Windy capes and Confederated bridges

We were awarded a certificate for sightseeing from "Tip to Tip" on PEI!

From wind farm to wind farm as it turned out. We've seen wind farms in Washington and California but here at North Cape we got some real detailed information on wind energy. Unfortunately, the information was a bit more technical and dry than we would have liked but it is impressive the advancements that have been made in turbines. The North Cape area of Prince Edward Island is set aside by the Canadian government for wind power generation and scientific study. The PEI provincial government has bought and installed wind turbines and are providing 5% of the province's power in that North location. As a "special deal" wind turbine companies are invited to set up and test their equipment at North Cape. Of course, all power produced goes into the provincial grid. Win, win, huh?!

Prince Edward Island is beautiful. Even with the hard rain we had yesterday, the contrasts of green fields and red dirt is outstanding. Neat farms, a zillion beaches, lobsters, oysters, mussels, and potatoes. All in a long skinny island (110 miles long by 20 - 40 miles wide). Think I could live there (in the summer only!)

We get a kick out of PEI bragging that they were the birthplace of the Confederation that led to Canada separating from Great Britian. Well, they DID host that meeting but they didn't like what came out of it and chose to stay part of Great Britain. Then when PEI took on building an island-wide railroad and had so much debt they ended up joining Canada so the Canadian government would take over payments. One of the stipulations they required to become a province was to always have access to the mainland. This was accomplished by sailboats and iceboats in the winter (only $1.50 in the winter if you helped push), then ferries, and finally the Confederation Bridge.

We traveled to New Brunswick today over the 8-mile Confederation Bridge which was opened in 1997. Since the Northumberland Strait ices over in the winter, collars were put around the support columns that raise and break up the ice and the bridge was planned with a minimum clearance of 75' to allow icebergs to pass underneath (good thinking!)

PEI Sweets: Potato Candy and Seaweed Pie, oh my!

All right. We admit it. We are museum junkies.

Just had to go learn everything we could at the Potato Museum. And we found various anecdotes about the plant, too.

The potato was first grown in South America. The Inca's were growing potatoes when the Spaniards came. Those guys took the potato back (along with the gold and silver and corn) and over the next 75 years the potato was planted from Spain to Ireland.

A French king wanted the French to plant the potato, they wouldn't, so he had potatoes planted and guarded during the day, knowing the French would raid the garden at night. The French finally learned to love them ... fried.

Everything attacks potatoes and their plants. Virus', bugs, and scabs. In every case, if proper field preparation and chemical applications are used the problems can be avoided. One gets the impression that without the chemicals it would be nearly impossible to get a "good" potato. Apologies to the organic food advocates. Last night, as I scrubbed my organic potatoes, I was a bit paranoid trying to make sure I didn't have any of those buggies. Ugh.

The potato has enough Vitamin C to prevent scurvy. That certainly was helpful on long sea voyages.

PEI grows lots of potatoes. Both seed and table type. Freighters call to load potatoes to countries all over and many 3rd world countries get their seed potatoes from here.

There was a kitchen at this museum where we tasted fudge, candy, mints, bread, and pancakes all made from potatoes.

Then, if that wasn't enough for one day, off we went to visit the Irish Moss museum. No. No moss. No Irish. Just seaweed. Kelp.

This seaweed is known as carrageen moss and carrageenan is extracted from it and is used as a thickener in beer, toothpaste, soap, ice cream, cosmetics, and puddings. This kelp is cut from plants in the nearshore and has in the past been harvested by a rake and basket pulled in the surf by a sure-footed horse. Nowadays the kelp rake has been modified and is pulled behind a lobster boat. We still see many farms with these Clydesdale-type horses. Maybe they still get to run in the surf sometimes.

This interpretive center has a cafe attached which serves Seaweed Pie. Had to have some of that. Yummy! No little seaweed pieces to catch in the teeth.

Potatoes, Lobsters, and Foxes

We've spent two days "free wheeling" (driving the CR-V, without the RV) around the province of Prince Edward Island. Our main memories from 1990 when we were here were of the acres and acres of potatoes and a huge pile of lobster bodies used for fertilizer. We didn't find any piles of lobster bodies (yet), but the potato fields are still here enmass.

