looking at his left profile.

Almost to the end of the lake…that’s our turnaround just ahead another mile or so. We dropped off two hikers at the far end, just to the left around the last point you can see on the left side there’s a little dock…they’re embarking on a 5 day hike across the park. It was about 1330 when we dropped them off and they still have a 2,000ish foot climb to the rim for their first campground…and there are no marked trails so they’re basically making it up as they go along.

This is aa different fall from Pissing Mare…but you can see how the wind picks up a lot of spray off of the fall as it comes down. Don’t know the exact height…but based on the rim elevation it’s probably 100 feet wide and 500 or so feet tall. 

Looking eastward after we turned around…by then the morning overcast had mostly cleared and it was a beautiful blue sky day. We have been amazed how blue the skies are here in Newfoundland on clear days…must be the lack of air pollution.

Our fearless explorers as we headed back towards the mouth of the fjord and the dock…one of the folks we met took this one for us.

Another hanging valley.

Another named rock feature…this one is Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. You’re looking at his face from his front left…and you can see his right eye socket, nose, upper lip and mouth. Look just left of center.

Closeup of Tin Man to help you make out the feature. The face is probably 400 feet tall.

One last shot of Pissing Mare Falls just before we rounded the corner and lost sight of it. Colin said it was the most famous one in the park.

With that our day was done…so we headed for the aforementioned Happy Hour, dinner, and a shower.

After dinner…Neil went out for a couple of sunset shots around 2115 as it was a nice evening.

The rig sitting in site 6 at Seabreeze RV Park…Neil was sitting on a rock at the shoreline to take this…Big Red is maybe 100 feet from the water.

Downtown Cow Head looking east from the campground.

Looking west as the sun started to set.

East again…wanted to show the campground office on the right side and the road you can see just in front of Big Red 3 images back…we’re right on the water.

Ahh…a great end to a spectacular day…one of the best we’ve had in awhile for Fun Stuff©. Sure…it was cold and windy but the DLETC did a super job today. Thanks Connie!!

Interesting things found on the net…just a couple today as it’s already an image intense post and we have slow internet.

I would laugh every time I went into the toilet room if we had this one.

Is he still faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?

Rules is rules ya know.

Cyas.

Before I get into today’s post…let’s talk about Newfoundland a bit…what it’s like. Seems like a good idea to me as it’s a place not many folks visit. First up…a couple statistics. It’s about 42,000 square miles with a population of just under a half million. It’s about 320 miles by 310 miles and is mostly a square with a piece sticking up to the north from the northwest corner and another smaller chunk hanging off of the southeast corner. Most of the population lives either along the coastline or along the Trans Canada Highway as it bisects the island east to west. There are two major cities…Channel Port aux Basques on the southwest tip and St. John’s on the southeast tip. It’s got over 7,000 islands and about 15,500 miles of coastline.

So what’s it like?

Basically…Newfoundland resulted when Ireland and Alaska had a baby. Topographically…it’s a lot of rock with bits of dirt in between…a lot of the “dirt” is actually what would be called muskeg up in Alaska or peat over in Island. Lots of water…thousands upon thousands of lakes, ponds, streams, brooks, rivers, wetlands. Lots of hills and low mountains…not real tall as the highest elevation is only about 2,700 feet but what hills there are result in a lot of short, steep grades on the roads…which meander around the valleys and ridges with a lot of curves…no real freeways as we would have down in the USA. In fact…the mountains in the southwest part of the island…known as the Table Mountains…are actually part of the Appalachian Mountains…way back when all the land on the earth was gathered into the super-continent Pangea the Appalachian Mountains existed but not the Rockies…they’re much younger. When the land separated into the continents we have today…part of the Appalachians went with what eventually became Newfoundland.

People…they’re among the most friendly folks we’ve ever been around…even friendlier than most of the rest of Canuckistan…well, friendly except for the border guards. Can’t really say anything bad about them.

Infrastructure wise…well…that’s the part that the Alaskan parentage provided…the standard of living here is a lot rougher than it is in most places down in the USA. It’s not lower…don’t want to give you the wrong impression…but it’s just a lot more rough and ready than say the I-95 corridor in the eastern USA. Stores…groceries, gas stations, hardware and the like are all fewer and farther between than most Americans are used to…and the selection in stores is also less than what we would be used to. Nothing wrong with that…but it’s definitely something you notice as you travel around.

Road-wise…well…there it’s almost exactly like Alaska. There are two seasons up here…winter and road construction…but mostly the road construction folks do a good job and even with lane blockages and flagmen they tend to get you going as quickly as possible. They’ve also just accepted a lower standard of smoothness for roads…with the weather up here and snowplows busting up the pavement every winter…they just patch the potholes and don’t do complete repaving jobs nearly as much as we’re used to down in the USA. They also have a lot of gravel and unpaved roads…just like Alaska…the main roads are paved but a good percentage of the secondary roads are gravel…well maintained gravel so it’s not usually too bad to drive down them…but gravel nonetheless.

Weather-wise…I dunno what to tellya…I don’t think they have summer up here. As I type this missive up here in Cow Head which is about halfway up the west coast of the island…it’s 50 degrees coming down from a high today of 52 and headed for a low tonight of low 40s…with 20-25 knots of wind blowing. Granted…we’re only about 30 feet from the coast of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence…but it’s cold and windy…and it’s been that way ever since we arrived…and it also rains a lot.

Ok, enough of that…let’s get to the meat of today’s post…

We got saddled up and on the road this morning about 1000 for our 213 mile transit from Doyles up to Cow Head…which is located in the northern portion of Gros Morne National Park…we’ll be visiting that the next 4 days so I’ll leave descriptions and photos from the park until a later post.

For only a 200 mile day…it was pretty brutal…it was in the high 40s when we started getting ready to leave and drizzling. Rained most of the first 100 miles and some wind as we passed over small passes and through valleys…nothing dangerous but the combination of rain, lowered traction, wind, and curvy roads…not to mention the roadside ditches and cliffs…meant that Neil had to pay closer attention to things than would be normal on a US freeway. After lunch…the weather got better but then we were driving through Gros Morne National Park…with lots of lookie-loos on the road and even worse curves and hills.

