Puppy Training 101...The Puppy Training Basics

Homeward Bound

The Arches on Nfld's Northern Peninsula

Basking in the rain & wind

The tempest!

Fogo Island

Fogo Island Inn

Sunny Trinity

A Trinity Saltbox house

Originally a private residence, now a St. John's B&B 

Can you hear the flutter of butterfly wings? That's me, getting warmed up for take off later today. It's been an amazing five weeks and I have covered a tremendous amount of territory... drove 3845 kms in 3 weeks!
So today, travel musings on this most recent adventure...
My visit with my favourite, and probably only living immediate relative besides my brother, Auntie Paul, was so much fun. It was a little startling, I admit, to look at her and see myself 25+years from now. We laughed and laughed and talked and talked, so often sharing the same opinion...I'm not sure that's necessarily a gift to the world!
I've told several people here in Newfoundland that if they have ever thought they'd like to see the  boat-only accessible communities on the South Coast of this province, Grey River, Francois,  & MacCallum, they should not postpone the idea. It really is only a matter of time before the aging population there will vote to re-locate because of their isolation and need for some form of living assistance, be it medical or social. The sight of that endless forbidding coastline will long haunt me. The ingenuity of concrete roadways and winding boardwalks displayed in all these perched communities continues to remind me of the resourcefulness of the people who inhabit this place. The people are warm and friendly and hospitable just like the rest of the world. We just can't imagine living a lifetime in such isolation any more than they can imagine living in a city!
Mother Nature's wind and water display in L'Anse aux Meadows was truly a treat. That's the picture I'll hold on to as I conjure up Newfoundland when I'm far away in BC. It's humbling (that's the word that comes to mind and won't go away) to see evidence of a people's habitation put there 1000 years ago. I can't even imagine the discomfort of their ocean crossing not to mention the inhospitable landscape where they briefly settled. Those Norsemen were tough, no question!
Zita Cobb and the co-operation she has wrought among the seven(?) communities on Fogo Island are a fine example of what's possible. The terrain of Fogo Island is like no other place on the island of Newfoundland, and I should know... I wonder how many miles of it I walked that day! Loved the place and I encourage visitors to Newfoundland to go there, even if Fogo Island Inn is too rich for your wallet, as indeed it is for mine. It's so worth seeing.
( I finished this post in St John's airport, Wifi was not co-operative, tried again in Toronto, no luck so here I am, safely at home with thoughts of Trinity and St John's a distant memory)
Trinity was it's usual quaint and lovely self and in addition to a delicious meal, a lovely walk, an interesting and well-performed theatre performance, we lucked in to a free concert by the renowned Cantus Vocem. There we connected with former Corner Brook residents, all of whom I can now call friends.
Friends aplenty in my beloved St John's and I did manage to connect with just about everyone I wanted to see. Enjoyed not having a car and the weather co-operated for walking. Had lunch with friends at the cafe in The Rooms...delicious food with a magnificent view plus great conversation! Thanks Michelle & Garth.
My one regret on this trip was the absence of dogs. My life just never feels complete without them. I did talk to all I met on the street, no surprise to anyone who knows me. This lack will soon be rectified as I once again immerse my self in my puppy world.
I'm so grateful I was able to cross  three big things off my 'bucket list', see people  and places that  matter to me.
 I am also profoundly thankful to be back home!

I Love This City...

St John's... home of my heart. The rain, the wind, the glorious sunshine, the fog creeping in through the narrows... I'm not going to talk about the sideways snow.
It is always an absolute delight for me to be here. I have old friends (is anything more wonderful than old friends?) that I love to visit, and walking  the older treed streets of the east end of the city gives me unimaginable pleasure.
No visit to  Newfoundland would be complete without Jiggs' dinner and I am always fortunate enough to stay with an old friend who lets me cook it. The best part is the hash that I make the next day (one must plan this ahead of time; leftovers are essential!)  What's Jiggs' dinner? Salt beef ( a throwback to pre-refrigeration days and a contributor, along with salt fish, to the high incidence of hypertension in this province), potatoes, turnip, carrots, cabbage or greens & pease pudding, accompanied, if you're lucky, by homemade pickled beets and /or mustard pickles. The meat is first soaked overnight and then boiled for several hours along with the split peas which are in a pudding bag. Vegetables are added towards the end. The pudding is then drained, removed from the bag (very carefully, it is very hot!) and mashed with butter and pepper... remember the nursery rhyme "Pease pudding hot, peas pudding cold, pease pudding in the pot, 9 days old"?