Our best memory of last time was seeing the trucks, loaded by a machine that picks up the potatoes from a row left by another machine, lumbering out of the field onto the road. Loaded perhaps too full, and lurching up onto the paved road, causing several (sometimes dozens) of potatoes to fall out onto the road and shoulder. We found then that while the ones that hit the pavement might be bruised or skinned up, the ones that made it to the grass shoulder were unharmed, and just asking to be picked up. Result: We had "road-kill" potatoes for several dinners.

For the last two days, we checked roadsides where the trucks were coming out of the fields with no success. The trucks are not loaded as fully, and many of them have covers over the loads. So much for free enterprise! Today, we stopped at a farmer's stand and bought 5 pounds of spuds for a buck. Two miles down the road was a left turn that leaned out a bit and -- you guessed it -- a bunch of potatoes on the side of the road. And a few more at the next stop sign. Drat!

Most of the roadside stands and small shops that offer fresh lobster were already closed for the season. But we found a restaurant last night that would cook us a couple of their usual 1 1/4 pound lobsters and let us take them out (without the rest of their usual full meal items), for half the cost of the dinner. We were running out of daylight and didn't want to sit through a full dinner and have to drive the 50 miles to the RV in the dark on roads we were unfamiliar with. All we wanted was the lobster, anyhow. So dinner last night was sinfully simple --- lobster and melted butter. Not too shabby!

On our first day of free-wheeling, we wandered through and around PEI National Park on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. On one of the unpaved side roads, we spotted a fox trotting across the road. We stopped. He stopped. By the time we got the camera fired up, he was sitting on his butt watching us. We got a shot or two, but wanted him to get up and show off his magnificent black tail. When he did, and ambled off the road, the camera (or camera operator) wasn't quick enough to get the tail.

A hundred yards down the same road, another one crossed. This one we got, although a bit fuzzy. A guide at the park's Visitor Center, when shown the picture, said it was a silver fox, which hasn't been seen around here. She asked us to send her the picture so she could have the park naturalist examine it. Perhaps we have discovered a whole new breed, which will be named after us! Or not.

Tomorrow we move to a different RV park better positioned to enable us to free-wheel the other end of PEI. Stay tuned; we might find that pile of lobster bodies yet.

Why use a trap?

Why go to all the trouble to go out to sea with your lobster trap when you can just pick them up along the shoreline?

Just fiddlin' around

Time for a little catch up. Chores and forward planning. Visiting with camper friends and then time for some free-wheeling. This fiddle was on the cruise ship dock at Sydney.

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More Newfoundland notes:

- Newfoundland is where old school buses come to die. We probably saw 50 or so old and unused school buses parked behind homes. Why? Two theories: 1) less children around so not as many buses needed or 2) schools used to be sponsored by churches. Each community would have multiple schools, one for each denomination, and buses would be necessary for each of these schools. When the government took over the schooling, the churches had no need for many of the buses. Mystery: not solved.

- What were the dump truck-sized loads of broken pavement sitting in piles at the ends of people's driveways? This area was so remote that no asphalt paving equipment was available. When roads elsewhere on the island were torn up, Manuel, the local rock and quarry man, loaded up the broken asphalt chunks and then dropped them off where someone wanted a driveway. Next step, Manuel came and used a torch to heat up the chunks and laid the driveway. Looks like there was a power roller that finished the project. Mystery: solved.

These containers are for garbage sacks. They don't get rolled around in the incessant wind. There is an air gap between each slat. You can imagine the annoyance plastic or metal garbage cans would be if they were knocked over by the wind. Everyone homeowner has one of these octagonal garbage containers.

"Come Home Year 2007". Newfoundland is losing population. We saw many communities sponsoring a "come home" celebration. Previous area residents are invited back to see the community today in hopes they may decide to return. Lots of signs and flags and banners around the area to welcome these folks. Different come home years for different communities.