We did get stopped briefly at one construction zone where there was a single lane open for traffic for about 3/4 of a mile or so…ended up sitting there waiting on our turn for 10-15 minutes. While we were sitting there stopped on the two lane road…Neil looks to his left and lo and behold this is what he found.

Yup…a little black bear…probably 150 or 200 pounds…sitting right next to the edge of the road eating flowers and completely ignoring the line of cars stopped 12 feet away. He actually stood up on his…or maybe hers…dunno which…hind legs and watched the proceedings but Neil couldn’t get the camera off of the passenger seat quick enough to get that shot. Quite a good series of shots for something we just basically lucked into and shot photos out the opened window on Big Red…the li’l guy (or gal)…couldn’t have cared less about the cars. Cars actually make pretty good blinds for taking wildlife photos because the animals don’t realize there are people inside the vehicles.

Interesting things found on the net.

Bet it’s fun to sing the Happy Birthday song to this lady.

Haters will decry this one as Fake News.

Meanwhile…in Ireland.

I just can’t see her finishing though.

How Hells Angels in Canuckistan terrorize their victims. 

Cyas.

After our time in Little Bras d’Or was ended…we were up early for the 4 mile transit to the ferry to Newfoundland…just so ya’ll won’t pronounce it wrong it’s pronounced Nu-fun-land up in these parts…basically we turned left out of Arm of Gold campground for 300 yards and then right on NS-105 which is also the TCH (Trans Canada Highway) which dumps you right into the ferry terminal. We had already gotten our reservations for the 90 mile 6.5 hours trip on the Blue Puttees ferry…we arrived at the terminal by about 0830 and got quickly checked in…we were the 3rd RV to check in for the daily sailing which leaves at 1145. We went into the terminal building and killed some time before boarding started at 0920…we were on the ferry by 0945…Connie parked Little Red in the outside lane and Big Red and the rig were in the center lane…they put RVs in the center for better weight distribution.

We sailed about 15 or 20 minutes early and had a nice transit on a beautiful day over to Channel-Port aux Basques on the southwestern tip of Newfoundland. We found seats, napped, ate some fish and chips in the restaurant, took another nap…and we were there. Neil pulled off first…and you exit the ferry terminal directly onto the highway…no place to park…so he went up the road a couple of miles and pulled over to the side near an Irving truck stop…very similar to a Flying J or Pilot in our neck of the woods. Connie showed up about 10 minutes later…her row was the last to disembark…and we finished the rest of our grueling 24 mile transit to Doyles NL and quickly…well not quite so quickly as there were 4 or 5 rigs that pulled off the ferry after Neil but passed us while he was waiting on Connie and Little Red…but we got a nice site 38. It’s a full hookup back in but the way the CG roads are built we basically only had to back straight up to get into the site. Neil hooked up utilities and we had dinner…then rested until bedtime as we were tired…dinner wasn’t until like 2100 or so.

Thursday we basically rested and Connie planned our time here in the Codroy Valley…it’s not like there’s a whole bunch to see and we’ve been going pretty steadily since we crossed the border so a couple of easier days seemed in order. She did find 2 scenic drives for us to go on…including 3 lighthouses and a waterfall…so it wasn’t all bad. After that was done we did a quick hike around the inspirational trail…as the campground named it…about a 2 kilometer figure 8 hike along the shore of the Grand Codroy River.

After awhile…we figured out why they called it the Inspirational Trail.

Although we liked this one the best.

Friday we headed off on a scenic drive that basically goes north and west from Doyles…which is situated on the western side of Newfoundland. The island basically looks like an upside down capital Y…we landed at Channel-Port aux Basques on the southwestern tip and Doyles is just a bit up the coast from there. We’ll visit Cow Head about halfway up the coast and then Quirpon where the Viking settlements were at the far northern end before coming back down past Cow Head and then heading eastward across the center of the island to Eastport on the east side and then St. John’s on the far southeast tip…we’ll then retrace our path across the middle back to Doyles to board the ferry back to Nova Scotia in about 3 weeks.

Ok…let’s take a look at our Fun Stuff© and the associated photos.

As we left the harbor we got a shot of the Low Point Light…we saw this from the ground side the other day but it’s at the mouth of the exit from Sydney harbor into the Atlantic…although the ferry actually goes straight across the narrowest part so whether we were in the Atlantic or the Gulf of Saint Lawrence depends on your point of view I guess.

Shortly after we passed the light…we passed the inbound ferry from Newfoundland…the ferry runs twice a day and this one left last evening from Argentia over by Saint John’s for the 16 hour transit back to Sydney…Neil noted that we exchanged the proper International Rules of the Road single whistle blast for a port to port passing of the other ferry…glad to see they follow the rules.

On our day trip up to the north of Doyles…we did get a few shots.

Cape Anguille Lighthouse…the westernmost point of Newfoundland and the location of the island end of the underwater cable that finally connected it to the rest of Canuckistan back in the late 1800s or early 1900s.

Another one of those foghorns…the sign basically says “this is a loud sumbich…”

The main bridge across the. Grand Codroy River in the area…one lane. Didn’t see a weight limit but it would have been wide enough for the rig and we did see a truck cross it…although he probably only weighed 15 or 20 thousand pounds instead of our 34 thousand…not sure we would want to take the rig across it…no sir, not sure at all.

Saturday was scheduled to be a beautiful day…so we headed out for our second drive which would just happen to include a stop at the pub for dinner on the way home. 

First stop was the Cape Ray lighthouse.

Followed by a succession of small coastal towns…here’s a sample shot but they all looked pretty similar…small and quaint with houses that ranged from dilapidated shacks to pretty nice looking homes…each town with it’s own harbor of fishing boats.

Next up was a stop at Barachois Falls…which included a 1.25 mile round trip hike…it was all on gravel path or boardwalks so it was a nice walk albeit uphill on the way back. The falls is about 125 feet tall total and was really pretty nice…although Connie didn’t hike the last 50 yards as it was mucky and scrambling over rocks.