Jiggs' Dinner (pease pudding in the bowl)

Next day's  yummy hash

Lots of hash. Several days' worth of yummy!

A man named Paul Johnson has established many wonderful walking trails in the city, some along Rennies River, some through residential streets, some on the back of Signal Hill. There's signage along the way if you are interested in the history of the area.

I took a number of pictures on my walks the last couple of days and here they are...

St John's is noted for its colourful houses

Note the detailing... 100+ years old 

Lots of row houses here

Local police horse right in the middle of the city!

A friend's garden


If you ever have the opportunity to come to newfoundland and have only limited time, just enjoy St. John's. It is truly an amazing place!

Train your Puppy to do Puppy Pushups

Trinity

View from our accommodations

A very old Anglican church...site of Sunday's concert

My favourite house in Trinity

My father's people are from Trinity. Here in Newfoundland, that's significant. Up until recently people made connections with people they just met by knowing which community the family name came from. That's all changing now with the world including  Newfoundland, becoming so much more mobile. Certainly the influx of new people from all parts of the world has lessened the importance of knowing where someone is 'from'.

 In any event Trinity has a huge draw for me. It is a picture-book community of only about 35 year-round inhabitants but the summer sees that blossom into the hundreds with the summer livyers plus 1000's of tourists. The town itself is tucked under a hill beside the water in Trinity Bay and now that the old houses have been painted the expected Newfoundland bright colours, it looks like a  child's boxed toy town. 

No car is required once you arrive and find a place to stay. This is a delightfully walkable  town. As soon as we were settled in to our accommodations overlooking the water and the lighthouse, I set off to get reacquainted with the now-familiar roads and byways. I took many pictures of houses with a plan to send them to my Aunt whose birthday was the next day and whose love of Newfoundland matches my own.Then it was time for dinner & a theatre performance.Rising Tide theatre Company, headed by Donna Butt, has been offering a delicious variety of Newfoundland based theatre productions  in Trinity for 20+ years.

Yummy salmon dinner with a hazelnut chocolate dessert had lots of time to settle as we watched "Loop", the story of a young lad's quest for answers in a small Newfoundland community ( we call them outports) following World War 2.This production had some very touching moments and was sensitively performed by the excellent cast.

Cantus Vocem, a well-known a cappella choir offered a free concert in the local church on Sunday. Couldn't miss that!  As we took our seats, Janet said, "I hear someone calling Judy House (my maiden name)."  I turned around to meet for the first time, the son of a former business acquaintance of my father's, whose people are also from Trinity. Also with him & his wife were another couple. This woman was the much younger sister of a former schoolmate of mine. I last saw her when she was  a curly-haired child of about 5. We stopped talking when the excellent concert began but were invited back to the Maybee's where we talked and reminisced non-stop including over a delicious dinner, until 7:30 p.m.   Pure magic, it was! The Maybees live in his grand father's  house built in 1892. They have preserved the old house and added a piece on which overlooks the water. History and the ocean in one place. Fabulous!

I had mixed emotions the next morning when it's time to begin the last leg of this driving vacation. I would have loved another day (or more) in this tiny hamlet but will also be happy to turn in the rental car and stop driving. ( When I did turn the car in, I did the math and discovered I had driven 3845 kilometres in 3 weeks. How far might I have driven if I actually enjoyed driving!) 

Good-bye Trinity. I know I shall return.

Abandoned.

Idyllic

Farewell

Trailblazers... That's Us!

A very old track

There are lots of hikes in Newfoundland these days, many of them old footpaths used for a couple of centuries and now tarted up with board walks & signage. 

