NL July 26

Here’s last night’s gorgeous sunset:

We made a farewell tour of Fogo Island before we headed to the ferry. Though there were threats of rain for the entire day, we woke to, and enjoyed, a couple of hours of sunshine.

First stop was Shoal Cove with a strange, black building that we think is an art gallery. To me, it didn’t fit the landscape:

And from here, we got our first sight of the Fogo Island Inn. See it to the right, juxtaposed against this lovely, well-preserved church (not impressed with the Inn so far):

We pulled in to Joe Batt’s Arm and parked at the Etheridge Point’s picnic area. This would be a great place for overnight free camping. Here we also saw “The Witch’s Foot” (it requires some imagination; think big toe, right foot):

OR, is the Fogo Island Inn the Witch’s Foot from across the cove?

We heard yesterday that the owner of the Inn, a local girl,got rich and wanted to erect this posh, eco-friendly, artsy hotel and restaurant. If you go online, you won’t find prices. But we’ve since learned that the cheapest room is $850 a night, meals included, and it goes up to $3,000 a night! There’s been a lot to say about this by the locals. It’s only been open two months, so time will tell. But they did send an invitation to each household on Fogo and Change Islands offering a tour, dinner, room and breakfast for two, gratis.

A guy we talked to last night went and said they had a great meal (sauteed Stinging Nettles and all). A woman we met today can’t wait to go for her anniversary. We ran in to Toronto/Pontypool couple who had stayed two nights there, and she said it was expensive but fabulous.

For me, it’s sort of ugly. But other places on our little tour were much more beautiful:

We drove on to Tilting, a village which is a National Historic Site. It maintains the character of an old fishing village and is very “Irish”. Though places have been modernized, much remains as once was. As we were touring some fishing stages and old fenced gardens and root cellars, the church bells began to ring…MANY times. It was 9:30, and a local woman told us it was for the 10:00 Mass. Like “get up and get to church!”. By the way, there WERE several cars parked by the church after 10:00:

We met a man with his granddaughter who was visiting from-unbelievably-Pontypool! And he confirmed that there WAS an RV Dump in the middle of the street (which we happily used):

We were bid farewell by these Tilting sheep grazing as they must have many years ago:

By the way, we learned that the Caution Moose signs we saw coming in were, in fact, Caution CARIBOU signs. Jeesh, another elusive animal (but not to the guy who obviously found a few):

So the ferry left on time, we saw new friend Angus once again on the ferry, and two young kids played accordion and an Ugly Stick. They were heading to a festival in Twillingate and were just practising (Angus and I shared a dance):

It started to pour as we headed to Gander. The Welcome to Gander area features a sculpture of a helicopter, then a helicopter flew over our heads in the Walmart parking lot AND we saw the funniest sign on the Trans Canada: “Caution: Low Flying Aircraft”. What were we expected to do?

The rain and fog has forced us to stop at the Joey Smallwood Lookout in Gambo. No view from my chair tonight, and don’t expect a sunset picture tomorrow.