Here’s a shot Connie got…

And here’s Neil’s HDR, Luminarized version…actually a couple of different versions…his was taken about 50 yards past where Connie’s was as he got to the edge of the stream and then used the tripod and spent 10 minutes processing it as opposed to the 10 seconds it took to process hers. From a strictly what did it look like with your eyes standpoint…hers is probably closer…but from a which one is more likely to have you say “yeah” standpoint maybe one of his is better…let me know what you think in the comments and/or if I should put in both the straight out of the camera shot as well as the processed ones when he does things like this.

Next stop was the town of Rose Blanche…which strangely enough is the last town accessible by road as you head east across the southern coast of Newfoundland…all the rest are only reachable by ferry until you get almost 300 miles east to the Argentia area. There are both people and car ferries that transit along the coast.

Looking due east…the town of La Petites is about 5 miles across there but you can’t really see it because of the haze. There are only about 20 permanent residents in the town now…but it has overnight accommodations and there’s a car ferry that leaves Rose Blanche about 1600 in the afternoon and returns the next morning about 1000 if you should want to go there and visit…although with only 20 residents they get about 90% of their income from tourists and there’s probably 1 place in town total where you can eat and get a beer.

Also at Rose Blanche is the Rose Blanche Lighthouse…which amazingly enough is different from the standard white with a red top design scheme of every other lighthouse we’ve seen here so far. It’s constructed of granite and is no longer in operation but is operated as a tourist attraction only.

With that our day was done…we headed the 45 kilometers back to Channel-Port aux Basques for dinner at the 1 Ton Pub and Grill…Connie had clam strips and Neil had a bacon cheeseburger…her clams were good but his burger was typically overdone as all burgers up here in Canuckistan are…they’ve got some sort of health rule that prevents them from actually making them edible and requires burning them almost beyond recognition. He’s not going to have any more burgers up here he thinks. The fries on the other hand were the best we’ve had in a restaurant in quite awhile.

As we finished our beers and dinner…Neil noticed the ferry coming in so we hurried up and left before it moored and disembarked…every night at Grand Codroy Campground about 1915 there’s a line of RVs that got off the ferry trying to check in…that would be fine as we’re already checked in but they clog the entrance road and we didn’t feel like sitting in the backup until they all got checked in so we could get to the campsite.

We had our third mini NHOG Rally though…we had gotten an email the other day from Joe and Vick Garafola…we met them at the NHOG Rally in Chattanooga in 2016 when Connie had her eye issue and couldn’t see…they were in the area so we told them to stop by. They were on the ferry and after checking they came over…Neil lit a nice campfire…and we chatted for an hour or two until we were all tired and headed off to bed.

Sunday…well Sunday it rained…all day…so we went to Mass and gave Vicki a ride as Joe isn’t Catholic but she is…afterwards we did laundry and Neil dumped and flushed our tanks in preparation for tomorrow’s transit to Cow Head NL.

No Interesting things from the net today…slow internet and hard to upload.

Cyas.

After our 327 mile trip here we were beat I tellya…pretty much beat. About half of the trip was on a nice 4 lane freeway…then we got onto NS-105…which forms the eastern port of the Trans Canada Highway…it’s composed of a series of different roads as it goes from Newfoundland to the west coast and the construction type and quality is variable depending on where you are…the named road was constructed largely of already existing roads. Anyway…105 was pretty rough…and we discovered on arrival that the window shade over our living room window had fallen off the mounts on the ceiling…further investigation revealed that the wall anchors had pulled out. Not surprising…it’s happened before…but there are no metal structural members in the ceiling, just fiberglas and insulation with a thin sheet metal backing board. The solution is just to put in new screw wall anchors…luckily we had a few but they’re on our list to buy more……then hang the shade back on the brackets. This requires…naturally…that you remove the window valence but it’s still a less than an hour job which we got done today after our driving tour of Lake Bras d’Or was done.

Sunday we headed off to Mass at the church about 400 yards away from the campground…the pub is the same distance in the opposite direction on Church Road…so we’ve got pretty much everything we need fairly close…and then were headed down the east side of Lake Bras d’Or…our plan was to stop for lunch at Rita’s Tea House and then continue on down the shoreline another 20 mile or so before heading back. At the northern end of the lake we crossed westward onto the peninsula that has our Arm of Gold Campground in Little Bras d’Or, head around the southern end of that peninsula and then make our way back to the campground.

Some photos from our trip.

Rita’s Teahouse where we had lunch…we actually had High Tea even though it was only around noontime. It was the home of a Canadian country western singer named Rita MacNeil…after her death in 2013 her estate turned it into a teahouse and museum of her career. We had your typical High Tea menu…egg salad, cucumber, and tuna sandwiches with no crust, some assorted pastries…lemon squares, red velvet fudge, coconut macaroons and oatmeal biscuits (cookies we would call them) that were pretty good…and tea of course.

Sitting at our table…an usie…this was before lunch got there.

A shot of the rig parked in our site…looking out ahead of us about 400 yards is the church we went to.

After our trip we headed home and did a little spot touch on the driver side quarter panel on Little Red…some jerk down in Maine scraped it up a bit. We put some touch up paint on it to keep it from rusting until we get back to Fort Myers…then we’ll get it fixed when we’re not moving.

Found some interesting facts on the population of Canuckistan today. The country has a total population of about 36 million folks…and it’s even more skewed in distribution than the US is…sure, NY, PA, OH and CA are heavily populated with lesser numbers of people in the west and Alaska…but they’ve much more population density variance up here.

99% of the population lives below the line in the image below…1% lives above it. That’s a total of about 360,000 people total living above the line…and even below the line a lot of the land is very lightly populated.

50% o the population lives in the red areas below.

I saw another image yesterday that was the above map divided into colors each comprising 20% of the total population…but then I went to find it again to post here and couldn’t find it…basically 3 of the 5 20% blocks were on the east coast in the area from Toronto to Quebec, another one was centered around Calgary and the last comprised the remaining 80-90% of the land area. The one below showing population density was the closest one I could find to showing this…note the large dark gray area which is pretty close to the last 20% block on the image I couldn’t find again.

Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut have a total population of 118,000…and the three red cities of Whitehorse, Yellowknife, and Iqaluit have 50,000 of that 118.000. Even the more populated provinces like BC, Alberta, and Quebec have most of their population concentrated in the southern or coastal sections.

What this tells you is that vast, vast majority of the country is basically empty of people…the lightest yellow area in the image above is a density of 0.4 people per square kilometer and the gray area is less than that. Having been in the upper portions of Alberta, British Columbia and Yukon on our Alaska trip back in 2015…I can tell you that if you see a half dozen cars per hour total on the major (well, the only ones actually) highways that’s almost classified as rush hour. There are about 3.9 million square miles in the country and probably 3 million of them are basically empty.

Later on…I found the one I was referring to before…the colors below represent 25% or about 9 million of the population of Canuckistan. It really bears out…again…the ones above.

So we had 2 full days here for Fun Stuff© in the Sydney area of Cape Breton Island…the first was taken up with a visit to Low Point Lighthouse and some errands…we needed to buy more jeans as we’ll not be in shorts the rest of our time in Canuckistan. We found Levi’s 505s for 35 bucks US…score. The second day was devoted to a trip over to Louisbourg to visit the restored city and fort there. We were originally going to do a rum tasting as well…but Connie woke up with an upset tummy so we punted on the rum tasting.

Here are a few shots of the Low Point Light as well as the barriers that were previously constructed to help prevent erosion of the bluff near the light…you can see how well it’s worked…and also a working lobstah boat right off shore.

After our Fun Stuff©it was 5 o’clock in Tel Aviv as one of our RVing friends would say…so we headed over to the Blue Mist Tavern for dinner…turned out their kitchen was closed today so we just had a couple of brews and met some local Bras d’Or good ole boys…then went next door and brought home a pizza from Janes Pizza for dinner…it turned out to be a hit as it was the best pizza we’ve had in quite a long time.

Tuesday…we scheduled a trip down to the Louisbourg historic site…it’s run by the Park Service up here and is a reconstruction of an old French settlement here on Cape Breton Island that was first settled in 1720 and occupied until the French lost New France to the UK in 1758. We took about a mile hike around the town and got a few shots…

The King’s Bastion…which housed the 600 soldiers manning the fort, their unmarried officers, and the governor and his family.

Married officer’s house.

Looking down the Quay…the widest street in the town, The harbor is immediately to the left and in addition to shops this wide street was used for social functions.

One of the shops along the Quay.

The Frederic Gate from the harbor to the Quay…located in the center.

Cannon along the Quay…there are others behind this fortified wall in the Demi-bastion…a fort basically…that look out over and protect the harbor.

The Dauphin Gate out to the land side of town…at the west end of the Quay.

Cliff Swallow…there were dozens of these nesting up under the eaves of the buildings in town.

Some of the local residents.

Ye Old Royal Sword Maker…although since this is a French town I guess Ye Old is not really appropriate.

The Ice House where they stored ice for their wine and beer. The sign says this is an upside down cone shaped building…sure looks right side up to me.

Guardhouse where the soldiers stood duty…right outside the King’s Bastion.

Chapel.

Confessional.

The rear of the King’s Bastion and courtyard…this was taken from the parapet of the fort that looks out over the land between the town and the remainder of Cape Breton Island off of the peninsula the town is on,

The Atlantic Ocean was pretty rough today…so Neil got some shots of the breakers.

This first one is a rock just outside the harbor…probably 20 feet tall spray from the waves.

We left Louisbourg and drove around to the Louisbourg Light which is across the harbor from the town. This light was constructed in 1734 and is the oldest lighthouse in Canuckistan…it’s still operational today lighting the way home for wayward mariners.

With that we headed home…Neil made stir fry for dinner…it was really tasty. We used the last of the chicken breasts that our friend Jeff gave us when he left Seminole in April…this pile of chicken chunks came from a single boneless breast…it was the largest chicken breast any of us had ever seen by a factor of 2…huge. We’ve seen turkey breasts that weren’t this large. We used it specifically so there would be leftovers for tomorrow night after the ferry trip…we’ll be getting to the campground pretty late so need something quick.

Interesting things from the net this week.

Now you know the rest of the story as Paul Harvey would say.

I don’t play around.

More truth.

Cyas.

We headed off about 0900 this morning after coffee and breakfast…our destination for the day was Fundy National Park which is about 37 kilometers or about 22 miles south. We started with 3 destinations in mind but then added a couple of others.

In addition…we expect to see Roy and Ann Brody again this afternoon…they’ll be here through Sunday or Monday whereas we’re leaving Saturday morning…they’re headed down into Nova Scotia to Yarmouth at the far end while we head further northeast to Sydney to catch the ferry over to Newfoundland next week.

First up was a visit to the very southern end of the park…well, it’s not actually the southern end but it’s as far as you can go on a paved road…to see the Wolfe Creek covered bridge. This is a new covered bridge built in 1992 in the same style and construction techniques (mostly) that old 1700s and 1800s covered bridges used…the key difference being that rather than being limited to about 3.2 meters vertical clearance and 4 tons weight capacity as the 45 Bridge I’ll talk about in a bit…it’s got a vertical clearance of 4.5 meters and is rated for 23 tons…the primary reasons for these increased dimensions being that the Wolfe Point RV Campground is on the far side of the river and they needed a bridge that could handle RV traffic.

On the way to Wolfe Point…we passed by a sign to Herring Cove…so after visiting the bridge we stopped by there. Neil hiked down the 150 odd stair steps to the beach while Connie stayed up top…our original plan was to maybe eat lunch there but the bugs were fierce. They’re not biting bugs…at least not so we noticed…but they buzz ‘round your face and are really, really annoying…so we headed off for an overlook just inside the park east entrance up on top of a ridge overlooking the Bay of Fundy and ate there instead.