I've always like to walk but the very word 'hike' intimidates me.  I have committed to walking for 30 minutes a day so yesterday after Janet & I had studied the map of Fogo Island, we settled on the Oliver's pond trail, deemed to be an easy 1 km walk. As we parked the car we asked a local if we were headed in the right direction and she said it "wasn't that far" and gestured in a loop that would bring us back on the road a few hundred yards from our car. A warm breeze, sunny skies, waves breaking lazily on the rocky shore to our right...what more could one ask on a September day in Newfoundland?

After we had walked for more than an hour, it dawned in us that this was most assuredly not Oliver's pond and we had most certainly walked far more than a kilometre. Furthermore, as beautiful as the coastline is, the lack of any sign of human habitation in any direction was a tiny bit unsettling. We walked and we walked always on a well-worn footpath but with only marshy bogland on one side of us and the vast Atlantic Ocean on the other.

"Maybe we should turn around and go back the way we came?"

"No sirree... there's a path here. It's got to come out somewhere."

We were grateful for the sunshine, told ourselves we had many hours of daylight left and kept on walking.

After 2 hours we saw habitation in the distance. Whew! What a relief! With still lots of walking to do we picked up the pace, encouraged by the prospect of The End. We apologized

 to the people whose garden we crossed to reach the road and we did indeed emerge exactly where the local had said we would.

Never mind the historical Dwyer property, never mind the artist studio, never mind the local storyteller... where's food?

Baked beans and toutons ( fried bread dough that defies description as to its deliciousness...sorry, no picture) plus a mug of tea did me in. I napped in the car while Janet thoughtfully walked to the nearby supermarket and bought salad fixin's.

 We repaired to our tiny cozy cottage built on the landwash in Joe Batt's Arm.Thus ended the day's activities. 

The day before we spent the day on Change Islands, a nearby group of small islands a 20 minute ferry ride from the mainland& a 20 minute ferry ride from Fogo.  We did a bit of a boggy, rough- terrain walk there, then because it was showery  with a cold wind, we drove around admiring the jigsaw puzzle scenes of fishing boats in seaweed strewn coves,ringed 'round with wooden wharves and oxblood fishing sheds. We enjoyed the congenial company of a young family from Trinity that evening at dinner in the inn that provided a delicious meal of fresh cod followed by blueberry pudding with caramel sauce. Young Benjamin (2 1/2) entertained us all at dinner with his amazingly articulate and delightful conversation!

A highlight of our day on Change Islands was to stop by the Newfoundland Pony sanctuary where we visited the 6 or so ponies, some tethered out in lush grass and some in a fenced area. We did not see the woman  responsible for the rescue and care of these lovely creatures but we did leave a donation in the tin provided which she says will help keep these guys in hay over the winter. 

As I write this, we are on the ferry back to the mainland. We will arrive in Farewell shortly and then drive a couple of hours to Eastport.  More very dear friends have dinner prepared for me and I'll enjoy their company this evening.

Tomorrow it's off to Trinity...Mecca for me.

Just Like BC Except...

Just like BC except...

Smaller ferry, no terminal, no conveniences besides washrooms.

We're at least an hour early for the ferry which by my reckoning will be at least an hour late. Here we sit on the wharf on Change Islands in a line-up of 6 cars waiting for the ferry to Fogo. Yesterday we also waited a very long time for the ferry to here. No matter. We weren't in a hurry to be anywhere.

The shoreline by the ferry

Oh goody! Here she comes. The next leg of our adventure is about to begin. I was wrong. The trip from Change Islands only takes 20 minutes. It also takes 20 minutes from here to Fogo so the ferry was not as late as I expected it to be.

Now, where was I? Ah yes, I had put away the car keys for 2 whole days and had some catch up time in a very small & clean motel about 5 minutes outside Gander. A member of the staff ( I think there are two of them) & I moved a fridge into my room, fluffier pillows were provided upon request, yes, I could do laundry for $5.00 & certainly I should feel free to boil the kettle any time at all. Excellent!

After I dropped Judi in Deer Lake, I determined to break up the drive to Gander in 1 hour chunks. The two hour break found me in Grand Falls, where I walked the daily 30 minutes surprised a former neighbour at her work, visited the local 'trough' (Chinese buffet) and felt decidedly refreshed for the last hour of the day's drive.

