August, 2004
page 1
A new month - a new adventure.  At 6:30am on Sunday, August 1 we were first in line at the ferry terminal to board the MV/Caribou for a trip from North Sydney, Nova Scotia to Port aux Basques, Newfoundland.  But, we were the last row of vehicles to board.  The advantage was that all the other vehicles had been routed along the sides and when we drove on the ship we were directed straight down the center.  We then set our clocks all ahead by only 30 minutes....a very strange time zone! 
The trip across the Cabot Strait took about 5 hours.  The ferry reminded us of the ones we had taken on the Alaska Inside Passage three years ago.  We split our time between the cafeteria and the comfy seats in the movie lounge.  Tom watched "Spiderman" and we all watched "Cheaper By the Dozen."  We also enjoyed a bit of the live entertainment in the pub lounge.  It had been warm and sunny when we departed Nova Scotia, but our arrival in Newfoundland found us in misty fog.  We spent the first night not far from the ferry docks in a large truck scales area and on Monday morning started our way up the west coast of Newfoundland.  Gone were the acres of potato fields we'd seen on Prince Edward Island.  Here in Newfoundland we found rugged cliffs, large rocks, short stubby forests and marshy tundra. Our first stop was in Corner Brook.  We joined quite a few other rigs in a parking lot of a shopping center that had a Wal-Mart, Dominion (large supermarket) and a Canadian Tire (which had a dump station).  While in Corner Brook we visited the Captain James Cook Memorial.  He mapped Newfoundland before he explored the Pacific.  We also found the Public Library and made use of the Internet connections - not an easy task as we never saw even one sign telling us where the library was located.  A tour book told us it was on the 3rd floor of an office building - and it was!
On Tuesday we headed north again - on the "Viking Trail."  We made "tourist stops" at the Lobster Cove Head Lighthouse and "the Arches," and several beautiful scenic spots along the cliffs and seacoast.  We joined a group of vehicles stopped along the highway at one point to gawk at a mother moose and her two calves.  That night we started our own gathering at a truck fueling station lot.  There were 8 or so rigs by morning.  Wednesday our stops were at the Port Aux Choix Historic Site where we learned about the four ancient Indian cultures whose remains were found since the 1960s, but had lived here about 5,500 years ago.  That night we got settled for a 3 night stay at the Triple Falls RV Park in St. Anthony.  We needed to get water, do laundry and dump our holding tanks. 
Our first glimpse of Newfoundland at Port aux Basques.
Our travel buddy Jacques with Tom at "The Arches" along Newfoundland's west shore where the sea has worn away parts of the rock, leaving arches of stone.
Mother moose and one of her two calves.
In the St. Anthony area we visited the Grenfill Properties which is a memorial to Dr. Grenfill, a London doctor and preacher who came to this area in the early 1900s and started medical, economical and social projects which are still operating to benefit the residents.  We spent half a day at the L'Anse aux Meadows Heritage Site which commemorates the first settlement by Europeans in North America around 1000AD.  It wasn't till the 1960s that a couple from Norway discovered the remains of that settlement.  It certainly would have been a hard cruel life here in 1000AD.  One evening we attended a "Viking Feast"....plenty of cod tongue and dried sardines for all!  (They had salmon and roast beef, too.)  And dessert was local berries called "bakeapples"...tasty!  The entertainment was a "Viking Court" where some of the diners accused their friends of various minor offenses such as a woman who accused a single traveling lady of always needing repairs on her RV so that all the men would take their tools and go to visit.  The punishments were likewise humorous.  Our park had three RV travel caravans staying here, and some of those people were at the dinner.  They seem to be having a great, though hurried, trip from what they tell us.  We talked a while with one couple from New Philadelphia, OH (where Jacques used to live) and another who used to live in Frisco, CO (where our son, Reid, lives)...small world!      On our drives in Newfoundland, so far, we have noticed a couple of odd things.  First, we passed many many wood piles at the side of the road.  All the wood is neatly cut and stacked, mostly in firewood size, but some in longer lengths.  But these piles are out in the middle of nowhere.  The other oddity has been decent size vegetable gardens - also along the side of the road and in the middle of nowhere.  The gardens are neat, with rows of various vegetables and usually a fence around it, often with rags tied to the fence.  We asked our guide at the L'Anse aux Meadows about it and he confirmed our guesses - that the locals use the wood to heat their homes and go out in late winter to the meager forests to cut the wood, haul it to the roadside for easier pickup (often using sleds to get it that far) and leave it till they need it and have time and space to get it home.  Because of the lack of good topsoil in most of Newfoundland, the vegetable gardens are planted at the roadside where larger patches of soil were created when land was cleared to build the roads (which happened in the 1970s)   Life still isn't very easy here!    