Before eating…we stopped by Dickson Falls…located on Dickson Brook naturally. We had a pretty nice little loop hike of almost a mile…with a very nice waterfall and a couple of minor falls downstream from Dickson Falls proper. 

After eating…we headed north for Ponderosa Pines…but took a planned short side trip to the 45 Bridge. Seems like the Canucks have the same really logical naming system that the Mainers do. There’s this covered bridge that we headed off to see…it’s named the 45 Bridge. Why? Naturally it’s because it passes over the 45 River…and you take 45 Road to get there. Now why it’s named 45 I have no idea and a quick google didn’t reveal anything useful…but that’s it’s name and the bridge and road name obviously flow from there.

After the 45 Bridge…we headed home for dinner with another day of Fun Stuff© in the books…so on the the pictures.

First up…I gotta show you the lengths that we’ll go to to get great images for you…our devoted and loyal readers…to see and enjoy. Here are a couple of shots we took along the aforementioned 45 Road on the way to the bridge.

How far will we go…all the way to the Black Hole I tellya.

We had to drive about 5.7 kilometers down that gravel road to get to the bridge…and the photo shows one of the good parts…although it was relatively smooth for a gravel road that piece is about a 20 percent grade. We were up and down…dodging ‘round the potholes…picking our way across washed out drainage culverts…but Little Red handled it like a champ and we made our way out and back in.

Looking southward toward the Bay just downstream of the Wolfe Creek Bridge.

And looking the other way here’s a view of part of the bridge.

As we departed the area we looked back and got this shot…the two above were taken from the right hand side of the bridge just on the other side of the concrete pier.

Herring Cove beach.

And a shot Connie got from up on the bluff.

Closeups of some of the flowers on the trees there.

Next stop was the hike at Dickson Falls…the first few of these are not the main falls but the minor drops downstream from the main fall…

And finally…Dickson Falls itself…it’s about 30 or 40 feet for the top drop and then another 12 or 14 for the cascade lower portion…all of the minor drops above are within a couple of hundred yards downstream from the main fall but there’s enough separation so that they’re not considered part of Dickson.

An usie of the adults on the boardwalk near the main drop of the fall.

This was about the only wildlife we saw today…some sort of slug thing about 2 inches long.

Final destination of the day was 45 Bridge.

A shot of the interior support structure of the bridge. Ever wonder why covered bridges are…well, covered? It’s not for any structural purpose but rather to protect the deck and structural members of the bridge from rain, ice, and snow…any of that will cause premature deterioration of the bridge structure and shorten it’s useful life. To prevent this…they were designed with side walls and shingled roofs to keep the rain off of them.

There was a nice little waterfall directly under the bridge…we could hear it but finding it to take a photo was mostly impossible…we did get a few shots of small portions but the only way to see any significant portion was to hang out the window on the side of the bridge and look straight down…don’t worry…Neil was holding on with one hand and Connie had ahold of his belt as well while he got these.

Then it was off to lunch at the overlook…the park has a couple of Adirondack chairs up on top…they were occupied with other lunchers and it was sprinkling a bit so we ate in the car but once they left we got a couple of shots of us lounging in them.

And a couple of shots looking southwards toward the Bay.

With that our day was done and we headed for the barn…and looking at the weather forecast we switched our activities for Thursday and Friday…deciding to do the nails/haircut/grocery run on Thursday during the rain and go down to the Mary’s Point, the Cape Enrage Lighthouse and a bonus Anderson Hollow Lighthouse on Friday followed by dinner with Roy and Ann.

It rained all day Thursday…hard…it was a bit of a challenge driving up to Moncton for our errands as the road markings here in our northern neighbor are poor at best and pretty much impossible to see when it’s raining…but we got them all done and brought home a tandoori roasted chicken from Walmart for dinner along with a couple of baked potatoes that Neil cooked for us.

Friday we headed off to Mary’s Point…we passed on the bird sanctuary and walk on the ocean floor thing and stopped by for a quick look at the Anderson Hollow Lighthouse…which has been moved several times and now sits on a dam at some sort of abandoned tourist attraction.

Anderson Hollow Light

Cape Enrage Lighthouse. As you can see…it’s almost identical in design to Anderson Hollow…and to almost all of the lighthouses we’ve seen along the coast up here. Seems the Canucks have more of a bent towards uniformity as compared to lighthouses in the US…we deliberately build them with different designs and paint schemes to ensure that even if you see the light in the daytime you can easily identify it. Back in sailing ship days with less than GPS accuracy for their navigation…being able to visually identify a light during the day was a big deal because (a) it told you where you really were and (b) by knowing that you could avoid the shoal waters that lights frequently are placed to help shipping avoid. Seems like a different idea up here…as a former mariner the US philosophy makes more sense. Cape Enrage lighthouse is still operated by the Coast Guard…although it’s unmanned now. The property is owned (except for the light) by a couple who have built a gift shop, restaurant, and charge an admission fee to get into the grounds to see the light and the fossil beach just at the bottom of the bluff past the light.

Close up of the light section…it doesn’t have a Fresnel lens like most lights do so it’s not visible as far…based on it’s height it should be visible at about twice it’s actual visibility distance.

The foghorn at the light…a nearby sign says it might go off anytime if it’s foggy…and if it does it will damage your hearing…must be mighty darned loud. The couple that runs the place and their 20 odd summer workers that run a zip line on the property must have a real hard time trying to sleep if the weather is bad.

Another couple of shots of the light that Connie took.

Looking back from the light towards the dorm for the summer help…if she had been any farther back she would have fallen over the railing and down the bluff.

We came home and then headed back out with Roy and Ann to the restaurant at the local dude ranch…horses and all. Dinner was good but not great…but it was only 8 miles away instead of 30 so that covers a lot of sins I guess…Connie had salmon and it was great…Neil had shrimp carbonara that was decent.

After we got back Neil went out and got another couple of sunset shots.

