Prince Edward Island - Aug. 16 - 25

Beaches, beaches, beaches! Vivid colors: rusty red cliffs, sapphire blue water, every shade of green in the grasses and trees, white sand, pale yellow fields of grain, an artist’s palette of colors for the wildflowers, rainbow colored deck chairs marching across lawns, and the most spectacular sunsets and moonrises imaginable. Fields and fields of potatoes, soybeans, buckwheat, oats, barley, wheat, corn, and more and more potatoes extending all the way to the ocean shore. Fishing fleets, lobster boats, mussel and oyster farms. Gift shops, tourists, bike paths. Peaceful, pastoral, serene. That is Prince Edward Island!

PEI is a very small island, less than 170 miles across from east to west, and much less from north to south. It is almost three islands because there are three definite parts, each just barely attached to its neighbor. The southern shore is on the Northumberland Strait, the northern shore is on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the Eastern Point gets blasted by the North Atlantic and its strong winds. The middle gets the most press and the most tourists, probably because Charlottetown, the largest city with 65,000 people, is there as well as the National Park and Anne of Green Gables. The other 65,000 people who live on the island are scattered all over with most towns having only a few hundred people in them.

If you can’t tell, we love it! We still love Newfoundland best because it was so different: harsh and rugged and vast, but PEI is a beach lover’s paradise, and I love the beach. As usual, we’ve explored all of the nooks and crannies, trying to find the best camping places. As often as possible we found campsites at the end of one or another red dirt road right next to the sandy beach. One night we camped at the end of a red dirt road right next to a lighthouse with red cliffs between us and the beautiful ocean. So you can tell that there is a lot of red dirt here. We met some musicians who wrote a song called, “The Red Dirt Road” about PEI!

We’ve seen beautiful sunsets and moonrises. The first night we had a campfire on the beach we suddenly saw something in the distance that looked like a tent that was so brightly lit it must have been on fire. Then we realized we were looking at the moon on the horizon, and watched in awe as it rose slowly into the sky like a hot air balloon. As it rose, it’s color changed from orange to pale yellow. While that was happening, the last redness from the sunset was fading in the east, and the white frothy waves were being drawn into shore. The waves looked eerie, almost iridescent, because a floodlight from one of the cottages down the way was shining on them. They were coming into shore quickly, their paths seeming to change, and they looked almost like they were being pulled into shore by fluttering ribbons, much like those used in gymnastics. After that every night we looked for the moonrise as much as the sunset!

Of course we had to visit Green Gables. Both of us have watched the videos made from the books, and love the characters. Watching the “Anne” movies and the tv show “Avonlea” was one reason we decided to take our Maritime Provinces trip. We loved the scenery in the shows, which were supposed to be here on PEI. Of course, most of the shows were shot elsewhere in Canada, but in locations that looked like PEI did 100 years ago.

Green Gables, which Lucy Maud Montgomery used as the setting of her books, is now a National Historic Site. Lucy didn’t live there, she lived with her grandparents nearby, but her cousins owned Green Gables and she spent a lot of time there. I think she patterned Anne after much of herself: an orphan raised by an elderly man and woman, a young girl who liked to use her imagination and also to write, a young lady who taught in the one-room school near her house, and a young lady who loved the area in which she grew up.

One day we went to Avonlea Village. We weren’t really sure what it was, thinking it was just another town where restored buildings are brought in and demonstrations of the time period go on. We were pleasantly surprised! Avonlea Village is an experience! Luckily we got there when it first opened, because the action starts then. They have the characters from the Anne books, and recreate scenes from the first story in different places in the town. We saw Anne’s arrival on the island, the first time she met Matthew and Marilla, her green hair dye, and when Diana accidentally got drunk. Later we went to school, where I called called up to the front, and gave the wrong answer. No dunce cap for me, though! The schoolmaster just figured people from New York didn’t have the “right kind of learnin’ like they do in PEI”. There were more scenes from the book reenacted during the day, lots of singing by a great ceilidh band, beautiful houses to explore, buggy rides, lots of stuff for kids to do, and constant street scenes with Gilbert and Charlie doing what little boys do. One little boy of about 10 told his grandmother after the first scene reenactment that “this is for babies.” He soon got into the action, following Gilbert and Charlie around, playing pranks with them and on them. After a short time, he was totally hooked, and will probably long remember his adventures in Avonlea.

One night we went to the musical “Anne of Green Gables” in Charlottetown. It was wonderful. They had chosen shorter actors and actresses to play the students, and taller people to play the adults, so it didn’t look unreal. The woman who played Anne was about 30, but played the part of 11 year old Anne to 16 year old Anne very well. She was probably less than 5 feet tall and very slight, but she had the biggest voice! She was excellent in the part.

I, of course, bought some Anne books. For the 100th anniversary of the release of “Anne of Green Gables,” an author okayed by LM Montgomery’s descendants wrote a wonderful book about where Anne came from and how she happened to have such an astounding vocabulary. It is called “Before Green Gables” by Budge Wilson.

There are bike trails all over the island. The old railroad bed has been made into a bike trail, and extends from east to west. Also, the national park which owns most of the coastline in the northern central section of the island has miles and miles of paved trails running right along the ocean. It was really fun to ride along the coast and see the spectacular views of the cliffs and the water.

PEI was having Old Home Days at Charlottetown last week. That is like our county fair. PEI is a province, and that is like a state, but because PEI is so small, their fair was more like our county fair than state fair. The women’s craft exhibits and young 4-Her’s exhibits were wonderful. Besides beautiful quilts, hooked rugs, needlework of many kinds, jams, jellies, and pies, they had categories for photography and scrapbooking. I think I could have competed in those!