Jacques and Tom enjoying the Roast Capelin (dried, salted sardines - heads and all) at the Viking Feast.
Click on "Forward" above to see more of our adventures in Newfoundland and Labrador.
One afternoon in St. Anthony we asked the clerk at the Triple Falls RV Park where the triple falls were.  She directed us to a hiking trail and said it was about a 15 minute hike to see the falls.  She neglected to tell us that it was a favorite swimming spot and when we got there we discovered what must have been most of the teenage population of St. Anthony jumping off the cliffs and enjoying the pool at the bottom of the falls.  It really was a beautiful spot...but we were glad it wasn't our kids jumping.
One of the Triple Falls near St. Anthony, Newfoundland
August, 2004
page 2

On Saturday, August 7 we took time to clean, dump and fill our various tanks and use the internet line at the Triple Falls RV Park.  Then it was off to St. Barbe where we parked inside a fenced lot - also called an RV Park.  It's all a matter of definition!  Our neighbors here in St. Barbe had also been our neighbors in St. Anthony.  Just as in Alaska, we find that we travel with somewhat of the same group of people.                       Early Sunday morning we were up and in line at the ferry docks for an 8am sailing on the MS Apollo.  It was a grey and misty morning.  We found our way to the lounge and seats in front of the large windows for the 90 minute ride across the Straits of Belle Isle to Blanc Sablon, Quebec. Thanks to the mist and fog we couldn't see very far in front of the boat.  Once off the ferry we drove the car a short distance into Labrador.  The landscape was much the same as in Newfoundland..short trees, rocks along the shore and bogs.  We drove through several small towns and stopped at the Point Amour Lighthouse.  While at this spot we noticed several groups of whales swimming off the coast.  They were fun to watch.  A little over 50 miles from the ferry, the paved road ends at the town of Red Bay.  In 2002 a gravel road was completed from Red Bay up to Cartwright....we chose not to take that one, although there was a fair amount of traffic headed that way.  Red Bay had been a large whaling port in the 16th century with most of the fisherman coming from the Basque area of Spain.  Today it is a small village, population about 250, with an Historic Museum - and a nice restaurant where we ate lunch.  We had to retrace our drive to return to the ferry for the 6:00 return trip to St. Barbie.  The road follows the coastline and any place there is a cove, it seems that a community has sprouted.  As in Newfoundland, most of the houses are small and look to be what we would call a "split-level."  The lower level is in the ground with small windows just above ground level.  The houses are often backed up to a small hill.  All this is to protect them not so much from cold or snow, but from the wind.  We have noticed in Newfoundland and again in Labrador, many people park their cars along the road and walk out into the bogs to collect berries.  In Newfoundland the difference was that most of the berry pickers were wearing suits of netting to protect themselves from the nasty little black flies.  We didn't think we had much of a problem with them, but we each had a few itchy welts within a few hours. 