Saturday we were up early for our 330ish mile transit to the Sydney NS area…where we quickly got setup in an un-numbered site at Arm of Gold Campground just about 5 miles from the ferry landing in North Sydney where we’ll be embarking Wednesday morning for our transit to Newfoundland. There were about 1 or 15 Airstream travel trailers lined up in a row here when we pulled in…but they were all gone the next morning so they were obviously an Airstream only caravan…our guess is that they got on the ferry this mooning.

Interesting things found on the net.

The real Bermuda Triangle.

Hipsters at lunch.

I really wonder why that is.

Cyas.

Monday we had a 170 mile travel day from St John to Hopewell Cape…since it was a relatively short day we took our time and got underway from Rockwood Park a bit after 1000 after saying our “until next times” to Roy and Ann Brody…and it turns out they’re also heading to Hopewell Cape a couple days after us and even staying at the same campground…so we’ll see them again later on in the week.

We hopped onto NB-2…a nice 4 lane freeway…for the first 140 miles then onto NB-114 at Moncton for the last 30 miles of the transit down to the Hopewell Cape area…and pulled into the Ponderosa Pines RV Park…quickly getting checked in and assigned a site. When we got back there we noticed that the utilities were on the wrong side…and they were so far forward that we didn’t have enough hoses or extension cords to reach…so the owner who was back finishing up construction on some new sites shifted us a few sites up where we had the utilities in the right place. Still have a pretty nice view of the lake on the property…turns out the site we were originally in is normally a class A RV site and they pull in forwards rather than back in…that puts their windshield toward the water and the utilities in the right position. No worries though…there aren’t that many rigs parked here. We were originally going to go into one of the new pull through sites (probably 100 feet long)…they were supposed to be done last week but the plumbing inspector hasn’t been out yet to certify the connections for use.

We were actually pretty tired even though it was a short travel day…and it was down into the 50s by dinner time with a low 40s forecast for overnight…so Neil just made some potato, corn, bacon, venison sausage, and cheese tortellini soup for dinner…it was quite yummy and really hit the spot on a cool evening.

Tuesday we were up early for our first scheduled activity…a visit to the Hopewell Rocks located just about 3 miles from the campground. This is a series of rock formations in the Bay of Fundy that have skinny bottoms and fatter tops with trees growing on them…they’re very similar in shape and how they were eroded to the hoodoo’s that the wind and freezing rain sculpts out in the west except the erosion is done by wave action. They’re also…because they’re in the Bay of Fundy, known for it’s world highest tidal range…alternately 50 yards off shore or high and dry depending on the tide. Your $10 entry fee gets you access on two consecutive days so you can visit at both low and high tide if you prefer…which we clearly wanted to do while we were here. 

After parking and paying the entry fee there’s about a 1 kilometer walk down to the rocks…they’re called Flower Pot Rocks here…with about 200 feet of vertical descent…so over our two round trips down there we got in a hair over 3 miles of hiking.

Before heading out…Neil went out at 0540 to take some photos of the sun coming up over the marsh south of the campground…the original owner back 53 years ago bought a huge chunk of property, built some dikes in the marsh to create lakes and stocked them with fish and built himself a pretty darned nice campground.

Looking eastward from the dike just south of the rig.

Back to the north…the rig is just out of frame to the left behind those trees.

Looking south from the dike…this is at low tide and the bay is about 500 years away.

Second shot taken from the same spot 6 hours later at high tide.

Southwest along the edge of the bay.

They even have Great Blue Herons up here.

Closer view of the gully you can barely see in the image 2 shots back.

After hiking down to the rocks at Hopewell Rock…this is a shot of them at high tide. We visited at about 1100 and then again at 1500 to see both tides…I’ve deliberately put some of the slides out of the order in which they were taken to illustrate the tidal range.

And the same rocks at low tide…the small opening you can see at the bottom of the center rock in the above has become a hole large enough to drive the rig through if you could get it down to the beach. Neil looked it up on the tide tables this afternoon and the high tide was 40.7 feet and the low was 4.3…representing a 36 foot difference in just 6 hours. Further up towards the north end of the Bay of Fundy the tidal range is as much as 53 feet.

Why does the Bay have such a large tidal range when it’s connected to the Atlantic Ocean which has a much lower range? The simple explanation…just because. The longer explanation is that there are two factors at play. First is that the natural tidal resonance of the Bay based on it’s shape and contours is exactly in sync with the tidal range in the Atlantic…so like waves amplifying when they’re in resonance synchronization they increase in size. The second reason is that because the opening of the bay faces to the southwest and the islands arranged around the mouth causes a large vortex eddy outside the mouth of the bay and the eddy sucks the water level in the bay below the level in the Atlantic at low tide and conversely forces water into the bay at high tide so the bay has higher high tides and lower low tides than the ocean outside the bay.  

An area known as the Great Cove just north of the rocks.

And the same shot a few hours later.

Diamond Rock up near the visitor center…high tide.

And low tide.

More shots from walking around on the sea bed around the base of the rocks.

I left the person in this shot underneath the rock for a sense of scale…he’s actually standing just at the far end of the hole through the rock.

Crack on the outside face of one of the rocks…it will probably fall down in another quarter million years or so.

Neil went out and got a couple of shots at sunset ‘round the campground dikes.

Looking back towards the rig…we’e parked just to the right of the one you can see there.

Interesting things found on the net.

Alexa…remind me to feed the baby.

Go go gadget go.

Choose wisely. 

Cyas.

That’s Saint John New Brunswick of course…as distinguished from the other Saint John over on Newfoundland…which is actually Saint John’s so I guess it’s already distinguished from this one…we’ll be there in some weeks.

Turns out that we missed mentioning the easternmost town in the USA…the other day on our drive we passed through Lubec Maine which is that easternmost town. We wouldn’t have passed through there except the roads weren’t marked very well and we missed the turn we actually wanted…but since we went through it I figgered I should mention it.

