Terra Nova

I know a picture is worth a 1000 words Henry but sometimes only words will work. Terra Nova was absolutely awesome, just as beautiful as Gross Morne National park but in a different way. We should have stayed a week just hiking and biking. The boreal forests, cliffs and ocean all combine to make a memorable stay. As beautiful as the landscape is it's the people you meet along the way that you remember. We met a couple walking their dogs Java and Pebbles. After lunch together they drove us back to the site and had a glorious afternoon in the sun sharing stories. They have lived everywhere in Canada but decided to retire here. It was good to hear stories about 9/11 in Gander, dogs, wild life, living in the north, art, retirement and even a bit of politics. It felt like Sunday. Thank-you R&S for a wonderful day.

Bonivista

Today we have decided to take a break from sleeping in the van, and have holed up in a cosy little place called Fishers' Loft Inn, overlooking Trinity Bay. Here's a pik from our living room window.

A pictureof John Cabot looking out to sea in Bonivista. This is where he discovered Canada in 1647 for the King of England.

A pik of the ocean from this point.

A town we stopped in at along the way.

They have a population of just over 300 people and about 170 root cellars. One for about every two people.

A good place to store all these root crops, potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsnips, etc.

Every year the town has a root cellar festival and all the church ladies in town cook jigs dinners to serve. Last year they served up 1500 meals.

A great place in town for the kids to play.

Pictures around Twillingate

Along the coastal trail in Terra Nova National Park

Another while walking the trail

A jiggs dinner, yellow peasse porridge, cooked in a porridge bag together with a pound of salted beef, 1/2 a small turnip, two parsnips, two small potatoes, three carrots, and 1/4 a small cabbage.

The coast from the lighthouse at Twillingate

A Beothuk lady standing along a walking trail in the bush.

A work in progress just starting

A boat reminding us of home.

Pictures from along the way

Bronze sculptures Depicting East ( the vikings ) meets their distant cousins ( the native peoples ) a million years or two removed.

A viking in his peat home with his wench waiting out the winter

A peat hut of the time. Two metre thick walls. Quite cozy actually

A bronze plaque presented by the King of Norway honouring the Norwegian gentlman who found the ruins at Lanse aux Meadows through persistant research and exploration by sea and air. He knew it had to exist but it took some years to find.

11oo year old depresions in the grass that were later excavated and then put back to their origional state. sort of

The arches washed out by the sea.

Images

Sunday Sept. 13
Images
The grey bare rock landscape upon arrival in Channel-Port aux Basques
The raw wind always blowing cold off the ocean
Incredible views of the ocean as the road winds along the shore for miles
Huge bare rock mountainous hills on the other side, sometimes with trees on them, but mostly scrub brush or just plants where they can get a hold.
Peat bogs between the ocean and the hills.
The mountains and fiords of Gros Morne
The view of the table lands with lakes and water falls falling off them into deep fiords stretching out below us from the top of Gros Morne mountain.
Dozens of fishing harbors, around every bend in the road another.
Sleeping on the docks for free at night, and using their showers and bathrooms in the morning, gladly provided to us with great hospitality!
Receiving free cod, more than enough for two suppers from the fishermen as they brought their catch in at night.
The peat houses of Lanse aux Meadows, how people built and lived in them and survived over a thousand years ago in a semi arctic environment
The view of the almost barren mountainous country from the top of a high hill we hiked up to behind Norstead. Very little vegetation.
Five kids on their bikes one girl, and four guys, who bravely followed us all the way up the coast to Lanse Meadows. Always catching up with us one day or another again. We adopted them sort of.
Sir Wilfred Thomas Grenfell, a true Canadian hero! Google him
The theatre at CowHead, high quality Newfoundland theatre, and an example of how art and business can benefit each other.

Of moose and men .... and gardens

Moose are amazingly big. We saw another one grazing on the side of a road and one ambling through a village at dusk. There are always fresh footprints and droppings on camp sites and walking trails. Today we saw more than we’ve seen the whole trip. Hunting season started at midnight. By morning the back of the pickup at the park registration office was full of moose parts. There were lots of pickup trucks and quads on the side of the road. You’d see trailers with moose parts and antlers. Fathers with their boys walking with bloody chainsaws. Campers parked together in woodlots. This cage for moose jaws caught my eye. (The ministry checks the age and health of the moose people get.) A moose isn’t really that big when it’s cut into bits.
People are still getting their wood ready. For a $25 permit you are allowed to cut 4 bush lots of wood, enough to heat your house for the winter. There are long cords of wood along the highway.
Families also garden along the side of the road nowhere near their homes. The ditches usually have the best soil. (Almost all peat moss with kelp fertilizer.) The garden is out of the wind and there is often a water source near by. They all have a good strong moose fence around them. Most gardens are entirely of potatoes. Sometimes there is carrots, turnips, onions and cabbage. Today we stopped at a road side vegetable stand. This guy had a 2 acre garden. Half of it was turnips. Turnip greens are really popular right now. Families take 1 or 2 young leaves from each plant and eat it like spinach. This field is almost all picked over. He was busy bagging up jiggs dinners to sell at the grocery stores. Each bag had a few potatoes, carrots, onions, a turnip and half a cabbage. You cook it all together in one pot with pease porrige and salt pork but serve it separately. (Google it for the recipie) We’ll have to try it.
Henry is trying to master a cod dinner. He had to start with fresh cod instead of soaking dried cod. I’m hoping it doesn’t make much difference. After you pan fry the cod, you throw in your potatoes and onions. In the meantime you make your scrunchions. Cut up some salted pork fat and fry it. When the veggies are almost cooked you add your hard bread. (Hard bread looks like one of Jasper’s little dinner rolls except it is rock hard. You have to soak it in water over night first.) After the bread is cooked you add your scrunchions. Basically that’s it. He loves it. (This is not the time for me to cut back on carbs and fat I guess.)
It’s also berry picking time. There are still blueberries to be had although cloudberry season is over. It is a little early for partridge berries. After the first frost people will be out in droves for them. The frost makes them sweeter and drives out the little worms and insects that live in them. Partridgeberry sauce over cheese cake, now there’s my NFLD treat!
Grace
Listening to Henry humming a song from 'Poor Angus'

Norstead

Couldn't seem to get enough of the long-bearded, Viking lifestyle and stopped at Norstead. It is a recreation of a Viking village that Eric the Red came from on Iceland. It's got a smelting shop, weavers, bread baking, a church and even a pottery kiln. The guides are more than willing to act the part and tell you all about life in 1000AD. The really cool thing here is the replica of a Viking ship. This one was made in Maine. It is 90 feet long and built out of pine and oak and sealed with pitch and linseed oil. It actually sailed here in 1998 from Greenland following the Viking route. (The guide telling us the story watched it pull in here.) It is hard to imagine it floating let alone sailing from Greenland.
It was a beautiful, almost warm day and did another mini hike!