 

On Monday we were on the road again in the RVs...heading south to Rocky Harbour and the Gros Morne National Park.  We settled in at the Gros Morne RV Campground for two nights and on Tuesday we visited the Lobster Cove Head Lighthouse, the site of a 1919 shipwreck, and took a boat tour on Western Brook Pond.  At the lighthouse we also got to watch some students work with banded birds.  They have some "friendly" traps out in the woods and go out to collect the birds.  They then bring them back to their shed and examine each bird, note the number on the tiny band around its ankle, weigh it, measure its skull and determine its sex and if it is a hatchling.  Then they walk to the door and let it fly away!  They are researching migratory patterns and most of the birds were warblers of some kind.   To get to our boat tour, we had to walk not quite two miles from the highway parking lot through pine and tuckamore forests and across bogs to get to the pond.  The pond had been created by glaciers thousands of years ago, but is now landlocked and lower than sea level.  One of the boats got to the pond on a large sled across the frozen bogs in the winter time.  The other was cut into sections and lifted by helicopter and then reassembled.  The ride through the canyons of rock was pretty spectacular. We spotted a couple of moose on the rocky cliffs, too.  There is a beautiful photo in all the tourist literature taken someplace in the National Park of some hikers overlooking the fjords/cliffs.  We asked, and have heard many others also ask, where to go to take the same photo.  It is a four day hike from a drop off point along our boat tour.  You have to take a class with the rangers and prove your orienteering skills before you are given a permit to hike there.  Our tour dropped off a couple of hikers and they disappeared into the forest.  We hope they took their cameras!   We had  a great day even if we didn't get that same exact "photo op".
Heading south again on Wednesday we came once more to Deer Lake where we fueled up...$266.07CN or $202 US...ouch!  ($2.57/gal).  We then headed east on Trans Canada Highway #1 and made it to Gander for a night at Camp Wal-Mart.  The TCH is a much better road than Route 430 to St. Anthony.  We arrived in St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland on Thursday afternoon, August 12 and once again made camp at Wal-Mart.  All the campgrounds in the area were full and the clerk at the Pippy Park Campground even called all the other choices, including Wal-Mart, for us.  Wal-Mart was happy to host us and we stayed for three nights.  On the days in between we managed to learn our way around the capital pretty well.  We made stops at the "Fluvarium," an river ecology education center, the mall (a Wal-Mart and a grocery store are the anchor stores), the downtown harbor and area of shops and historic buildings, the Catholic Basilica of St. John the Baptist, and the National Historic Sites at Signal Hill and Cape Spear.  We were very cautious as we neared the Signal Hill Site on Friday afternoon.  The Parks Canada workers had gone on strike that morning and they had a large and busy picket line at the bottom of the hill.  Tom approached slowly and politely listened to the message the striker gave us.  The man had noticed our Ohio license plates and commented that we'd come a long way.  We explained that "yes, we had, and we'd really like to go up the hill" so he let us through.  We enjoyed the view from the top - overlooking the city of St. John's and its beautifully protected harbor.  Looking out into the ocean we saw some whales.  The significance of Signal Hill is that it played an important part in battles of several different wars over territorial rights.  And, in 1901 Marconi received the first transAtlantic wireless message near here.  A museum about this event is housed in the Cabot Tower which was built to honor Queen Victoria and explorer John Cabot who landed in Newfoundland in 1497.   Another interesting experience on Friday was when we stopped to ask a policeman for directions to a camera store and he took the time to make a radio call to find a good one and then got in his (Toledo made?) Jeep and had us follow him across town to get there...certainly a friendly and helpful officer! 
Point Amour Lighthouse in L'Anse Amour, Labrador
On Western Brook Pond in Gros Morne National Park near Rocky Harbour, Newfoundland.
The bog and tuckamore trees along the Labrador coast.
We went to the Parks Canada Cape Spear Historic Site on Saturday but did not encounter any picket lines.  It could be because we arrived there in the dark at 5:30am.  Cape Spear is the Eastern most point of land in North America and we were there to be the first in North America to see the sun rise that day.  Well, the sun did rise...and it did get light out...but the clouds were moving faster than the sun, so we didn't see much of a sunrise.  We did enjoy the walk along the cliff and the view of and from the lighthouse.  We were back home in bed by 7:30.    Later that day we took a drive down the Avalon Peninsula's east coast through Bay Bulls and Witless Bay to Ferryland but didn't see any of the whales we'd been told were gathering in the area.