Our Memories of Newfoundland & Labrador

After our 3 weeks in western Newfoundland and eastern Labrador, here are our strongest memories:
Short, scruffy trees. Rocks. Thousand of "ponds". Rocky bays. Telephone poles supported by wooden cassions filled with rocks (too time consuming and expensive to drill holes in the rock "soil". Signs for businesses held up the same way (or flopped over because they didn't use enough rocks). Fading signs for businesses amateurishly hand painted on plywood sheets -- there's not a lot of sign painters around. Rocks. They don't call Newfoundland the "rock" for nothing. Biting black flies.

No front porches. Chimneys with no rain caps. Every house had long clothes lines with pulleys from house to telephone pole. Stacks of lobster traps waiting for next season. Stacks of skinny poles alongside the roads waiting to be cut up for next year's firewood. Wooden boat skids using the same skinny poles. Roadside vegetable gardens.

The interior of every cafe was spotless, decorated with care, and the food was great. Cod. Trucks with moose-bumpers. Cod. Two, three, or four-kilometer long boardwalks through the bogs, put there with money from the Federal Government to make jobs and promote tourism. Cod flakes. Moose footprints on the boardwalks. Lots of wind. Many cemetaries with the best waterfront location in town. Moose.

All the people we met were very friendly and helpful. Proud people working at whatever they can do to make a living. In some communities at a subsistance level . At peace with their lonely and harsh environment -- a feeling of community and kinship with their peers. Mad at the government for not providing more infrastructure -- specifically, roads and electric power, that might make an industry feasible, but aware that the long winters and long delivery distances make that industry-dream rather unlikely.

We may never return to NL, but we're glad we came. We learned a lot about geography and history and gained an appreciation for their spirit and dignity.

Port au Port -- means Left or Left?

A nice ride down hiway 430 to Stephenville, and a 100-mile tour in CuRVy around the Port Au Port Peninsula, where we found a huge wooden Catholic church, and an even more huge gravel mining operation, culminating in a conveyer dumping into an ocean-going sized freighter. Do they ship gravel to foreign ports?? To Quebec?? We don't know.

There are 75 towns scattered around the peninsula, the biggest was just over 300 residents.

Near Jerry's Nose (I don't name 'em; I just report 'em), we spotted an arrow for a "Hidden Waterfall", and followed a short dirt road leading to a gorgeous view from a commercial fishing station with a space marked out for public parking. Nice of them.

Along the way, we saw many folks walking, biking, painting their porches, or mowing their lawn, and a surprising proportion of them waved at us. Guess they know all the local cars, and can spot the tourists. It produced smiles and waves back from at least two tourists.

We have noted earlier that most NL chimneys are the aluminum or stainless steel variety, and that at least half of them had no rain caps. We assumed the high winds had something to do with that. On the peninsula loop, that percentage was much lower, but we saw a large number of chimneys with very shiny rain caps -- no soot -- no corrosion. Apparently it's time to prepare for winter and replace missing caps.

Found the moose!

Found out where the moose go to hide out from the hunters. At the dumpstation!

It's all in the press

What a great presentation by the national parks to recreate and explain the presence of the Vikings in this northernmost corner of Newfoundland.

L'anse aux Meadows was the site of small Viking encampment. Lief Eriksson, with a group of about 90, left Greenland and headed for the New World after hearing about it from an Icelandic merchant, Bjarni Herjolfsson, who 15 years earlier had been blown past Greenland and sighted North America. (Notice: Bjarni gets no further credit.)

Lief used this area as a base for exploration. They were looking anything they could use (read:exploit) and especially for hardwood to be used for shipbuilding.

And here we go again: a historian went looking for something in Newfoundland and by chance found it. In this case, a fellow in the L'Anse aux Meadows area used the area for grazing for his cattle. These historians were the first people interested in the lumps in the ground in the area. He had figured the they were remains of indian camps. Little did he know.

Once research was begun, it was found that the lumps were the remains of the foundations of sod homes. Several things of extreme significance were found that proved that the Vikings were here. One was a pin that was known to be worn only by the Vikings to fasten their cloaks. The other was slag from an iron smeltery. Iron was produced from melting small stones of iron ore found in the bogs. Lots and lots of work went into melting down the low grade ore and beating out the impurities until the smithy could make nails to be used in repairing the ships.