When we went to the western third of the island, it was lobster season! The other parts of the island are through with their lobster season as it was in May and June. Of course we had to get fresh lobster right off the boat! We had been watching tens of boats off the shore all morning pulling their traps, checking their catches, and putting the traps back down, or taking the traps to a different location. When we got to the harbor, we watched them unload their catch, then went and bought two big ones!

We also saw boats unloading what we thought at first was Irish moss, a seaweed that is harvested here and used to make carageum (sp?) to thicken ice cream, cottage cheese, pudding, and many other things. At the second harbor we visited, we found out it was not Irish moss after all, but fuscilarium or “foo foo.” Foo foo is an invasive species that is taking over the Irish moss beds. It is harvested and used as an additive to thicken paint, but foo foo only brings 6 cents a pound whereas Irish moss brings 25 cents a pound. Both seaweeds are harvested by boats dragging rakes across the sea bottom. Irish moss also comes into shore with high winds, and people of all ages will rake it up and put it on wagons or trucks to be hauled to the “Seaweed Store.” They also use workhorses pulling rakes near the shoreline to harvest the moss.

Since this is supposed to be Irish moss territory, we went to a restaurant and had Seaweed Pie. It sounds horrible, but it was delicious! The carageum is just used to thicken the pudding that covers the top of a delicious sponge cake topped with berry syrup!

The Maritime Provinces were all heavily settled by immigrants from Scotland, Ireland, and France. When Britain finally got control of the land here from France they, at first, deported all of the French settlers who were already here. Then they said that the area could only be settled by non-British settlers. At the time, of course, anyone who was not a British subject was their enemy, so that meant there was no one to settle here. The government of Britain soon changed their mind, and welcomed Scottish and Irish settlers to these lands, After a few years, still needing more settlers, they allowed the French back in also. Later, of course, people from other areas, including New England and England, settled here.

Anyway, those three cultures have heavily influenced the music here in the Maritimes. We’ve been to several performances in all of the provinces except New Brunswick, and we’ve enjoyed all types of music. Here in PEI, we’ve been to a couple of ceilidhs and to a wonderful performance at the College of Piping. The ceilidhs here included lots of songs about PEI with fishing, potatoes, and the red roads being a large part of the lyrics. That sounds funny, but the songs are quite good, and really tell about the province and the feelings life here evokes. The Highland Storm concert was great, too, spotlighting the Scottish and Irish heritage. Most of the performers were high school and college students who are studying there. There were lots of bagpipers and drummers, one fiddler, and several highland dancers as well as step-dancers. It was an energetic performance to say the least!

Unlike Newfoundland which was settled to provide codfish to England, PEI was settled for its great farmland, not fishing at all. Besides farming, it was also important in the shipbuilding industry. In its hay day in the mid 1800s, hundreds of ships were being built here every year. We visited the ship building museum, though not many items related to that trade are still around. They did have a lot of information about the ships that were built, however. The best part of that museum was the huge house that had been built by the Yeo family who were the island’s richest boatbuilders. It was a huge house with 3 stories and a cupola on top. Unlike most museums, we were allowed on all of the floors and in all of the rooms. From the cupola, you could see the bay and where the ships had been built. The house is furnished like it would have been in the mid to late 1800s, and guides there explain what all of the little strange-to-us items were used for at the time. The house was lived in until the late 1950s.

There are hundreds of small farms dotting the island, and like I mentioned previously, farmland goes all the way to the ocean. There are fancy houses along the ocean, but there are also farms and businesses selling cars, auto parts, or whatever. Not all of the shoreline has become “prime real estate,” probably because there is so much shoreline, and the farms were here long before tourism. Most of the farms grow potatoes, and some grow other vegetables or grains. Several have dairy or beef cows, and a few have horses, sheep, or alpacas. Most of the “interior” part of the island is still farmland. Seeing all of the farms and dirt roads reminds me a lot of Candor in the 1950s when our prime industry there was farming.

I have loved all of the beaches: some with white sand, some with red, a few with just red rocks. There are so many that except in the national parks, most of the beaches are not crowded at all. There are beautiful red sandstone cliffs, and miles and miles of sandy dunes to admire and walk along. The harbors are all very interesting, too,with fishing sheds lining the shore and crab pots and unused lobster traps piled here and there. With fishermen bringing in their catch of the day, and boats going in and out, there is always lots of activity there to watch and fishermen around to explain things to curious people like us.

It will be difficult to leave this friendly place, but in a few days we’ll start heading home, spending a few days in Maine along the way.

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Aug. 13 to 15, Southern and Western Coasts of Nova Scotia

Saturday Aug. 13, South Shore of Nova Scotia

We visited lots of little and medium sized outports as we drove along the coast of Nova Scotia south of Halifax. This area looks much like towns on the coastlines of New England with lots of antique shops, gift shops, seafood restaurants, etc.

Our first stop was Peggy’s Cove which is the most visited and most photographed fishing village in Nova Scotia. The reason for that is that it is only 45 minutes from Halifax, and it is a very picturesque, tiny village that looks like it came from the past, and every tourist guidebook recommends a stop there. It has been declared an historic district, so nothing can be added to it to make it look more modern. I feel sorry for the people who live there (about 40 residents) because they have a constant parade of outsiders in their village. Actually I think most of the original residents have moved away to be replaced by a few small tourist type businesses. It is not much different from other outports we saw, with the exception that Peggy’s has an accessible lighthouse and huge rocks for climbing on, or falling off from if one is not careful!

We passed several equally picturesque villages before stopping at Mahone Bay which seems to be a fairly upscale place with lots of condos on the bay, sailboats in the harbor, etc. It is definitely not a fishing village any more! It’s claim to fame are three beautiful churches lined up along the bay.