Friday we got up early and headed off on our 106 mile trip over to St. John…we headed back up US-1 to Calais ME then crossed the border…and once again the border guards in eastern Canuckistan proved to be pretty much jerks. We were a bit over the permissible allowance of alcohol to bring in…but where as the ones out in Saskatchewan and points west of there didn’t ask about alcohol at all but about cash, some food items, and particularly guns…the ones here on the Maine border told us 3 times how it was illegal to bring guns into the country…and wanted to know if we had guns back in the states…Connie said yes but they were in storage and Neil said I don’t have any with me. Then then wanted to know how much alcohol we had…and were very unhappy that I hadn’t counted our cans and bottles of beer beforehand…who knew? Is there anybody that knows exactly how many cans of beer they have on hand? Then they asked about pepper spray…which is again illegal in the country…Neil told them we had bear spray and they didn’t care about it at all…despite the fact that it’s the same chemical as pepper spray only in a stronger formulation. Again…who knew…simply by making it stronger and calling it bear spray instead of pepper spray they’re quite happy to have us bring it in. 

So $120 CN or so later in excise taxes we were in…we could have just abandoned the excess at the border…but there was no way we were going to finance Happy Hour for those jerks…and besides the cost of beer and wine is way more up here…so it was cheaper to pay the duty than to buy new.

Anyways…we pressed on and arrived in Saint John NB…it’s right on the Bay of Fundy and quickly got backed into site 99 at Rockwood Park Campground…it’s a city park right off the freeway.

A couple of last shots of Eastport ME before I move on…we don’t take all that many photos of the beautiful campgrounds we’re in as we…mostly…go there because (a) it’s in the area where we want to do Fun Stuff© and (b) campgrounds are where the utility hookups are. Seaview Campground in Eastport on the other hand…most definitely has the It Factor and if we ever come up to Maine again we’ll plan on spending a couple of weeks there. Not much to do…but in the middle of the summer when it’s a bit warmer sitting in the recliner watching the tide go by ain’t a bad way to spend time.

Neil processed one of our shots to look more like it actually looked via his eyeballs at almost sunset…this is our favorite It Factor campground shot in the past 7 years.

Here’s a shot of the little dock at the campground…shown here just to illustrate the tidal range here in Quoddy Bay you can see above between the campground and Canuckistan on the other side. This shot was taken at just about high tide…at low tide the entire dock was sitting on the bottom at about a 30 degree angle and the waterline was 30 or 40 feet past the end of the dock. The rocks you can see at the far right past the red building were dry at low tide.

And then there’s what Rockwood Park Campground looks like…when we drove into the camping area from the check in building…we said to each other “Looks like an Alaska campground”…because that’s exactly what it looks like. We’ve lowered our standards appropriately for the remainder of our time north of the border…they mostly just don’t have what we would call beautiful campgrounds.

We lazed around Friday afternoon after our arrival…Neil had to use 5 sewer hoses to get to the dump connection which is behind the end of the rig…obviously the campground was not designed by anybody that knows anything about RVing…but that’s been typical of our experience in both this country and Alaska…hence our seeing it as an Alaska campground…the only difference being that the sites are much bigger than out there and the rigs aren’t jammed so closely together than you have to position yourself so your slides go into the openings where your neighbor’s slides aren’t. In the photo above, there is enough room in our site for both Big Red and Little Red as well as a picnic table to the side of the parking pad before getting to the edge of the next site. We headed off for dinner to a local pub…we ate lunch late so just had a couple of beers and an appetizer that we split before heading home.

Saturday…we had two Fun Stuff© destinations on the schedule…Reversing Falls and the Cape Spencer Lighthouse…along with a haircut for Neil and lunch out. We planned on visiting the Reversing Falls twice…at the end of both the inward and outwards flow to see it reverse.

First off…Reversing Falls is really a gross overstatement. There’s no waterfall at all…and not even any rapids to speak of as the water level never gets low enough for that. What you have instead is a tidal river…the skinny spot with a couple of islands in it that surround the “Falls” is only about 2 or 3 miles of river length from the Bay of Fundy…which has the largest tidal range in the world with some portions seeing 45-50 feet between the water level at low and high tides. So the river flows downstream…as most rivers do…during the later portions of the ebb tide and the early portions of the flood tide…but when the level in the bay gets higher than the level in the river the flow in the river reverses and it flows upstream. The “prime” times to observe are at the two changes between inflow and outflow…so we dutifully arrived at the Falls 1bout 15 minutes before the end of the inward flow. Sure enough…the water was flowing upstream and then over the course of about 10 minutes it went from 2-3 knots upstream to 4-5 downstream flow with a bunch of swirls and eddies around the ends of the island. You could clearly see the border between the darker brown ocean water that had flowed over the sandbars and downstream silty areas and the cleaner river water coming from upstream.

After that it was off to lunch at the Saint John Ale House where we had a brew and a couple of appetizers. The food was OK and Connie’s Barking Squirrel Amber Ale was excellent…but Neil’s Saint Ambroise Oatmeal Stout tasted like it was peed out on a dead raccoon by a drunk hobo.

Next stop was the Cape Spencer lighthouse for a quick stop and photo op…then back home to the rig for a nap. After that we headed back out to the Falls to see the end of the outgoing flow…again it was pretty anticlimactic…the water went from moving downstream to moving upstream over the course of 10 minutes or so. We did meet a local man who came out to fly his drone over the Falls and get some video…he wasn’t any more impressed than we were. Still though…it’s one of the few tourist attractions in town so we visited it…although it’s probably not worth coming to St. John just to see.

Sunday we went to Mass at the local cathedral…thought we were in Italy again as the entire inside was filled with scaffolding…they’re doing something to the roof/ceiling area but the center portion was open for seating. After Communion we were treated to a short string piece played by a group of children from the parish…we thought it was a Civil War tune at first but on research it turned out to be Ashokan Farewell which was composed in the early 1980s by American folk musician Jay Ungar…although not composed for it was made famous by Ken Burns mini-series The Civil War which aired in 1990. It’s a very Civil War sounding tune…by design of the composer.

Ok…on to some photos.

Looking first upstream (to the right of the viewing area), then downstream, then straight across between the islands. My apologies for the paper mill on the far side…how rude of them to position it right in the middle of where people want to take photos.

