Marystown and Burin

A very cloudy yet warm day today and we just toured a bit around the area.

First off was to the tourist information in Marystown where we picked up our material on what to see.

From here we spent the morning visiting more of Tom's family, his brother George and wife Josie, and sisters Alice and Rita, everyone welcomed us, very nice folks.

Now it was lunch time and Teresa took us down to Burin to lunch at the By D Rock Cafe, a really wonderful spot and the food was great, I had a partridge pudding with brown sugar sauce for desert, yummy.

Burin was absolutely beautiful and we would like to go back to do some more exploring, hope we get a sunny day as it would be awesome.

After lunch our purpose was to go down to the wharf to see the Old Colony Trust which was an old packing plant made into a community place where they hold live entertainment every week. The walls are done up with murials of the surrounding area a the tidal wave they had here in 1929.

However when we got down to the wharf a Coast Guard employee " John" greeted us and asked us if we would like to have an inspection of the station and the Coast Guard Vessel. It was great, all the crew got involved and what should have taken us 15 minutes ended up being over an hour, it was a great visit, they were very interesting fellows.

We did look through the Old Colony building which you can see just behind in the picture above.

We knew we had to get a move on as it is now 2 in the afternoon and we had not seen to much, these newfies take everything in stride, what's the hurry.

Fred had told us the rig was going out to sea today so we wanted to go have a better look and yes, when we got there the tugs were hooked on, apparently assisting when they take up the anchors.

The rig is in Morier Bay just beside Fred's work place.

Grand Falls Windsor to Winterland

Catching up on the blog this morning as we did to much visiting last night and I rolled into bed.

The sky was nice and blue for our ride from Grand Falls Windsor to Goobies, we stopped at the tourist information in Gander and fuel in Clarenville. The TCH is in very good condition with lots of passing lanes and the traffic was mild so we just took our time.

Once we turned at Goobies to head down the Burin Peninsula the road was much narrower but yet in quite good conditon. After passing through Swift Current we climbed up onto a plateau of sorts and stayed there for some 100 kms before dropping down into Marystown. Up on top I had the feeling of being on top of the world, and yet it is probably no more than 600 feet above sea level. It was rolling hills, tons of rocks, ponds, bogs, streams and lakes, and even if it looked like you could not do any farming or gardening it was all so green, and more green.

When we dropped into Marystown the first thing we saw in the harbour was this oil rig, Fred says it has been here for three weeks for maintenance, so glad I got a quick picture driving by today as it is supposed to leave port today, I did not know that it travels under its own power.

We are in Winterland, which is about 10 km from Marystown and at a friends sisters home, Teresa and Fred Collins, and like most Newfoundlanders they made us right at home. Fred works down at the shipyards, painting and restoring boats.

So we will start doing some looking around today to see what we can get into, drizzly today and tomorrow then supposed to be more sunshine.

Cow Head to Grand Falls Windsor

Today was a lovely but uneventful day, the sky was blue and ride was picturesque.
We stopped at Deer Lake for fresh raspberries and fuel and got another picture of the moose and although he was not as wet as he was last time, he had lost a horn and it was tied up with ribbon.


We would look kinda out of place parked next to this camper.

The road was up and down and lots of lakes, we are parked at a nice campground in Grand Falls Windsor and will move down to the Burin Peninsula tomorrow.

We hear BC is burning up, be safe everyone.

St Barbe to Cow Head

A beautiful blue sky greeted us this morning for our short ride down the Viking Trail to Cow Head. Since it was raining so hard on our way up it was like seeing it for the first time.

Once we were all set up at the Seabreeze RV Park in Cow Head we headed off to tour a few things where we could not stop in with the motorhome.

The Arches Provincial Park was quite beautiful and made even nicer with the wonderful day we were having.

All along the coast you see how bad the wind beats the little trees, they just do not have a chance.

Parson's Pond was a cute little community and the pond was actually the sight of a drilling rig many years back but it took more money to extract the oil than it could produce.

We were really surprised when we got to Shallow Bay, there were many people out enjoying the beach. The beach was very sandy and yes I tried the water to see if the kids playing in it were just crazy and no it was very warm.