From there we went to Lunenburg, a much larger place with perhaps a population of 2,000.It is still a major port and fishing harbor. Most of the houses and businesses date to the 1800s and they, and the town, have been well preserved, giving it the distinction of being a UNESCO World Heritage Town. Many of the houses have ornate Victorian trim on them, several have widow’s walks, and several have a bumped out window above the front door, which is now called the “Lunenburg Bump. “ Many of them are brightly painted with orange, teal, magenta, purple, green, bright blue, and lots of other shades. There were also some unique metal sea creature signs hanging along the street: lobster, mackeral, scallops, squid, etc. The town was originally settled by German farmers to help supply fresh meat and produce to Halifax.

Sunday, Aug. 14 The Acadian Area of Nova Scotia

Today we learned what it really means to say everyone in your town is related. There are 1500 residents of a town called West Publico. 800 of them have the last name of D’Entremont and are all descendants of the first French settler here 12 generations ago! Those whose last name is different are also related! On the whole peninsula which includes two or three other towns, there are 400 entries in the phone book for the last name D’Entremont! There are so many people with the same first and last names that they often have to include the father’s or even grandfather’s names as a preface when they are talking about someone, like Joseph D’Entremont, son of Pierre, grandson of Henri.

Acadians are of French descent, and came to Nova Scotia and other provinces to settle as early as the 1600s. They called what later became Nova Scotia Acadia after the word the Micmac Indians used for it which was Kady.

Then England and France kept fighting over the land, and when England won the land, they decided in 1755 that people of French descent could no longer live here. That was the time of what they call the Great Upheaval when the French, called Acadians here, were removed from the land and sent back to France, England, or the American colonies. Some fled the area, a lot settling in what we now call the Cajun (slurring of the word Acadian) country in southern Louisiana, many in Quebec, and some went to other areas. Over the next ten years almost half of the original Acadian nation was lost at sea or died from famine and disease. In 1765, a mere 1,600 survivors was left in Nova Scotia, and most did not get their original land back.

The original D’Entremont was much luckier. He had fled to Boston where he stayed for 9 years. After that time, the English were allowing the French back into Nova Scotia, and Mr. D’Entremont was given his land back, an entire peninsula sticking out on the southern coast of Nova Scotia. Through the years, the D’Entremont family multiplied many times over! Now the Acadian culture is once again strong in Nova Scotia in three or four main areas. In the Acadian communities the children attend French speaking schools and learn about their culture. They do take courses in English so that they can function in a land where most of the people speak English.

The people here are mostly fishermen who have a much easier time making a living than the fisherman in Newfoundland. For one thing, the lobster season here is six months long, not two as in Newfoundland. Also, they can fish most of the year for other types of fish. Many of the fishermen here band together in co-ops to form their own fish processing plants, and some stay independent.

We learned a lot about lobstering from Olin D’Entremont who works at the Acadian Village, a recreated village, during the months when he is not lobstering. Olin clearly loves both of his jobs, and loves to talk about them. He has a license for 375 lobster traps and employs two men, one being his son, to help him. He does not like going far out to sea to get his lobster, preferring to stay only 3 to 12 miles from shore. He is fussy about his bait, wanting the freshest he can get, and preferring fat herring that have eaten a certain kind of red krill-like food. He feels that he gets more lobster with this kind of bait. Here, like in Maine, the lobster must be a certain size to be kept, and they can not be a female carrying any visible eggs. Unlike Maine, however, there is no upper limit to weight. He showed us lobster claws from lobsters that had been 19 or 20 pounds! His wife said that the big lobsters were not any better than the small ones, and often didn’t have as much meat in them as you would think they would have. Olin went on to say that one really needs to keep up with technology to be a good fisherman these days, so he had spend a lot of time learning to use the computer that aids his navigation.

At the village Olin shows the crafts related to fishing that every good fisherman must know. He showed us how he makes and repairs nets for bait bags, lobster traps, and fishing nets. He is also making a dory in the boat shop there using the methods they would have used in the 1920s. Yesterday he and the blacksmith at the village created a part to fix the 1915 Model T truck they have there.

They had cod there being salted as we have learned about in other places. After the cod is caught, it is gutted, cleaned, and then split so it will lay flat. Then it is layered in a wooden box with salt covering each layer. Surprisingly, a lot of water leeches out of the cod creating a brine. The salted cod is then laid on a flake, or rack, to dry. Olin said the best conditions for drying would be a northwest wind and slightly overcast sky. If it is too sunny, the cod might begin to cook, and that is not what they want. After it is dried, they pull off all of the bones and skin it. In olden days they would make a kind of glue from the skin using vinegar and something else. Other fish are often salted and dried in the same manner.

Shirl, Olin’s wife, explained that when one cooks salt cod, they usually soak it for several hours, changing the water frequently to get most of the salt out of it. They often use salt cod when making fish cakes or brewis. She said that she doesn’t deep fry fish any more as it is not healthy, but she sometimes panfries mackeral. When she cooks cod she dips it lightly in flour, then in a mixture of egg, milk, salt and pepper, then rolls it in cracker crumbs and bakes it.

Shirl, who also works at the village, was cooking a typical Sunday brunch for them over a wood fire. She was making bacon and baked beans to go with their eggs. During the time when they have no guests coming to the village, she keeps busy doing crafts like women would have done in the 1920s. She is braiding rags to use for rag rugs and sewing quilt squares together for quilts that will be sold in the village shop. She is also hand quilting a quilt for a Children’s hospital in Halifax.

There are two old houses in the village. The larger one, which had a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms downstairs, and an unfinished attic, was once home to two families which between them had 21 children! The smaller house had a kitchen, living room, two small downstairs bedrooms, and an unfinished attic where their ten boys slept. Their three daughters slept downstairs!