The Catholic Basilica of St. John the Baptist in St. John's, Newfoundland.
The cannon battery protecting St. John's at the top of Signal Hill.
A hazy St. John's downtown from the top of Signal Hill.  St. John's is home to about 1/4 of Newfoundland's 500,00 residents.
The first light of sun in North America on Saturday, August 14, 2004 from Cape Spear, Newfoundland.
Click on "Forward" and "Back" above to see more of our adventures in Newfoundland and Labrador.
August, 2004
page 3
Our three day stay in Newfoundland's capital of St. John's ended on Sunday morning, August 15 when we left "Camp Wal-Mart" and headed west on TCH #1, retracing our drive across "The Rock" as the province of Newfoundland is often called. It had been rainy and overcast when we left, but as we headed west we found the sun again and enjoyed the rocky scenery.  We left the TCH at the Bonavista Peninsula and drove north to Princeton where we stayed overnight in a brand new campground...The Princehaven RV Park has beautiful sites on the edge of a pond and great 30amp service, but their new well is producing cloudy water and their dump station has not been installed.  We had arrived there in early afternoon so we got in the car and made a tour of the rest of the peninsula.  We were glad we had done it that way as the rest of the road was in pretty poor condition with some nasty detours that would not have been fun in the RV.  At the end of the peninsula we found the peppermint striped lighthouse and a memorial to John Cabot.  There is also a recently built replica of  Cabot's ship, the "Matthew," which sure is a small thing in which to have crossed the ocean!  At the Dungeon Provincial Park we found some interesting rock formations and a community pasture full of horses, goats and cows blocking the road...the biggest concentration of animal life we've seen in Newfoundland.
On Monday we were headed west again, heading back towards Port aux Basques and the ferry back to Nova Scotia.  We stopped briefly at the Terra Nova National Park which has a Marine Interpretation Center on Newman Sound, then spent Monday night at the Wal-Mart in Grand Falls-Windsor.  On Tuesday it was on to Corner Brook (where we had stopped when we first arrived in Newfoundland several weeks ago).  In Corner Brook we once again stayed at Wal-Mart and the next morning went to a laundromat and the YMCA where they let us download our e-mail.  Late Wednesday afternoon we drove the rig three hours to the ferry docks to wait for our 2AM departure.  We arrived in North Sydney, Nova Scotia around 9AM on Thursday and went to the Piper's Trailer Park on the Cabot Trail near Indian Brook.
The replica of John Cabot's "The Matthew" in which he crossed the Atlantic in 1497.
We drove the almost 200 mile loop of the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island in the car on Friday.  Once again - on a day we'd planned to do a lot of touring the weather turned cloudy and misty.  But in the 11 hours it took us to make the drive, we did see a little sun.  The shoreline around the island is magnificent and scenic.  We enjoyed seeing the small communities tucked into the coves and the beautiful rocks and trees in between.  The road wound back and forth and up and down over the hills, into the clouds and back down to the sea.  We could have spent several days making the trip, but we were glad that we hadn't tried to drive the motor home on that road.
The shoreline along the Cabot Trail near Pleasant Bay, Cape Breton Island, NS
Fishing boats at Green Cove on the Cabot Trail
Looking out on Aspy Bay along the Cabot Trail, Cape Breton Island, NS.
The west coast shoreline along the Cabot Trail.