Eventually the Vikings got in crosswise with the natives and ended up leaving this area forever.

Leif called the new world: Vinland. Well, there aren't any vines here. So several options: one, the true Vinland has not been found - the one with the vines; or two, climatic changes; or three, just as his dad, Eric the Red, did in describing the "green" wonders of the land called Greenland, maybe there is a bit of an exaggeration. Nope you aren't going to be making wine here!

So you can see it's all in the press!

Honorary Viking

We participated in a Viking Feast in a sod hut restaurant.

Fun evening. We had 2 Vikings and their slaves serving us. We dined on moose stew, a Newfoundland "jiggs" dinner (corned beef and potatoes), squid, cod, cod cheeks, and a bakeapple liquor. Songs were performed, and a mock court was held. Lots of laughs. ps: Dean's now my slave!!

Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

Today we headed the RV north. The heavy winds have lessened and the sun is shining. A comfortable drive to the RV's northernmost stop. From here we explored St. Anthony's today and tomorrow we will visit L'anse aux Meadows where the Vikings first settled.

St. Anthony's was the base for the International Grenfell Association named for Dr Wilfred Grenfell. Grenfell organized a hospital ship to serve fishermen in 1889. As he spent more time off the Labrador coast, he found out how wretched the standard of living of the fishermen and families was and strove to assist them to help themselves.

He set up hospitals, nurses stations, and schools. He set up a co-op that allowed bartering, he acted as a minister and a judge, taught the people to become more self-sufficient by growing their own food, taught them crafts so they could sell their skills. He set up an orphanage. This he did in the summer.

In the winter he went to the populated areas of England, Canada, and the US and performed fundraising and searched for volunteers (called WOPs - workers without pay). He also sold the crafts of the people and received donations of clothing. This man wrote 40 books and sold them to raise money for his cause.

It's amazing to think of the number of people he and his organization helped in this little known area that was completely without government support.

Stormbound

Today (Thursday, 9/13) the 70-90kph winds are here with a vengence. The ferry is still tied up at the dock and is listing ten degrees as the wind pushes it against it.

An unmoving RV lined up at the dump station had his awning blow loose.

And since we had trouble standing or walking outside, we decided that driving the RV-towcar combination 80 miles wouldn't be fun, and the darned trip is supposed to be fun.

So we're sitting here another night, and will reevaluate conditions tomorrow morning.

Of course, we did go out and take a few storm pictures!

Labrador

We treated ourselves to an overnight trip to Labrador. We stored our RV at St. Barbe and took an early ferry to Labrador on Tuesday (9/11). It was a pleasant and smooth crossing.

Apparently, Labrador isn't all rock like Newfoundland as their highways have periodic dip/bumps, like someone had trenched a new water line under the road, and not backfilled properly. Also the paved highway was not as good as we find in Newfoundland; narrower, less shoulder, and numerous extreme climbs and descents (8 - 10%). Unlike Newfoundland's rock beaches, we even found (pink) sandy beaches here.

We read that Newfoundland tried several times to sell Labrador. First for $3 million dollars to Quebec. But Labrador was never sold as it seems that Quebec still thinks part of Labrador is their's anyhow.

After checking in at the recommended Lighthouse Cove B&B in L'ance Amour, we drove the rest of the paved hiway to the community of Red Bay and the site of a 1500's whaling station. Good displays/museums regarding the history of the area, the whaling industry, and particularly the Right Whales which were hunted here: the Northern Right Whale and the Greenland (Bowhead) Whale. These are baleened whales like our Humpback whales on the NW coast but have extremely large lower jaws.

Again we are amazed by how history of the area is discovered. In the 1970's an archival researcher studied records of the 16th century Basques of France/Spain and found records that described at least 16 Basque whaling stations along the Labrador coast. With this information and records that a loaded galleon had sunk in the bay during a storm, underwater archaeological work was done in Red Bay where remains of 4 boats were found. Now 14 years later, the museum is full of tools, dishes, clothing, and other artifacts from that era. Fascinating.