We had a great visit with both Olin and Shirl, and ended up with their email address, so will probably continue to correspond with them.

They told us to make sure that we went down to the local wharf because they were sure we’d be able to buy some fresh fish right off the boat. So off we went to Dennis Point Wharf, the homeport of at least 100 fishing boats, one of the busiest fishing ports in Canada. The boats range in size from 25 feet to over 100 feet in length. This fleet keeps about 350 fishermen in business and generates over $40 million a year. They keep six fish processing plants busy which employ another 300 people. So you can see that fishing is the life-blood of this community.

At the wharf several men dressed in colorful rainsuits were offloading their catch of haddock from a large boat with rainbow colored buoys hanging off the side.. They had about 80,000 pounds of haddock just today! They use drag nets to catch the haddock, and at times catch other kinds of fish in their nets. The fish were kept on ice in the boat in plastic bins. When they got back to port the bins were stacked four high and lifted off the boat with a winch to a platform from which two men would dump them into a trough. The trough was connect to a conveyor. The purpose of that was to remove as much water and ice as they could from their catch since the catch is weighed and they didn’t want to include the extra weight in their tallies. Occasionally a fish that was not haddock would come through, and one of the men would get it out of the bin and throw it into another bin to be sorted out later.

The haddock went down the conveyor belt landing in a large bin that contained about a foot of slushy ice in it. Each of these bins could hold about 1500 pounds of fish. When the bin was full, it was covered with more ice and a plastic cover, weighed, then taken by forklift to the back of a waiting tractor trailer. There were two trucks waiting there. One was hauling east toward Liverpool, Nova Scotia, and the other was hauling west toward Digby.

We asked to buy a cod fish which had been accidentally caught in their net, so they picked out a fish weighing about 10 pounds and charged us $5! They gutted it for us, then Bob filleted it, and we’ll get a few meals out of it. We have been eating seafood of some kind every day as it is so fresh and so cheap here to buy.

The Acadians live in villages all along the shore here. It seems like one might be traveling in France when driving through, because all of the signs are in French and there are Acadian flags everywhere. They look just like the French flag except they have a yellow star in the upper left corner. The children speak French and English in school, and probably just French at home.

We camped on the beach at Saulnier and had panfried cod for dinner along with some fresh vegetables we picked up at the farmer’s market in one of the little fishing villages we went through yesterday. The village was having a celebration and there was supposed to be a parade of decorated boats and fireworks on the beach, but the fog was so bad those things were cancelled. We had a nice campfire on the beach and listened to the music of the waves coming ashore.

Monday, Aug. 15 Acadian Area of Nova Scotia

We started at Eglise de Sainte-Marie, the largest and tallest wooden church in North America. It dwarfs everything around it, and one must look several times to see that it is not a stone church, but built entirely of wood. It took only two years to build, between 1903 and 1905, with the help of 1,500 volunteers using only handsaws and hammers! The priest in residence at the time was from Reims, France, and wanted to build a church like the one in his hometown. Plans for the church were sent from France, and a master carpenter in the area, though illiterate, was able to understand the plans and direct the massive undertaking. In today’s dollars, the church would have cost a little over a million dollars.

The church was originally 200 feet tall, but in 1914 lightning struck the steeple and started it on fire. Rain soon put out the fire, and when the parishioners rebuilt the steeple they made it 15 feet shorter due to their superstition that God started the fire because the steeple was too tall!

The stones collected from digging the basement were used to erect a thick foundation. It was long, hard labor done with only picks and shovels. Since the building is so large and so high, lots of large timbers were used in the construction to protect it from strong winds and storms. 40 tons of ballast help anchor the steeple in high winds.

Inside the church 70 foot columns, each made from an entire Norwegian Red Spruce tree trunk covered in plaster, support the arched ceiling. The religious paintings on the ceiling were painted by an artist who hated heights, so along with his paints, he brought a huge bottle of wine! The walls and ceiling are covered with canvas painted white. There are 41 beautiful stained glass windows that were shipped from France in crates of molasses to protect them.

We also visited Port-Royal National Historic Site. This is a reconstructed fort using the original plans for the French settlement built in 1605 when Samuel de Champlain and several others started the first French settlement here. The rustic buildings form a rectangle around a courtyard within a walled compound. There was a priest’s house, a governor’s house, a bakery, guardroom, trading room, sail loft, artisan’s area, etc. Several firsts happened here including Canada’s first play written and produced here, the continent’s first social club, called l’Ordre de Bon Temps, and the New World’s first grain mill.

In 1613 while the members of the village were several miles away harvesting their wheat, settlers from the Jamestown Colony in Virginia came ashore, pillaging and burning the settlement. The French settlers were saved by their strong alliance with the MicMac Indians who gave them shelter and food for months until their supply ship arrived and they left the area for good.

We stopped in Digby to eat some scallops because Digby scallops are supposed to be the best. We were not impressed, thinking Digby scallops taste no different from other scallops. They did, however, taste a lot better than the dinner of seal flipper we ate later. We bought the seal in Newfoundland, and cooked it all day as had been advised. That really didn’t help it, either. It tasted very gamey with a taste like beef that has been soaked in seafood. Neither Bob nor I could finish the seal, but at least we can say we gave it a try!

Tuesday morning - We passed through lots of farm country on our way to the ferry to PEI.

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Thursday and Friday, Aug. 11 and 12 Halifax

The skies have finally cleared, the sun is out, and we are back to wearing shorts! The sun feels so good after over 2 weeks without seeing it very much!

We have really enjoyed being in Halifax for two days, spending most of our time in the old part of the city by the harbor. They have a great boardwalk there, and we enjoyed walking along it looking at the ships and the buildings. Halifax is a city of about 400,000 that has done much to retain the character of its original city. There are many old buildings there that have been kept in good repair and are still in use today.

