Newfoundland

16 August  No pictures, because the Atlantic Ocean still looks like an ocean.

From North Sydney to Channel Port Aux Basques.  Today was a hurry up and wait day.   Since we didn’t know how long it was going to take us to get to the ferry landing, we got up and got rolling.  I had researched a bakery, so we figured we’d hit it for some fresh baked goodies before sitting in line to board the ferry.  We got to the bakery at 8:20 and it didn’t open until 9 am.  What kind of bakery doesn’t open until 9?  We left and headed to the line for the ferry.  Roger ended up talking with several people who wanted to know about our RV.  This provided him several repetitive conversations, plus tours, which he didn’t mind.  We were supposed to be in line 2 hours before the scheduled 11:45 departure.  We weren’t the first folks in line, but it did make for a quick exit off  the ferry once we got to P Aux Basques.

The ferry crossing took 6 hours, because we had very good weather.  The ferry was very similar to ferry we rode on between England and Ireland or Ireland and Scotland.  It was not crowded, but we also avoided the children’s play area deck.  We didn’t see any whales, which was disappointing.  We had picked up a brochure from  the campground in North Sydney on a campground about 35km off the boat, so once we landed we high tailed it to the campground.  We were the first of many to make it to the campground off the ferry.   Since ignorance is bliss, we didn’t find out until we got to the campground that there was a serious ferry accident about a week ago involving a ferry in Port Aux.  Apparently this has really messed up outgoing traffic, and the guy I talked to at the campground said he had been waiting for a week to get off island.  He was leaving tomorrow.  Fortunately things are finally settling back to business as usual.  Roger and I did some talking on the ferry (before we knew of the accident) and decided to change our plans and try to leave out of Argentia back to North Sydney.  This is an overnight ferry trip, but requires no back tracking across the province which seems a better fit for our plans.  In the meantime we’ll be in Newfoundland for a week, and headed up north to the ~1000 AD Viking settlement, then work our way back south and east towards Argentia. 

The campground had a very interesting newspaper.  Yesterday on our bog walk we saw some flowers we didn’t know what they were.  The newspaper had an article on the flowers.  “Newfoundland’s provincial flower is the Pitcher Plant.  It is found primarily in bogs and marshlands.  It has a large wine-red flower with a gold center, and hollow pitcher-shaped leaves are attached to the base of the stem.  An insectivorous plant, it feeds off the insects that become trapped inside when the leaves fill with water.  This water is an old fashioned remedy for pinky eye.”

Another interesting article in the paper was:  A little Newfoundland Boy was sitting on a rock with a gallon of turpentine and shaking it up and watching the bubbles.  A little while later a Priest came along and asked the little boy what he had.  The little boy replied, “This is the most powerful liquid in the whole world, it’s called turpentine.”  The priest said, “Oh no my son, the most powerful liquid in the world is Holy Water. If you take some Holy Water and rub it on a pregnant woman’s belly she will have a healthy baby.”  The little boy replied, “If you take some of this here turpentine and rub it on a cat’s behind, he’ll pass a Harley Davidson.”

This is what happens when you read the local newspaper, because there’s no internet or TV.