The cove on which Lighthouse Cove B&B is located on (depending on which resource you use) is called Forteau Bay, Lighthouse Cove, or Amour Cove. The community of L'Anse Amour has a population of seven, all named Davis, all related. Nearby is the Point Amour lighthouse, and near that, the wreckage of the HMS Raleigh, a British warship -- a big one: 700 crew on board -- that had gone aground there in 1922. The ship went aground for one of these reasons: 1) avoiding an iceberg or 2) the officers wanted to salmon fish off the river. Hmm. The Brits were so embarrassed about pictures of the shipwreck showing up in papers that they sent a crew over to blow it up in 1924. Great news though: the British deeded in perpetuity, the whole cove inside the point, to the Davis family, in gratitude for the family's (and others) role in rescuing all but 11 of the sailors aboard the grounded boat. Can you imagine the 700 sailors put up inside (it was December) a lighthouse, the four homes in the cove, the sheds, stables, fishboats, and ???

On the road near L'Anse Amour is a rock-covered mound that contains a grave of a 12-year-old boy buried 7500 years ago! With him were "souvenirs" that gave archeologists clues to his age, the social status of his family, and even the health of the civilization at that time.

The next morning we were greeted by roaring winds and horizontal rain. We had a great breakfast at the B&B, but a phone call to book passage on the 6pm ferry back to Newfoundland as we had planned, gleaned the info that all ferries were cancelled for the day because of the high winds. (70 to 90kph -- 45 to 55 mph as forecast in the Environment Canada website.) Poo! But, we had brought along a week's worth of medications, and two extra days of underwear, so decided that there was no immediate panic.

After breakfast we slogged to the nearby lighthouse/museum, and then to the other end of the paved road into Quebec (and 1 1/2 hours earlier than Labrador!) past the ferry landing.

The dip/bumps in the road now had a lot of water in them causing large splash patterns alongside and in front of the car. There ought to be no dirt, dust, rocks, paint or even undercoat on the bottom of the car now.

We stopped in at the ferry terminal to see how to book an "open" return, since Thursday's weather report was no better, and we figured it would be Friday or Saturday before the boat could run again. Surprise! The afternoon sailing had taken place on schedule, and the 6pm sailing was going to leave on schedule. Short version: It did, we were on it, the sailing was not very lumpy, and we were back in St. Barbe on "schedule".

Watch where you dig!

In the 1930's, a fellow was digging a foundation to put in a theater* in downtown Port au Choix when he unearthed a bunch of bones that turned out to be an ancient native burial site. Eventually several sites in the area were uncovered, and archeologists were able to determine there were four different ancient native civilizations here from 3500 BC to 1200AD. These people had a diet heavy in shellfish and fish, killed seals, and ate berries. They suggest that these people came over the Bering land bridge and migrated to the North American east coast. Interesting stuff. (*still no theater in town)

We stayed two nights here at Port au Choix (Port of Choice), at an RV park run by the Lions in a great location right on the water. What a view! For the second day in a row, we ran across a sailboat with Oregon registration sitting at the town dock. There are very few recreational boats around. Turns out the folks aboard are Newfoundlanders, but used to live in Oregon, and kept their boat in Seattle. They were circumnavigating the island.

Nearby were the towns of Port Saunders (lots of very large commercial fishing boats) and the town of Torrent Falls where we hiked a boardwalk trail. Saw muddy moose hoofprints on the boards in several places, but no moose. The trail leads to a fish ladder at Torrent Falls and took us past:

A week without wi-fi

We must be getting to the boonies. No wi-fi. Not even cell phone coverage in most spots. It may be a few days before we can send out more bloggings.

From Gros Morne National Park, we continue up the Newfoundland Viking Trail working our way to L'anse aux Meadows.

All in all, the highway is pretty good. After all, the whole island is rock. But in some places it got a bit rough. Maybe frost heaves?

At Arches Provincial Park, we saw some neat natural arches at the shoreline, hundreds of feet across. Unlike capes on our west coat where this might occur, these rock arches ran parallel to the beach. We could see where there may have been a fourth arch at one time.