One of those historic buildings is the Alexander Keith Brewery where we went on a tour. This was the best brewery tour we have ever been on. It was more of an interactive play than a tour. There were four different guides, all dressed in period costumes for the year 1863, who kept us entertained for an hour in this brewery that is the oldest in North America dating back to 1820. They actually gave us two large mugs of beer for our tasting while they sang, danced, and told stories in a great stone-walled bar that had originally been Keith’s basement in the house that dates to the early 1800s.

We also visited the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. There we saw artifacts from the Titanic and other shipwrecks, lots of different boats, dozens of model ships and a model fishing village with people about 5mm high that looked pretty realistic. There were also exhibits showing the horrible disaster that took place in Halifax in December, 1917 when two ships collided in the harbor. One of the ships was carrying a load of explosives. The explosion that took place after the collision leveled much of the city of Halifax, killed 2,000 people, and left thousands homeless. Evidently Boston, the closest city of any size, sent lots of help in the form of people, doctors, building supplies, tents for the homeless, etc. In return, Halifax sends a large Christmas tree to Boston every year that rivals the tree in Rockefeller Center in height.

High on a hill above the city is a fort called The Citadel built in the early 1800s as a defense for the city. It is now a national park with lots of costumed guides giving informative tours. The best part was the military precision marches and drills preformed by about 20 young men dressed in the kilt uniform of the Cape Breton Highlanders. The men are not really soldiers. They are college students doing this as a summer job, but I’m sure they’ve learned a lot from the job, like following orders and working as a team as well as the military marching skills. They put on a special firing drill in the afternoon, showing how they could all fire their rifles at once, or one at a time in a precision drill. Along with them, we saw a company of men fire the cannon several times. It, too, was done in precision, with everyone having a certain task to do. We also saw them fire the noon cannon, something that has been done 364 days a year since the fort was finished in 1856. They related a story of how the US Secret Service swarmed around Bill Clinton when he was downtown one day and the cannon went off :) There was also a drum and bagpipe band that played many great Scottish tunes, and the Army Band of the Atlantic Provinces also took part. There was a lot of pageantry, so it was a lot of fun.

On the boardwalk we saw several different “busker” shows. This is the 25th annual 10 day busker festival in Halifax. Buskers are street performers doing acrobatics, juggling, comedy, music, etc. Five shows were going on simultaneously in different parts of the boardwalk, each one attended by a couple hundred people. Everyone was having a great time and the shows were quite entertaining. We saw one guy with phenomenal drum skills who showcased his art by beating on 5 gallon plastic pails. Using his feet to raise and lower one of the “drums” against the sidewalk while he beat on the upturned pail with his drumsticks, he was able to create a bass drum sound. He entertained us by druming on just about everything around from baby strollers, to garbage cans, light poles, and people’s heads. Another busker showed his prowess with juggling soccer balls. Others did acrobatics, leaping over 6 people at a time, or rolling around in large hoops. Some did magic, some sang, etc. They really drew the crowds to the harbor front.

Newfoundland - Central and Eastern

Wednesday, Aug. 3

After taking the ferry back from Labrador Monday afternoon we camped along the coast on a rocky beach. Tuesday we headed south, going back to Rocky Harbour (once you’re in Newfoundland, you do a lot of backtracking, because very few roads make a loop - you have to go back on the same road you’ve been on before). At Rocky Harbour we stocked up on fresh and smoked fish. Surprisingly, in this land of fisherman and fish of all kinds, there are very few places to buy fresh fish. Most of the fish is taken from the ships directly to a processing plant where it is immediately taken care of and sent on its way. Rocky Harbour is the only place along the western and northern coasts to buy fresh fish!

As we headed east on the one east/west highway, we began to notice lots of differences from where we’d been. In the interior, and fairly close to the coast, the trees are much bigger, so there were actually some lumber mills. Also, people here seemed to have more money than their neighbors on the western and northern coasts, possibly because there are more residents and therefore more jobs available for the spouses of the fishermen, or jobs for men that do not involve fishing. The houses were bigger and more decorative, whereas on the other coasts the houses were just a place to live, with nothing much done to beautify anything on the outside. I found that even the schools on the western and northern coasts were drab and uninviting, but here in the central and eastern sides, they are more welcoming. Also, more people here seem to live away from the main part of town, so not all of the houses are clustered together. I also saw houses with for sale signs here. In the north and west they probably don’t need signs, just word of mouth if they want to sell their house.

There are many lakes, both large and small, along with bay after bay, and it began to look more like America with houses spread out along the shore and pleasure boats and jetskis, something that I had not seen at all on the western and northern coasts. If people here have gardens or firewood piles, they are by their houses, not along the road, because most of the land along the road seems to be privately owned, not owned by the province.

We camped for the night on the Bay of Exploits, an area that reminded me of the Thousand Islands because of the number of islands sprinkled all over. If you look at a map of Newfoundland, it’s sometimes difficult to discern where the bay ends and freshwater lakes begin because the whole area is blue with a little green around it.

Today we drove on to the tip of one of the clusters of islands to a town called Twillingate. It is supposed to be part of iceberg alley, but there were no icebergs anywhere around. We went to the end of the peninsula to see Long Point LIghthouse, a milkbottle shaped lighthouse built of stone. It was perched high on the cliff and we could see the Atlantic all around us, but no bergs. The fishing villages here are much closer together than the fishing villages on the west and north, and they run together to make one fairly large town. People still fish here, but it is turning into more of a tourist area.