Changing locations once again on Saturday, August 21 we headed west, leaving Cape Breton Island and heading to the "Evangeline" area of Nova Scotia.  We first made a stop in  Baddeck and toured the National Historic Site in honor of Alexander Graham Bell.  He made his home in the area during the last 37 years of his life.  We were surprised to learn about all of his scientific endeavors besides the telephone.  He was very involved in working with the deaf and with airplane flight and hydrofoil boats.  Our stop for fuel in Baddeck caused VISA to shut down our account...they didn't think anybody would spend over $300 for fuel.  It was Monday before we were able to reach them, verify that it cost nearly $3.00 a gallon to fill our 150 gallon tank, and reinstate our account.  After an all night stay in an Atlantic Superstore lot in New Glasgow we arrived Sunday at the Land of Evangeline Campground in Grand Pre.  It was worth the trip...we had 50 amp service, sewer connection and got a signal on the satellite. (our first such combination in Canada)  Our spot at the campground was within walking distance of the Bay of Fundy shoreline and there was a beautiful viewing deck for watching the changes in the tides, the shoreline birds and sunsets.  Since we had arrived in the morning and were also very close to the Grand Pre National Historic Site, we went there on Sunday afternoon to learn all about this area.  The earliest settlers here, in the early 1700s, were "Acadians" from France.  They developed a process of building dikes to protect the fertile farmland from the changing tides, and reclaimed land from the sea to use in farming and establishing communities.  At different times over the years the area was ruled by the French and the British.  In 1755, the British ruled that all the residents be deported.  Over the next 8 years, most of the Acadians went to live in other parts of North America.  Over the years, many of the people or their descendants returned to live here.  The National Historic Site has a church built in their memory and also a statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who wrote the poem "Evangeline" about the situation, and a statue of "Evangeline." 
Our first day trip from Grand Pre was to Digby where we had some "famous Digby scallops" for lunch at an outdoor cafe overlooking the busy harbor.  On the way back to the RV we also visited the town of Annapolis Royal to see the Historic Gardens and the Tidal Electric Generating Station where they have harnessed the Bay of Fundy Tides energy into a turbine that creates a portion of Nova Scotia's electric power...pretty interesting!    Our second day had a variety of attractions.  In Windsor, NS we discovered the "Mermaid Theater Company" which creates, builds, and performs plays and puppet shows for children all over the world. We toured their workshops and production rooms in old buildings in the old little town.  They are "regulars' at the Franciscan Center in the Toledo area and perhaps Mary had taken her class to one of their performances in the past.  Each of the characters is hand made to closely resemble the work in the children's books on which the plays are based.  Their most recent production is based on some of our favorites...Eric Carle stories.  Also in Windsor we went to "Dill's Pumpkin Farm" where world record giant pumpkins are raised.  Mr. Dill gave us a tour of this year's crop.  One plant takes up about 50 sq.feet and the pumpkins gain about 25 lbs. a day in the last week or two before harvest.  Wow!  Then there is Windsor's real 'claim to fame.'  The game of ice hockey was invented here around 1800 on Long's Pond behind the King's College School (which still exists).  The Hockey Heritage Center has quite a collection of old skates and wooden pucks as well as other hockey memorabilia. 
The Memorial Church and the statue of Evangeline at the Grand Pre National Historic Site
One of this year's crop of Giant Atlantic Pumpkins at Dill's Farm in Windsor, Nova Scotia
Sunset at high tide on the Bay of Fundy at Evangeline Beach near Grand Pre, Nova Scotia.
Click on "Forward" and "Back" above to see more of our adventures in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Click on "Back" above to see more of our adventures in Newfoundland and Labrador.
August, 2004
page 4
From Grand Pre, on Wednesday, August 25 we drove the rigs to the Halifax/Dartmouth area.  We had an appointment at an RV service center to have our leaking kitchen faucet replaced as well as a few other items looked at.  While they were working on the Dutch Star, we drove the car to the village of Eastern Passage on the Dartmouth side of the bay.  At Eastern Passage we walked the boardwalk of "Fisherman's Cove" which is an old fishing village turned into a colony of shops and galleries.  At the end of the village is the "Government Wharf" where fishing boats were gathering and loading all their supplies for the next day's start of tuna season.  The rods and reels were huge!  Across the street from the village we knocked on the door of a small house and said hello to the MacCormacks...relatives of our winter neighbors in Palm Creek, Peter and Cathy Nichita.  Cathy had grown up here and Nichitas, who now live in Kelowna, British Columbia gave us lots of good tips for our trip to the Maritimes.
Fisherman's Cove at Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia
The rod and reel for tuna fishing are almost the same size as the beer belly!