Here are typical small village scenes ( we call small villages 'outports' in Newfoundland)

Wifi has been a bit spotty on this trip so I have been depending on the Tim Horton's where available. After I'd been tapping away at the local Timmy Ho Ho's for awhile, it was time to find food. Didn't have a clue where to go so I asked some people seated at a nearby table and they suggested Rosie's. They hadn't been they said, but had been told the food was all home made. Good enough for me... Scallops, cod tongues, salmon, & cod comprised the fish platter and the homemade fries were yummy!

After breakfast  with my friends from Corner Brook who were en route to St John's, I took a walk in Gander. With all due respect, in this inland town, dubbed "The Crossroads of the World" back in the early days of trans-Atlantic flights, I find nothing that draws me or appeals to me ... except it's a marvellous place to be holed up with no schedule except my own.

I picked up my next travel companion, an old friend and former Grand Falls neighbour, at the appointed hour on Tuesday and it's off to Change Islands we go.

Janet, my current travel companion

Heading South!

After the tempest!

It always delights and amazes me that after Mother Natures throws a full-blown tantrum, oftentimes, the very next morning she smiles beatifically. The sunshine sparkled on the now navy-blue water, the lace-edged waves rolled lazily to shore, yesterday's horizontal grasses held faces to the sun...a world washed clean.

The flora of the limestone barrens

A surprise on the Port aux Choix walk!

After the usual hearty breakfast at our B & B, we drove the short distance to Norstead, the Viking village built close to the Unesco L'Anse aux Meadows site. Excellent research resulted in the locals creating an authentic feeling site with knowledgeable guides able to describe the way the original vessel the Snorri, was built as well as demonstrating the 11th century loom and one needle knitting called nalknitting. There was a sheep as well as several chickens which apparently would have been brought with these Norsemen as they sailed from landmass to landmass. This 1000 A.D. expedition was from  Greenland.The settlement was never intended to be permanent and was inhabited only for a few years. It's a long drive from Deer Lake if you want to visit this site but the highway runs a long a beautiful coastline for most of the journey and there are interesting spots to stop along the way.

Inside the Viking Chieftain's longhouse

A  Norse loom

Following that we travelled to St Anthony and visited the Grenfell site. Sir Wilfred Grenfell contributed hugely to the improvement of both the health and quality of life in northern Newfoundland and Labrador. His is a fascinating story.

We owe a debt of gratitude to this man!


We looked at a very long set of steps up to what I am sure would have a ben a marvellous overview of St Anthony. We opted to stay at a lower level and found some hert berries. These are new to me... similar to our blueberries but more oval in shape and sharper in taste.

Hert berries

On our way south, we stopped at Port aux Choix which was settled some 4000 years ago by the Maritime Archaic Indians. It has been inhabited ever since as a good place to find shelter, food and materials for tools and building. A lovely walk along the coast on the limestone barrens ( just like The Burren in Ireland but not as smooth-topped) but no berries anywhere.

No scallops at the Anchor Point Restaurant but we enjoyed a visit with other visitors and the great big bowl of mussels was delicious!
You may have noticed the number of French names I've encountered in the travels of the past 10 days. Until the treaty of  Utrecht in 1713 ceded the fishing rights to the English, the west and south coast of Newfoundland was fished by the french fleet during the summer fishing season. We English have  made  quite the mess of the French pronunciation. No Frenchman would recognize some of the names!
Foe example, Baie d'Espoir which translates as Bay of Hope,we pronounce Bay Despair!
For some years now Cow Head (Tête de Vache, the French called it because of the shape of the harbour as seen from the surrounding cliffs), has been home to Theatre Newfoundland & Labrador's Summer festival.  Judi & I enjoyed "Newfoundland Vinyl", a musical offering featuring songs written and originally performed by Newfoundland artists.  The young talent we saw did a fine job!
On Saturday I dropped Judi in Deer Lake and proceeded to dive for 3 monotonous hours to Gander. I did take a prolonged stop in Grand Falls-Windsor which helped.

I checked into a small country motel for 3 nights and am so very happy not to drive again until Tuesday!