From there we headed to Musgrave Harbour in honor of Frank and Eva Mae. It was on a point of land jutting into the Atlantic with no other nearby villages. We went to the harbour where we saw the day’s shrimp catch being iced down for shipment. Here, the boats are quite large as they fish in the Atlantic and must be able to withstand the rigors of the sea. The temperature here on the Atlantic side is very different, too. It’s 10 to 20 degrees cooler than what we were experiencing last week. The locals are used to it, however. It’s 57 degrees and Bob and I have on jackets, but the kids here are in shorts and tank tops!

Our next stop was Newtown, called “the Venice of Newfoundland” because of all of the canals, called “tickles” here. It is made up of many islands of all different sizes. The early settlers would have a whole island for themselves and all of their kinfolk, and would get about with boats. Now the islands have been joined by bridges, or in some cases, fill, giving the area the “Venice” look.

A wealthy family of fishermen had owned one island and built a school, a store, a boat shed, and two huge houses there. They have been turned over to a trust and are now a museum. The houses were gorgeous, but the best part of the trip was our guide, Jesse. He is an 18 year old whose ancestors on both sides have always been sea captains, fishing the waters around here, some of them even being involved in the dangerous seal fishing industry. Jesse plans to follow in their footsteps, but he’ll be the first in the family to actually attend a university to learn his trade. He is working at the museum so he can “get on the government roles by paying taxes” (probably something like our social security, or maybe something to do with his college payments). Like all of his relatives, he has worked on boats since he was very young, but this young man knows that the fishing industry is going downhill, and his goal it to be certified to captain larger ships, perhaps even cruise ships one day.

Jesse’s dad and uncles own their own fish processing plant and three huge boats. They fish for snowcrabs and shrimp, working at that about 4 months of the year. I guess each boat is allowed 1 million pounds of crab a year which Jesse said they get in about 15 trips. Fifty crab pots are tied to the main trap line about twenty feet apart, and then dropped overboard in a large circle with a buoy at one end of the trap line. They set two trap lines, usually one day apart, so they are picking up crab from one of the lines each day, rebaiting them, and then putting them back down. Jesse said that the whole line usually yields about 80,000 or more crabs at one time.

When they fish for shrimp, they are also allowed 1 million pounds. For that they have huge trawling nets attached to their boats with a weighted part under the water. They have to be real careful as they troll, because they don’t know what their net might snag on at the bottom of the sea, and if it snags, it can drag the boat under.

They don’t fish for lobster, because you don’t need very big boats to do that. Lobster don’t grow well in deep water, so they are fished for much closer to shore. For the crabs, they sometimes go 200 miles off shore. During crabbing season, Jesses said the men might only come into port for a few hours of rest before heading back out, or they might stay out overnight. Definitely not something I would want to experience!

Thursday, Aug. 4

As we were driving today, we noticed a cove full of blue and white buoys. Knowing that it was not lobster season, we were curious as to their use. We found out that they belonged to a mussel farm! Who knew such things existed? Evidently the mussels attach themselves to the ropes coming down from the buoys and are thus easily harvested.

Speaking of animals, today was the first time that we saw any farms or farm animals in Newfoundland. We saw dairy cows, horses, sheep, pigs, and chickens. We saw several of them grazing on the rocky cliffs, where unlike other rocky cliffs we’ve seen, there was grass. Some of the horses were blocking the road we were driving on, much like the buffalo in Cody State Park did last summer. They came right up to the RV and didn’t want to move. One looked right at Bob through his side window, and one looked at me through my side window. Bob rolled his window down a little to pet the one on his side, which seemed to satisfy the horse enough to move on to a safer place along with his buddies!

We stopped for a while in the tiny coastal village of Trinity which is a provincial historic site with most of the buildings are brightly painted, restored and protected, and there are rules in the town as to what they can and cannot do to their buildings. Everything must be kept the way it was in the early 19th century when this was a busy industrial center rivaling St. John’s. The population is now about 200 and the fishing industry has given way to tourism.

There was a beautiful Anglican church there, built in 1880, that had seating for 500. Somehow, I don’t think they fill it any more! There was also a small Catholic church reported to be the oldest all-wooden church in the province, built in 1833. We noticed here, and in all of the other towns that we visited, that the cemeteries belong to the churches. Since most of the churches don’t have room beside them for a cemetery, the graveyards are located some distance away. Since each church has its own graveyard, and since some towns have 3 or 4 churches, you will see an equal number of cemeteries, often right next to each other, separated by a short, white fence.

The highlight of our day was again at a lighthouse point. This time it was Cape Bonavista lighthouse at the tip of Bonavista Peninsula. The lighthouse itself was nothing special to look at, but at the bottom of the tall, rocky cliffs we saw at least a dozen humpback whales performing their stunts for the crowd. Twice we saw two whales breach at the same time. Boy, was that ever a splash! There was also a colony of puffins located on a rocky crag behind the lighthouse. As we watched them fly on and off their island, the quickness of their short wings beating against the sky reminded me of a child’s wind-up toy rotating as fast as it could!

We camped for the night on a narrow promontory of land jutting into the dark, cold ocean. We literally were surrounded by water on three sides, and could almost look straight down onto the sharp rocks about 100 feet below. I do not like to be very near the edge of any cliff, so that was a bit of a challenge for me to allow us to camp there. I didn’t allow Bob to park in the spot with only about two feet on each side of the RV before the cliff’s edge, however!

It was misty, foggy weather with a temperature of about 50 degrees, made much colder by the constant winds coming off the North Atlantic. The winds were so strong in the middle of the night, buffeting the RV like it was a piece of paper, that I feared we’d be blown right off the cliff! I certainly know what the pounding surf sounds like after a night there, too! I’m glad there are people like Jesse, mentioned above, who want to be sea captains, but that would not appeal to me at all. One night of just being that close to the raging ocean was enough for me!

