A Day in Gander

I was up early this morning and the sky looked so nice, within half an hour it was raining but we did pretty good by the afternoon it was nice again.

Sharon and I went shopping and the guys went to the Aviation Museum, they said they had a good time.

Winterland to Gander

Wow a no picture day.

After saying our good byes to Theresa we headed back up the Heritage Run to Goobies and then back to the TCH and up to Gander. Our park is nothing special but that is okay, we are going to have an easy day tomorrow, you know the laundry, shopping etc. day, and then Wednesday we will do the Kittiwake Coast.

Hope all is well with everyone at home.

St. Lawrence and Allen's Island

Wow, how wonderful to wake up to a beautiful sunny day.

We headed for the little town of St. Lawrence to meet with a friend who offered to take us out to Chamber Cove, which is where the USS Truxton and the USS Pollock went aground Feb. 18, 1942. We took just a little drive first through town and down to the harbour.

Connie's (our new friend) dad worked at the mine but he was unfortunately one of the hundreds that got cancer from all the dust and fumes and died at 68. The mine was for Fluorspar which was used for jewellery, apochromatic lenses, nuclear industry etc.. It was a very colorful stone which made lovely jewellery but for such a small town it was devastating as so many men died.

The mine closed in the early 80's and has now had interest in opening but I am sure the working situation will be much different. The museum was very informative and well displayed.

From the museum we walked to Chamber Cove and it was so beautiful, hard to believe that in 1942 such disaster could hit the area. Three US war ships were sailing by, it was a terrible evening, so much fog and strong winds, they say the waves were 35 feet high. The USS Truxton was in lead and was blown into the cove, thinking they had hit an iceberg, the captain ordered the ship into reverse, however it only damaged things worse as they were lodged between two sets of rocks. One young sailor made it to shore and managed to get to St. Lawrence where he got help, however only 183 survived and 203 died. It was such a hard task to get the sailors off the sinking ship which was now covering with water and up the steep cliffs.

Two hours later the USS Pollock ran aground about 15 miles further on in the small village of Lawn, so many people were scrambling to help, but again here many men lost their lives. And once again the same evening the third ship the USS Wilkes ran ashore just beyond but it was freed without to much damage.

A few men had scrambled up the rocks and were found in this fishermens shack, the door is missing as it was used as a stretcher during the rescue.

Looks to beautiful for such a horrific accident.

Up above the cliffs is a plaque and cross dedicated to those that lost their lives. The americans thanked the Newfoundlanders for their help by building the first hospital in St. Lawrence.

As it was so foggy yesterday we went back to Allen's Island and it was brilliant today, but still the French Islands were a blur in the horizon.

Came back to Fred and Theresa's and they had a big Jiggs Dinner ready for us, it was so very good, we cannot thank them enough for their hospitality the last few days.

Little towns around the Burin Peninsula

Well this morning was not as sunny as we had wished for but thought we better make our way around the peninsula while we could.

Our first stop was Garnish, a small fishing village with some pretty friendly people.

One smaller fishing boat came in while we were there and we went to watch it unload, when the boat is coming in the fishermen must call St. Johns and tell the fishery and they call the monitor who comes down to the dock to weigh and record how much each is bringing in.

This fishermans load was 403 pounds of cod, here in the picture is the monitor running the ropes and Ron got to run the hoist.

The monitor told us that he would be in Fortune at 1pm when a much larger fish boat would be arriving.

So off we went down the road to Frenchmen Cove, we toured the Provincial Park they have there but no way our rigs would fit.

We found a little garden planted by a volunteer and it was quite lovely, he (or she) also had planted some vegetables and they looked very nice, up the roadway was and old dock and it did not smell nice, oh so fishy.

The beaches are not white sand but round type river rocks but they look nice from far away.


Grand Bank was having a festive day so we got to enjoy a little of that as we wandered around.

Water Street was quite interesting and so we had our picnic lunch here, if we had known they were having BBQ etc. for the festivities we would have done that.

This is their Heritage Home, seems like everyone town has one.

It did have an awsome garden.

Now it was just about 1pm and we wanted to catch the monitor looking after the fish boat in Fortune Head so off we went.

The boat was unloading at the packing plant so we could not get as close as we had wished.

They unloaded the cod from the bottom of the boat in two barrels, hoisted up and dumped into the plastic tubs.

After watching them for awhile we went to the other side of the harbour, still in Fortune Head and found a fish boat unloading Sea Cucumber, this was a first for most of us.

The boat goes one day out, approx 100 miles, fishes for 15 hours, and then back with 35 thousand pounds of sea cucumber, sold at 30 cents a pound.

They unload them like the cod with the buckets, but once up on the dock they are dumped onto a conveyor belt that dumps them into the plastic containers.

It was so interesting.

After we left Fortune Head the fog came in and made our afternoon rather dreary, this fellow below gave us a good laugh.

We found the lighthouse, which was nothing spectacular but the waves on the shore were.

Walk, Burin and Port aux Bras

Very foggy morning, so not much sense in going round the coast, instead Ron and I decided to go for a walk through the Winterland Eco System.

It was an easy walk 5 kms of boardwalk or good path through flat forested and bog areas. Along the way I found many ripe blueberries so I had a good feed.

It was very warm and we finally had to take our jackets off and were lucky enough to get it finished before the rain fell.

Along the path you come to a heritage home and here is the root cellar.

The house was closed but we looked through the windows.

After a gourmet lunch of hotdogs we went back to Burin to go through the museums.

The first was a heritage home which was owned by the Redding family.

Inside one of the rooms.

The next stop was across the street at the Bank, built in 1910, in fact yesterday was thier 100 anniversary. The museum was great and our little tour guide was excellent, her grandfather was one of the survivors of the tidal wave that hit Port aux Bras back in 1929. Port aux Bras is only 5 minutes down the road. The museum had a whole room dedicated to the tidal wave and it was very interesting.

After leaving the bank we drove out to the United Church in Collins Cove, the church sits right on the shore and is very striking.

From here we went to Port aux Bras, to view a brand new monument that was erected last week in memorium of those that lost their lives in the tidal wave. On November 18th, 1929 an earthquake took place 250 kms off shore and at 7:30 pm 3 50 feet waves hit the shore, it took homes off the shore and in the case of the Judge home(our young tour guide) the father watched from shore as his home was swept away with a light still burning and his wife and three young daughters inside.