You can see the swirling of the browner Bay water coming up along the near shoreline between the islands and the cleaner river water coming from right to left past the island and from left between the shore and the island as the flow reverses.

A couple more shots of the disappearance of the browner section as the reversing continued on.

Huge seagulls sitting nearby…we only saw them at the end of inflow viewing…later in the afternoon at the second visit there were no birds to be found. These are Great Black Winged Gulls.

More Common Loons then we’ve ever seen before in one place…again they were gone by the afternoon visit.

Another gull type airborne…this one is a California Gull…large but not the size of the Great Black Winged.

The border between the browner downstream water and the cleaner upstream water as it passed us…simultaneously the cleaner water was pushing into the opening between this island and the one 20 yards to the left from it.

More Great Black Winged Gulls.

Lunch.

Ren-Ale-Sance…this is what a beer tap selection should look like.

Cape Spencer Lighthouse…it’s sort of a bust as far as picturesque goes…and I had to crop out all of the bottom part as it was full of graffiti…cursed kids.

Looking southwest from Cape Spencer…as you can see the lighthouse is pretty far up from the water…too bad it didn’t provide a better photo opportunity.

A couple of shots of the eddies and swirling water as the tide shifted from outflow to inflow.

We headed home after this…it was 1915 by the time we got home and after 2000 by the time dinner was fixed and eaten…Connie needed to wash her hair so that was it for the day.

Sunday we pretty much did laundry and not much else…although we did have a mini New Horizons rally while we were here. Friday on our arrival…we noticed another NH Summit nearby and figured we would stop by and visit…while Neil was up in the back of Big Red getting the water bin out this pickup stops next to him…and it’s Roy and Ann Brody…they were the rally masters for the NHOG Rally in Chattanooga 2 rallies back…we visited with them both Friday and Sunday evenings. Strange running into them…with only about 1200 or so total NHs ever built we’ve seen a grand total of 6 outside of the rallies we’ve attended (NHOG and RV-Dreams) and traveling with Bill and Linda Napier…who will also be up in the Maritimes this summer albeit not in the same place we are at the same…they’ll be in PEI a month before us and back southwards (I think) by the time we’re over to PEI.

Interesting stuff found on the net this week.

If you don’t want to read my castigation of arrogant assholes who have no understanding of basic high school civics, how laws work, how laws are changed if you don’t like how they work, and think that their political opinions outweigh all of the above…then go ahead and skip down a few paragraphs…because Ima gonna open a can o’ verbal whoop-ass on ‘em. 

No photo for this one…but you probably saw the story in the news last week about the illegal immigrant Equadorian citizen pizza driver who was arrested in NY…he’s got a US citizen wife and two kids…he was arrested for immigration (and probably numerous other) violations but the liberals are all up in arms because this “innocent father who has committed no crime” is up for deportation. Unfortunately…the liberals completely ignore the facts…like these…he agreed to voluntarily leave back in 2010 rather than be detained and deported and was given 3 months to leave. He failed to leave so a final deportation order was entered…which makes him by definition an illegal alien and criminal with an arrest warrant to be deported. Subsequently he married his wife and has children aged 2 and 3 by his wife…they are citizens as is his wife…he could have easily filled out the forms to receive a permanent green card but didn’t bother. He could easily have gotten a proper drivers license…but that would have resulted in him being found out and deported…so he doesn’t have a drivers license…no social security number…and since no license no insurance…but he was driving and delivering pizza illegally…not to mention he was working illegally…not to mention he tried to enter a US military installation without an ID…he only had a “city ID card” which means he didn’t get entered into the database and hence caught up on his illegal warrant. Not to mention that the pizza place he was working for hired him illegally since he can’t legitimately fill out the I-9 required for working in the US…and not to mention that if he was in an accident the pizza place would be liable.

But…no, he’s completely innocent of any crime according to the liberal press, the governor of NY, and a 2011 appointed federal judge who’s stayed his deportation until July 20 so that he can have a hearing about whether his deportation is legal and whether or not he’s committed any crimes.

And the governor of NY…says he was illegally detained despite the fact that he submitted an invalid ID for entry into a military facility and despite the fact that running his name through the active warrant check revealed his outstanding arrest warrant for immediate deportation.

And his local Senator…Kirsten Gillibrand…claims that this is “another example of inhumane immigration enforcement policies” and that “it’s shameful to separate him from his wife and children like this”.

Nope…nothing criminal or illegal to see here…not at all. Assholes need to review the facts and see how many crimes he’s actually guilty of…instead…what’s shameful is that he knowingly and willfully violated the law and now liberals want to claim it’s all not his fault…he’s guilty of nothing and it’s “inhumane” to arrest him.

BEP I say…just BEP. For those who don’t recognize that acronym it stands for Bovine End Product…which is a polite way of saying BS.

I am tired of politicians and judges selectively enforcing and also creating laws to suit their political agenda. Now I sympathize with the 11 million or so illegal immigrants in the US…let’s not sugar coat it by calling them undocumented because the fact is that they are here in violation of the law. All they want is to have a better life for their family for the most part…and for the most part they’re working (albeit not paying taxes) and stay out of trouble. I sympathize…I really do…but until the immigration laws get changed they are here illegally no matter what “immigration reform” proponents have to say. I’m not in support of trying to kick all 11 million of them out…if for no other reason than the government doesn’t have either the competence or the facilities to round them up and kick them out…and a lot of them are either children whose parents brought them here illegally or were born here and thus are US citizens…but until the law gets changed then the law is the law…and politicians, law enforcement, and judges should either enforce the law or be impeached and removed from office. Maybe I can get a judge to agree with me that I don’t have to pay taxes any more…I wonder how far that lead balloon would fly.

OK…enough ‘bout that…ya’ll that skipped can start reading again.

Ya know what these are…doncha…why they’re snow angles.

Scottish weather forecasting stone…very similar to the Alaskan one I posted some time back.

More truth.

Punk arrested during a haircut.

Ya sure ‘bout that?

Cyas.