Friday, Aug. 5

We drove to St. John, the capital and largest city in Newfoundland. First we went to Cape Spear, the most easterly part of North America. It was very foggy there, as in the whole area here, but we could see 60 to 100 feet ahead of us. The ocean was roiling at the cape. Angry waves attacked the large rusty colored rocks along the cliffs, the almost black sea water splashing up the most beautiful turquoise blue edge with frothy white foam on top.

We have been told that it’s always foggy in St. John because this is where the cold Labrador current meets the warm Gulf Stream current. It would be great to see some of this area on a sunny day. The row houses and apartment houses in the city are like an artist’s palette, each one a different color from its neighbor.

St. John’s is a city of about 100,000, and with the other towns on the Avalon Peninsula where it is located, the area population is about 500,000. That’s half the population of the whole province!

We walked around George Street, which seems to be pub central, then we ate at a local hangout called The Ship Pub. It is a great place where the locals hang out. I guess it is also used in the tv show Doyle which is popular here. While there we met an oilman from Houston and shared supper and conversation with him.

Saturday, Aug. 6

We had a wonderful day despite the rain and fog. Ingrid Clarke, Mary Haag’s niece, gave us a tour of St. John’s which was great to hear from someone who has lived here all her life. We went to the the museum called “The Rooms” which is supposed to remind people of the little sheds fishermen around here use for their fishing supplies and where they would gut and salt their cod, etc. It was great to have everything we’ve been seeing in the province explained in detail. All of the museums here in Newfoundland have been outstanding. One can tell that a lot of effort has been put into them.

St. John’s is said to be the oldest city in North America. That’s entirely possible since so much fishing was going on here. There seemed to be constant wars between the French and the British for control of the harbor. The harbor is a natural place with a narrow channel to enter, and it is deep enough for large ships. That way, the boats are protected from the harsh North Atlantic. Even today it is a busy harbor with cruise ships, container ships, and others using it. The fishing boats seem to keep to another part of the harbor, and smaller boats use the harbor at Quidi Vidi.

We also went out to Quidi Vidi village, a small fishing village right near the city. While there we toured the brewery and had some delicious Quidi Vidi Iceberg beer made from the waters of icebergs. Some companies harvest the ice from the bergs, melt it, and sell it to companies to use. It is very pure water, so it made the beer have a very light taste.

In the evening we went to the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival where we heard lots of great music from bluegrass to Celtic. There was a huge crowd there, and they really got into the music, dancing and singing along with the performers. One group from Cape Breton Island, called Barra McNeil, was made up of six siblings ranging from their late 20s to about 40. They have been doing this since they were young, and what a phenomenal show they put on. They had bagpipes, flutes, mandolin, guitar, banjo, and keyboard, and played them all. At one time four of them step-danced while the others played. Another group was called the Dardenells. They played accordian, mandolin, banjo, guitar and a hand-held drum. One of their members is going around to all of the outports (small outlying fishing villages) and learning the old songs from the older residents there before they are gone for good.

Sunday, Aug. 7

We took advantage of the rainy day to finally do some laundry so we didn’t do too much sight-seeing today. We did go up to Signal Hill which rises high over the harbor of St John’s. It is no longer used as lookout against intruders, but if it isn’t foggy, you can see a long way from there in all directions. I’m glad I never had to stand as a sentinel there! If it’s this cold and windy in August, I can’t imagine what it must be like in February!

It’s very windy and cold here right now. The winds shook the RV all night, and were probably 40 -50 mph. Winds at St. John’s airport can reach 90 mph and at Signal Hill they can reach 125 mph!

The harbor at St. John’s is 1.25 miles long and 1/2 mile wide with a depth from 30 - 90 feet. In order to get into the harbor, a ship has to travel through the Narrows which are between 600 and 1,036 feet wide with a depth of only 35 feet. One has to be a good ship captain to pilot some of the larger ships into the harbor. Approximately 1,000 ships of significant size dock there during the course of a year.

We also walked along Water Street, George St., and Duckworth St. in the very old part of town next to the harbor.

In the evening we went back to another night of folk music. We really enjoyed the first group, called Celtic Fiddlers, which was made up of teenagers. One 16 year old boy in the group can play 22 different instruments! The last act was a tribute to Ryan’s Fancy, a group that did a lot for Newfoundland folk music over the last 40 years. One member of the group is still around and he played and sang with lots of other talented musicians from the area. They played several traditional songs, including a sea shanty. At the very end of the show about forty people were on stage as they played the “Ode to Newfoundland” which sounded like a national anthem. Actually Newfoundland was not part of Canada until 1949, so the song could predate that, and therefore would qualify as a national anthem, I guess. One of the teenagers also sang a song about Newfoundland that stated “I know she’s a rock with lots of wind and bad weather, but she’s home sweet home to me.” You can tell that Newfoundlanders are proud of their province!

Monday, Aug. 8

It was finally clear and almost sunny in St. John’s so we headed up to Signal Hill to get a view of the city in clear skies instead of foggy. I am still impressed that anyone could live up there. The signalman’s family lived here, and during the 1800s military families also lived here until a baby died from smoke inhalation in the cold, drafty quarters.

We’ve really enjoyed St. John’s. It’s such a small city that it is super easy to navigate, and everyone is friendly. It is so colorful, it makes you feel good just to look at it, despite the fog!

We first stopped at Bidgoods, a grocery store. It was the biggest store we have been in since we’ve been here, and Bob remarked that it’s Newfoundland Wegman’s! We went there to get native fish and meat, so we stocked up on caribou steak, seal flipper, seal sausage, caribou and moose sausage, cod cheeks, fresh and frozen cod. We still have some salmon, smoked salmon, and smoked herring. We are really enjoying fresh seafood every night! We’ve had and loved cod tongue, fish and brewis, and fishcakes while here, also!