Back into Cow Head and a stop at the church yard with all the beautiful flowers, lovely to look at without doing any weeding, my type of gardening.

Our site for the night is a very picturesque one, hard to have to leave tomorrow but we are headed for Grand Falls-Windsor and then Winterland.

Labrador

Oh such poor internet where we are, so I am just hopeing this works.

Our trip to Labrador was great, we met some wonderful people and saw much different countryside. The northern part of Newfoundland is quite brown and grey with rocks but Labrador was green, very green, even the rocks looked green.

We were up early as our ferry left at 8am and we wanted to be on time.

The sailing was very smooth and we saw one whale, once they opened those big front doors to the ferry we were off. We actually landed in Blanc Sablon Quebec, so we are travelling through provinces and time changes quite quickly.

The first thing that greeted us were the black flies and yes they were plentiful but not as bad as we had been warned. Up on top we could look back to where the ferry docked and the harbour of Blanc Sablon.

About 5 miles down the road we entered into Labrador and visited the tourist information in an old gothic church. Here they had a little wall sign with a statement from Jacques Cartier that said he was sure he had found the land that God had given to Cain. It is extremely rocky and I am not sure you could find a place to grow a garden.

Just before the little village of L'Anse Amour is this ancient burial ground, the archeologists think that this was the first civilization in these parts and this is the burial ground of a 12 year old girl from 8000 years ago.



This light house was my favorite part of the day, it had a tour through the way the Wyatt family lived and an escorted tour right to the top of the lighthouse which is attached to the house. I worried all the way up how I was going to get down but was determined I was going to do this. Once up on top we were very high up and standing right beside the fresnel lens, I do not think you would be doing this anywhere else.

Just as we were arriving a frighter was headed up the Straight.

Right beside the lighthouse was the foundation of the Marconi Station that was active for 65 years and two men were stationed there at all times.

Another shot of the lighthouse, after the tour we were invited next door for some Labrador tea, it was quite lovely but tasted a little like tree bark. They also had a resident groundhog which was the biggest I had every seen, I think they fed him well.

Five flights of stairs and two ladders, I sat on my bottom to get onto the ladders.

This young man turned out to be the grandson of Mary, they lady that we spent the night with.

From Pointe Amour we headed up to Red Bay to see the National Historic Site of the Basque sailors that came to harvest our whales. It was an amazing story of how they discovered the wreck of a ship just like the one above in their harbour and retrieved every piece so they could recreate the times.

Once here they hunted the "right" whale in these little boats called chalupas. The whales were called the right whales because they were the right ones to fish for, slow and once shot they did not sink but floated.

We talked for awhile with a couple local residences and inspite our feeling of desolation they are very content, they say they have all they need and would not want to leave.

As you can tell our day was cloudy but at least not raining.

After a very untasty chicken dinner we arrived at Barney's Bed and Breakfast and met Mary, she was a delight to talk to and she and here parents were born and raised here, she was one of 13 and had 8 children of her own. She has seen many changes, including the road that we now all complain about as it is so rough, they had to travel around by little boat.

That night Ron and I went for a walk, good time the black flies have gone to bed. We met the other two people staying at our bed and breakfast and they are a father and daughter headed to ride the Norther Ranger out of Goose Bay to Nain, we had really wanted to do this trip. We are going to get together with them in Nova Scotia, where the live, to look at their pictures.

The next morning we head west of the ferry into Quebec, it was so foggy that we could not see much and it looked like it would have been beautiful.

We were in line very early for the ferry, so I bought more cod, Ron really liked the last bunch.

It was still very foggy and the ferry looked spooky coming into port.

The little town of Blanc Sablon across the bay in the fog.

Our return trip was very uneventful, got a quick glimpse of a whale but the fog was thick, were back in time for turkey dinner at the restaurant next door. Tried to do the blog but with no success so Sharon and I played hairdresser and colored each others hair, had a great shower and did laundry, the facilities at this park are wonderful. Off to Cow Head this morning, have a great day everyone.