We spent three nights in the lot at the Fraserway RV Center.  Thursday morning found us in downtown Halifax where we visited "The Citadel."  The fort is the fourth one built on the site but has been standing there since the 1700s.  It was in use until after WWII.  The fort and the military posted there obviously did a good job protecting the city and Canada since it has never been attacked.  Later in the day we drove the RV from the dealer over to the local Cummins engine service center.  They replaced our fuel filter which eliminated our glowing "warning light" on the dash.  We must have gotten some bad fuel several weeks ago.   On Friday we headed out on the "Lighthouse Route" and visited the towns of Lunenburg, Mahone Bay and Peggy's Cove.  In all three places many of the old homes and fishing sheds have been turned into shops, galleries and cafes.  The fishing boats and equipment are very colorful.  There were also many sailboats tied up out in the harbors.  In Mahone Bay we saw the three famous churches and toured Amos Pewters and learned about pewtersmithing. Unfortunately, Mr. Amos, a friend of the Nichitas mentioned above, was on vacation.   At Peggy's Cove we stopped at the SwissAir Flight 111 Memorial (it crashed at sea near here in 1998) and of course at the famous lighthouse on the rocks built in 1914.  It is now automated and a post office is located inside.
Peggy's Cove Lighthouse overlooking the Atlantic Ocean from atop the smooth granite rocks of the shoreline
Firing the noonday cannon from the Citadel in Halifax.
A fishing shed in Peggy's Cove with its ready supply of traps and buoys.
All of our parts did not arrive at the dealership in Halifax/Bedford, so we decided that we had enough time in our travel schedule to wait over the weekend in hopes that the last would arrive on Monday.  That gave us time to do routine maintenance on tires and batteries and Tom was able to flush the water heater and install a new anode rod.  The dealership does a terrific business renting RVs, mostly "Class C" units and mostly to Europeans.  They even run a shuttle to the airport to pick up and drop off the arriving tourists.  The signs in the parking lot are in German as well as English.  There was a constant parade of people through the lot over the weekend, and one poor lady was busy scrubbing down the inside of the rental units for the next group.  She had some pretty interesting tales to tell.  On Sunday when traffic was slower, we were able to dump our holding tanks and fill up with fresh water.
We waited patiently till Monday afternoon for our part to arrive, but the wait was in vain.  It seems that the vendor sent the part to the dealership's office in Abbotsford, British, Columbia...4000 miles away.  So in mid-afternoon we headed to New Brunswick and the Ponderosa Pines Campground at Hopewell Cape.  We took a quick drive over to the Hopewell Rocks that evening and got the "lay of the land" for our excursion on Tuesday.
Wouldn't you know....the last day of August dawned rainy and cloudy.  But, we stuck to our schedule and headed out for the 7:25am low tide at the Hopewell Rocks.  We were the first ones at the site and walked out in solitude on the ocean floor at the Bay of Fundy.  We stayed for six hours, through rain showers, and kept track of where we had walked as the tides came in.  We were up on the viewing platform before we got trapped by rising water or had to follow the suggestions on the warning signs to climb above seaweed level and wait three hours for the tides to recede.  We also visited the Visitor Center to learn about the reasons the tides here are so fantastic and about the sandstone rocks that have withstood  thousands of years of erosion.  Because of the recent full moon, the tides were slightly higher than usual, rising over 7 feet an hour to a difference from low tide of 43.5 feet....the highest tides in the world......quite amazing.     After it was "high tide," we retrieved the motor homes and drove on to the town of Pocologan and the Ocean View Campground.  As we got the rigs all set up, a fog lifted and we had a great view of the Bay of Fundy.
Another month has come to an end, and this one has certainly been full of adventure.  We still have a few more days to go on our  Motoring the Maritimes tour, so be sure to check in again soon.
If you look closely, you can see Tom standing at the "Lover's Arch" at Hopewell Rocks on the Bay of Fundy....it was low tide at 7:30am.
This is the same view at 1:20pm., except Tom was standing on the viewing platform above the rocks this time.