From there we headed south in the Avalon Peninsula, taking the “Irish Loop” which goes around the coast of the peninsula. It is so named because so many Irish people settled here.

It sure was desolate country. I am reading a book called Latitudes of Melt which is set at the bottom of the peninsula in Cape Race and surroundings. In the book they talk about the barrens. They sure are barren - nothing but moss and low grass appears to be growing on the flat ground all over the lower part of the Avalon Peninsula. The villages were not even nice looking as on the west coast. The houses were not grouped together, but spread out along the road and other spur roads. There was no where around where the people might have worked unless they fished. It had to be at over an hour to St. John’s, possibly two hours, so I’m not sure if they would work there.

Bob was delighted to see a small herd of caribou; one male and five females.

We went back up to Brigus, a tiny village on one of the many peninsulas near St. John’s. Brigus is a very old village, settled in about 1620 as a fishing village. Now it seems to be a bedroom community for rich people. Most of the houses are surrounded by white picket fences, or in some cases, stone fences. There is a large harbor, and two smaller harbors for smaller boats. We camped in a town park by the larger harbor. I really love the town, and could see living here, in its quiet calm, yet being close to civilization if I wanted it!

Tuesday, Aug. 9

We left our peaceful spot in Brigus and started our trek west and then south to catch the ferry tomorrow at Port aux Basques. We stopped near Great Falls to visit a Logger’s Life Museum. I know similar logging camps were also used in the US. Boy, was that hard work. They lived in cabins in the woods where they worked, felling trees from sunup to dark, and if any part of the tree was wasted with their cutting, they were fined. They had spruce boughs for mattresses and slept two to a narrow bed. I’m sure the spruce smell helped to deaden some of the other smells in there!

After our RV cooked codfish supper on the beach in St. Georges, we headed to the ferry dock. We don’t have to be there until 3 AM, but think we’d like to get some sleep, so we’re hoping they’ll let us get in the line and go to sleep until they need us at about 4 AM (you have to be there 2 hours early, but they don’t do much until about 30 minutes to 1 hour before.

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Labrador and Quebec

Saturday, July 30

We took the ferry from St. Barbe, Newfoundland to Labrador today. Actually, the ferry goes to Quebec, a few miles away from Labrador. The trip was about 1 1/2 hours. During the winter when pack ice fills in part of the Strait of Belle Isle, the ferry leaves from Corner Brook, Newfoundland, and ports at the same place in Quebec, a journey that must take 6 or more hours.

On the ferry we met up with several people we have become friendly with in Newfoundland, and even before in Nova Scotia. Since there is only one road going North and South, we keep seeing the same people wherever we go. One group is a family from the Netherlands whose daughter is going to be going to graduate school in Boston. They are traveling around this area and need to end up in Ottawa for her to get her visa through the Embassy there. Another is a couple from Quebec that we have seen several times.

While on the ferry, our Netherlands friends were talking with a gentleman who lives in Goose Bay, Labrador. He is a judge, and it sounds like he has a unique job going from one small Labrador town to another to hold court. He sometimes goes by car, float plane, snowmobile, or whatever way he can reach the town. He was telling us about the “road” in Labrador. He thinks it is quite good, but he lives here and is used to it! Only portions of the road are paved, the rest are gravel. We found out that even the paved road is not good! The only paved portion once you get off the ferry in Blanc Sabon is about 50 miles north into Labrador and 50 miles south into Quebec. Many of the villages can only be reached by boat or plane. The road goes all the way from the ferry north through Goose Bay, Churchill Falls, and Labrador City into Quebec, but it is about 500 miles long and extremely bumpy. We decided not to go on it with the RV, especially since flat tires and other damage are a real possibility.

We went up to Red Bay, passing several fishing villages along the way. Once in Red Bay we found a nice spot overlooking the harbor, and settled in for the night.

Sunday, July 31

We tried to go to the local church in Red Bay along with a few other tourists, but found out that they have no minister, so services are not held there any more.

Red Bay is a charming little fishing community on a natural harbor that right now has an iceberg in it! In the late 1500s, Basque whalers would come here for about 8 months of the year to kill whales. They would render the blubber into oil which was then placed in barrels that they had brought with them (disassembled until needed). They also harvested the baleen which was used for the stays in women’s corsets, among other things. More than 1,000 men would usually come, and they had quite an operation going here.

In the 1970s and 80s, archeologists uncovered the remains of much of the operation, including a galleon that had wrecked in the harbor and several of the whale boats. From documentation in Spain and France, they feel that it must be the wreck of the ship, San Juan, which got loose from its moorings one night during a bad storm, was slammed into the rocks, and sunk with 1,000 barrels of whale oil lost. The mud and cold water had actually preserved most of the objects, and they were able to resurrect one of the fishing boats and some whale jaw bones from the right whale. They found most of the pieces of the galleon also, but the cost of restoring it was prohibitive, so after carefully measuring and documenting each piece, it was all put back where they found it in the mud and covered with a large piece of rubber weighted down with concrete filled tires. That way, if later they found some money to do something with it, it would still be preserved.

The archeologists also found a grave yard containing the remains of 12 men who probably died from disease, not the wreck. Along with the men, they found some articles of clothing still partially intact! It was all a very fascinating exhibit.

Not wanting to risk our RV to the gravel road, we headed back south and went along the coastal road past several fishing villages in Quebec. The countryside here is beautiful, but very stark. The land is vast, and filled with rocky hills on which only different kinds of lichen grow. There are a few stunted trees here and there, but none growing on the rocks. There are also many, many gorgeous lakes and rivers adding to the scene. It has been a very enjoyable two days!

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