Got stuck (really) for the first time ever when the RV's back wheels cut across a median grass strip getting into the narrow parking lot "IN" hole (turned out it was an "OUT" hole, but not marked). Another one of our famous firedrills to unhook the car (hitch, cables, brake system, etc) to allow AMZN.Bus to back out and go in the other way.

Filled up CuRVy with Newfie gas at $4.10/gal. when converted to U.S. gallons and U.S. $. Today the price of gas raised a penny per liter, and diesel 4 cents per liter. Think we'll get out of here with only one more fillup.

Our weather has been a consistant nice and yukky on alternating days.

Enroute to St.Barbe (where we caught the ferry to Labrador) (pronounced Barb not Barbie), we saw an increasing number of stacks of eight-foot-long "logs" (nothing bigger than 8" diameter) alongside the roads. Asking around, we found that the locals get a permit from the government to cut up to one cord per year. They do this in the winter and haul them behind their snowmobiles on a sled called a "komatik", to the side of the hiway, where they are left for nearly a year. As winter again approaches, they go out and cut them into firewood, and haul them home to use a fuel for the winter. We're not sure how they prevent pirating. Maybe with one of those shotguns us tourists are not permitted to bring into Canada!

Speaking of guns, it's hunting season for moose here and lots of folks are zooming around in their ATV's with a gun tied on. Glad we saw our one Newfie moose at Gros Morne as we've been told the moose have gone into hiding. Don't blame them.

At Flower Cove, we saw 650-million-year-old thrombolites, strange bun-shaped "rocks" which are actually living -- the fossil-like remnants of algae and bacteria growth. It's tough to swallow that these rocks are living but maybe they were at one time.

Fjord or Pond or Lake?

Lots of hiking today as it has been a sunny day at Gros Morne National Park.

One of our hikes was to Western Brook Pond where we took a cruise and a billion pictures. Most bodies of water over here are named ponds, whereas we'd call them lakes. The steep sidewalls (to 2200') and the numerous waterfalls of Western Brook Pond remind us of the Misty Fjord area of SE Alaska. In our Alaska cruising we see hanging glaciers but here they are hanging valleys. The lake portion having been eroded much deeper and faster than the valleys (and streams) that feed into it.

Western Brook Pond was a salt water fjord at one time but continent shifting has folded rock layers between the pond and the ocean. We tromped over 4 of the folded rock layers to get to the pond.

Between each rock layer was a NL bog and lots of naturalist signs describing characteristics of the bog:

peat to 12' depth;

caribou lichen: the main source of nourishment for the caribou in the winter;

carnivorous plants: such as the Pitcher Plant which is NL's official provincial plant (can you imagine a meat-eating plant as the official plant! Hello, Audrey!!);

and creatures (we saw our first Newfie moose).

Look out, Moose!

Traveling northeast on Canada 1, we found some taller trees -- if 30 feet can be considered tall. And fewer ponds (but still plenty), and a couple of huge lakes. Canada 1 is the main route to get from the southwest corner of Newfoundland to the "population center" of St. John's on the east coast, so there are many trucks traveling the route. It's a good road, with many 4-lane sections and good "slow traffic" lanes on the 2-lane hills, so our 50mph rate didn't delay anyone who wanted to go the 90km per hour (57mph) for long.

We were looking for -- and found -- something a local had told us about: BIG (three-inch pipe) brushguards on the front of the over-the-road trucks, with two, four or even six driving lights mounted on them. For going 4-wheeling across the tundra? Nope! Big lights to better see the moose at night, and the brush guard to protect the front of the truck if he whacks the moose anyway! No sense in tearing up the front of your truck while decreasing the moose population. (An earlier blog noted that there are around 700 moose/vehicle collisions in NL each year.) Didn't see a moose today.

Many of the trucks coming toward us were log trucks, with 4 to 6 inch round "logs" cut in 8 foot lenghs and carried crosswise on the truck. At a truck weigh station, we saw a medium-sized pile of these logs. Apparently one way to avoid a fine is to simply offload enough to get your truck under the appropriate weight limit. It looked like these were not all off the same truck; seemed like a common occurence. We suppose the logging company sends out a truck now and then to pick up the excess.

Being a pretty barren island, Newfoundland is minus many of the animals one expects to see most anywhere. There are no skunks, porcupines, snakes, groundhogs or "regular" deer (caribou are not deer). There would have been even less if several species hadn't been imported: Moose!! (would you believe?), shrews and voles, hares, rats and mice, mink, chipmunks and squirrels -- all imported. They figure the bears and beavers came on ice floes, but also note that polar bears can swim "hundreds of kilometers"! Coyotes are recent residents having walked over in the winter when the strait to Labrador is iced over.

Population centers: There are only four cities in NL that have a population of over 10,000. St. John's is the biggest, with around 100,000. In the 3 weeks we will be here, the biggest town we will visit, Corner Brook, has only 20,000. When NL became a province there were 1450 communities, now there are 700.

Ponds -- and more ponds

Yesterday we described the naming history of "Newfoundland and Labrador". Listening to the locals, we find they are pronounced "Newfund-LAND" and "Labra-DOR". Readers will be expected to pronounce them correctly in the future. Further, to save space, we shall refer to them as NL (as is done on many signs and business addesses.) Having said that, I fear we shall necessarily refer to them separately, as we can only be in one or the other, and what we describe will be what we saw in that "half" of NL.

First, let us clarify something else we said yesterday. We called Newfoundland "rocky". This is not quite true --- Newfoundland is one big rock! There is precious little soil here; just what gathered in the low spots and supported the growth of some hardy, slow growing, stunted greenery. Again, the similarity to alpine meadows high in a mountain range.

The other thing that gathers in low spots in the rock is water. "Ponds" is what they're called on the maps, but it only shows the larger ones, many with names. But there are tens-of-thousands of them, anywhere from a few feet to hundreds of feet across. Some more-or-less round, some long and skinny, most randomly shaped and only a hundred feet in any direction.

And the darned things are at different levels. They fill up to the level of the lowest rock sill around them, then run over into a lower pond, maybe quite close; maybe hundreds of feet away. And so on --and on. We could often see a dozen ponds at different levels. Sometimes the flow between ponds was obvious, sometimes it was hidden.

We drove east from our campground near Channel-Port-aux Basques (where the ferry came in), to the end of the road twenty-five miles away. There are five small oceanside villages along the way, and we toured each of them. The houses were mostly in good repair and brightly colored, but haphazardly placed wherever the owner could find a level place. No two adjacent houses seemed to face the same way, or were built at the same level. The road zigged and zagged between them. It reminded us of farm villages in Switzerland, where some houses were built with corners cut off to prevent them from protruding into the road. We saw at least two that way today, and a couple others that should have had a corner beveled.

Tomorrow to the northeast.

Rain!

Greeting us on our first day in Newfoundland and Labrador (more about that name later) was our first Seattle-style rain since we left at the end of July.   A quite heavy rain during the night, and more-than-you-wanted-to-walk-in in the morning.  The land is quite rocky and big puddles/small lakes showed up where there were none last night.

 

The rocky terrain and winter cold cause the vegetation to be sparce and stunted like the high areas in mountainous country.  Looking across the countryside causes the word "barren" to  come to mind.  We haven't seen much yet, but the first impression is that this area is very different than we're used to.  ("We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto".)

 

Newfoundland was declared a British colony in 1824.  In 1855 it became self-governing, and in 1927 acquired the area known as Labrador in a settlement of a boundary dispute between it and Quebec.  In 1949, it became a Canadian province.  The name was changed to "Newfoundland and Labrador" in 1965.

 

In many ways, the two parts of the province are still looked at separately.  That's because of the distinct difference in area, topography, population and industry.  E.g., Labrador, with an area of 115,000 square miles, has a population of only 29,000 -- a density of 3.96 people per square mile.  It has only about 100 miles of paved roads. 

 

Newfoundland has an area of 42,000 square miles, a population of 483,000, a density of 11.5 people per square mile, and 1800 miles of paved roads.  (As a comparison, California has almost exactly the same area as the combined province, but a density of 225 people per square mile and I'm pretty sure the entire state is paved.)