NL July 18

Hiked 7 km
Bugs and clouds (okay, bugs) prevented last night’s sunset. But we were up early and heading north to Red Bay.
The town is right of the fork in the road. The left was tempting, but the gravel road is not for us, yet:

We don’t usually do the pay-for-it tourist stuff, but the Red Bay National Historic site, now a UNESCO site as well, was tempting. So we toured the Visitor’s Centre (complete with a small iceberg just outside the window which had been there for 4 weeks1):

then headed to Saddle Island with our Water Taxi Captain, Truman.
This place is amazing. In the 1970’s, this archaeological site of a 16th century Basque Whaling Station was discovered by the observation of red tiles piled everywhere on this little island just minutes off of Red Bay. Many years of digging on land and under water has revealed an amazing story of the killing and rendering of 25,000 whales, sunken galleons, and the Bernier, a 1960’s wreck.
You walk the island (we spent two hours) and the places for tryworks (where they rendered the blubber), cooperages, wharves, a possible church, a burial site, and a Dorset Eskimo site. It was amazing:

And we saw two life birds: a Spotted Sandpiper:

and Truman pointed out another, an Eider (duck):

We asked how he knew it was one (thinking markings, size, etc.) and he said he’d shot and eaten enough to know! He said you “fill ’er with Stove Top and bake ‘er”. We loved Truman. He also took us on a tour around the little iceberg and we both touched it. Beautiful colours and solid as a rock:

We tried more Fish and Chips (tasty but still not a winner) and decided to walk it off on two trails. The first was the Boney Shore Walking Trail along the beach where many of the bones of the whales slaughtered by the Basques still lie. They’re bleached, many still intact, and some crunch underfoot:



The Tracey Hill Walking trail (670 steps up) was more a challenge. We climbed 442 of them then decided “this isn’t Mount Everest, so we have nothing to prove” and headed back:

On the way home, we stopped at the wooden deck bridge over the Pinware River, a beautiful, salmon-fishing spot:


Back at the campground, we filled with water, avoided bugs, drank wine and Scotch and went to bed!
Here’s another view of the campsite:

NL July 17

Hiked 2 km

Beautiful day for a ferry ride. But first, last night’s sunset:

Just before sunset, we were attacked on the trail by a Willet defending its nest or chicks. NOISY!

But we left our little free campsite and headed to the ferry. While waiting, we visited Black Duck Cove and scoped out more free camping (love this province).

This was quite a memorial to a 20 year old (and a predictor of the sight of  the guy in t-shirt, shorts and flip flops driving his snowmobile across the asphalt onto the loading dock of the ferry a little later).:

The ferry ride was beautiful, sunny, quite warm and swift. David chatted with a man who’s from Deer Lake, NL, has taught all over Canada including the North, and is excited about his salmon fishing trip to Quebec (in NL, you can take one salmon; in Quebec, SEVEN including one BIG one).

I was appalled by the couple who smoked outside despite the No Smoking signs, in fact took pictures of each other smoking under the No Smoking sign and, when a bottle of apple juice fell over from its perch on the garbage pail, threw it OVER the garbage pail into the ocean. Hmm…

But then, Labrador:

We got some info, and drove along the coast. Here are a few pictures from the MoHo as we traveled (many better to come, I’m sure). It’s beautiful and so very different from the Newfoundland side.

		First shots of Labrador VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We got a great site (#21) at Pinware Provincial Park ($9.75 a night; thank you my darling Senior), just over the dunes to the ocean:

We walked the beach (beautiful and sandy, which surprised us), fought the bugs (Black Flies and some huge Horse Fly or something-the Park guy said there were so many that he forgot all the names), and tried to fly our kite (in Codroy, there wasn’t enough wind; here there was too much):

There are loads of birds feeding on the water (lots of small, dead fish on the beach) and we saw seals, but no whales. But a great start to our Labrador adventure.

Here’s the view from my chair in the dinette (note all the bug protection):

NL July 16

Hiked 4.5 KM
Here’s last night’s sunset:

We got up to sunshine and decided to explore Flower’s Cove. Three hours later, we had seen the beautiful lighthouse:


an Anglican church, named the Skin Boot Church since the funds were raised from the sale of donated sealskins that were made into boots:



…and the Catholic Church:

and two cemeteries. The saddest headstone was for three young children, ages 2, 6 and 8, who had all died in 1880 within days of each other. We wondered what illness took these young lives:



We crossed The Marjorie Bridge, originally erected in the early 1900’s, to join communities:

It and the boardwalk lead to a Thrombolite “garden”.Thrombolites are these rounded rocks (they say like buns) that can only be found here and in Shark Bay, Western Australia. Fascinating:

After a disappointing Cod and Chips lunch (more will have to come now), we drove up and through a few more coves, then sought the endangered “  Long’s Braya”, which is supposed to be found in Shoal   Cove. We saw the signs, were told they bloomed late June, and we didn’t see anything.
BUT in Shoal Cove, we did see scores of stretchers with sealskins drying (once in a lifetime I’m sure):



We went through Nameless Cove (favourite name so far) and came back to our trailhead campsite for another night.
Here’s this morning’s view from my chair: