BLOG 20—King's Point—A Big Waterfall, Great Pottery, Humpback Whale & to Fleur de Lys!

 

View from King's Point over Notre Dame Bay

The small town of King's Point had a lot to offer, as you can tell from the above title!  The road into King's Point was one of the worst yet for bad potholes; the locals were very upset about it too!  We arrived in King's Point at 2:30PM on Tuesday May 26 for a 3 night stay at the town campground in George Huxter Memorial Park which also includes the town playground. Since we were the last rig in, we got the only spot left right next to the “washrooms” which is Canadian for bathrooms and showers!  The only drawback was the 20A electric plug was at the top of the building wall at least 9' up, but fortunately Bob Pullman, an over-6 footer, came to our rescue to plug in and pull out later!

We decided to go see Rattling Brook Waterfalls about 4 miles away before settling down in our campsite.  From the small parking lot, you walk up a very long, very high series of wooden stairs that climb the mountainside and have recently been built to replace an even higher set of stairs that have been damaged by a rockfall taking out part of the upper structure!  Several warnings that your climb up is at your own risk but the new stairs were very well built!  It doesn't take you to the very top of the falls but to a viewpoint where you can get an unobstructed view and photographs of this falls that is 850' high!  It was very impressive with the roar of the water at the top.  Back in the campground, we heard that our scheduled Lobster Boil dinner here was cancelled so Maryke pulled something out of her hat as well as out of the freezer!

On Wednesday, we had 3 tours scheduled in the morning with the first one being the King's Point Pottery, which has a large retail craft and gift store as well as the very well known pottery which has won many awards.  Linda Yates and David Hayashida are the owners and potters as well as the town's tourist ambassadors!  David took our group through the crafts gallery and told about the processes for creating many of the works and answered many questions patiently. 

Then Linda took our group into her pottery studio and demonstrated at length the craft of building clay bowls on her wheel, which everyone found fascinating!  Lin, in a former life, had a pottery studio on his houseboat in Seattle with a wheel and kiln so it brought back fond memories and we both admired the work and different techniques this couple have developed.

The gift shop at the Pottery is huge and amazing because they not only sell their own beautiful work but pottery, art and many other terrific crafts from artisans all over Newfoundland!!  Here are some photographic examples of the work we admired!

The next tour was to the Whale Pavilion just a couple doors away.  Since it wasn't quite open for the season yet, David guided us at this beautiful building housing the skeleton of a 50' female Humpback Whale that came ashore and died nearby.  David was one of the leaders of a small number of people that got the government permit and towed the whale in and cleaned the skeleton over a long period of time then “articulated” it, meaning to put all the bones together into the fantastic display you can see today.  There were many questions and David is obviously a real whale expert now after this several year process and could explain all the biological facts as well as the government grant process to build this showcase building. 

His group, the King's Point Heritage Society, has assisted the town of Trident to build and complete a similar facility housing a sperm whale, which is also open for visits.  For many of us, the combination of the Pottery and the Whale Pavilion with David and Linda's friendly commentary was a great morning!  Our 3^rd visit to the Heritage House Museum, also run by the Society, was cancelled due to renovations in progress.

In the afternoon, we drove out to Harry's Harbour, which is sometimes good for whale sightings and icebergs but not today!  We had quesadillas for lunch in the rig; handy having a kitchen while you're touring! Incidentally, speaking of icebergs, here's some statistics that will amaze!  The largest iceberg ever recorded was 208 miles long and 60 miles wide or nearly 12,500 square miles!!  The tallest iceberg on record was 550 feet high—WOW!

At 5:30PM our group had a hamburger cookout at the Fireman's Hall, up on the hill above the campground, that was very good.  Afterwards, we had been invited to come to the Spring Concert of Valmont Academy, next to the Firestation, which had skits, singing, poems, several Newfoundland songs and skits with kindergarten through high school kids performing plus 2 male teachers doing a Newfoundland favorite called “Excursion by the Sea” with many people in the audience singing along!  

Really a fun time and afterwards, several people came up to welcome us to town and the principal demonstrated the typical Newfoundland button accordion (or screechbox) and then the Ugly Stick when he found out that I owned one!!

On Thursday morning at our regular 8AM CB Radio announcement broadcast, we learned that the King's Point Pentacostal Church had invited our whole group to come for breakfast at 9AM.  Some in the group had already had breakfast and we had it out on the table but shifted gears and headed to the Church, which is, by coincidence, located on Church Street!  The breakfast was amazing—fried eggs, 3 large pieces of bacon, potatoes, beans, orange slices, bread and homemade jam, orange or apple juice, coffee & tea—WOW!  All very friendly and shaking hands and afterwards, they asked for a picture with their people and ours!  What a great, friendly town! 

We took off a little after 10AM by ourselves to visit Baie Verte (Green Bay) where we saw a viewing deck for the Baie Verte Mine, a very large open pit asbestos mine from 1963-1990 that is permanently closed. There are 10 other mines in Newfoundland, mining copper, zinc, gold and silver. 

Open pit mine

Along the roads we very often saw small root vegetable gardens owned by people who don't have gardens at their house

   

Fish stages and sheds

We came to the town of Fleur de Lys and found an ideal place at the small craft harbor for a sandwich then drove to the end of the road to take the Ocean View Trail up a mountainside with boardwalk part of the way and large flat rocks out to a great view!  One of our more ambitious hikes on this trip!   

 

The boardwalk through the spongy swamp---Reindeer moss----and we were so glad to see the rig again below!

 

We even found a Queen Anne type house in Fleur de Lys--probably from a rich cod merchant?

The other attraction here, the ancient Dorset Soapstone Quarry and Interpretation Centre, one of the oldest mines in the world, was still not open for the season, but they had a lot of storyboards outside on the wall to explain the quarry.

We continued up the road to La Scie, a fishing town, which was settled by the French in the 1500’s. It is the largest fishing community in this area and has a large very busy harbor,   La Scie is “The Saw” in French.  It's on the tip of the peninsula. We drove down into the harbor and talked to one of the fishermen and he told us that the catch was good and they were getting $3/lb. for crab and $1.30/lb. for shrimp—better than last season! 

Then we drove to tiny but very scenic Shoe Cove with houses built around a pond in the center of the town surrounded by mountains with a mine on the outskirts!  There is a tiny harbor here where we saw a house built high on the rock wall with no apparent access except maybe by rope from the top or boat below and winched up??  We walked around and talked to a couple that live here year round and own the highest house over the harbor and ocean with an incredible view and told us about some of the bad winter storms.

 

Where is the access to this shed???- But it has a million dollar view!

The generating station uses the water from the fast roaring river (bottom left)

Finally we visited the small village of Snook's Arm down a gravel road with a hydroelectric generating plant on a wild river and another large mine.  In its former life, Snook's Arm was one of the first whaling stations in North America.  There are still remnants of whale jawbone just offshore, we were told.   Several very colorful fish shacks.

On the way back to King's Point, we were stopped on the highway for a couple minutes because a bear cub had come onto the road and gotten hit.  Didn't see his Mom but I bet she's mad!    

We had heard from several people that the By the Sea Cafe across from King's Point Pottery had a very good liver and onions dish.  We arrived at 8:05PM and fortunately, they were still open and we got our excellent dinner after a long day of 239 miles on the road!   Look for our next post of our visit to Twillingate, coming soon!! 

 

The fishermen's shed and fishing stages are so colorful and sometimes there is a nice extra touch!

BLOG 19—Deer Lake Area

On 5/24 we were off for Deer Lake in cold, windy and foggy weather.  The weather cleared up nicely in the hour and 20 minute drive to Arches Provincial Park so we stopped as this is a great place to walk and for photography! It's been a long time since I used my Nikon 16mm Fisheye lens which on my Nikon D7100 becomes a 24mm Fisheye, with nowhere near the exaggerated effect of 16mm on a full frame camera.  We walked down as the tide was way out and got under the big arch and shot a few frames.  But the lens came into its own for closeup shots of the incredibly beautiful sea polished stones and rocks that line the beach and under the arches. 

We won't see Arches again this trip but the next opportunity for scenery like this, I want to try out my 14mm rectilinear lens that would become 21mm with my camera's 1.5X magnification factor.  Watch for it!!

Campfire in the evening and an enthusiastic "parker"!

Deer Lake was a short 2 night stay at Gateway to the North Campground, a nice place just off Exit 16 of the Trans Canada Highway or TCH, on the Humber River with a laundry, full hookups and nearly 100 sites.  It's very close to the town of Deer Lake, which has fuel, propane, lots of restaurants, several grocery stores and most other services. 

Our only caravan visit here was right across the street at the Newfoundland Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion.  The Insectarium is housed in a beautiful 1940s heritage building—an old dairy barn built with church-like arches to support the roof!  There is only one other Insectarium in Canada and this one in Newfoundland is now 12 years old and doing well despite the short visitor season here!  The Butterfly Pavilion is a long tunnel-like building of heavy plastic sheeting well heated and humidified to make perfect butterfly habitat even in chilly Newfoundland!

We learn all about leafcutter ants      The old dairy design barn is still visible

We started our group tour at the Butterfly Pavilion with the owner guiding us around to the 400+ butterflies of many different species flying all over, onto plants and onto our heads and shirts!  Photography was difficult, as usual in these butterfly gardens, as most butterflies seldom stay put for long.  There were many blooming flowers and shrubs to attract them but no fruit like bananas or oranges that really pull them in for a meal!   Here's a few photographs that we were able to capture but, alas, no morpho butterfly, our most favorite, since they very rarely take a rest but they kept cruising around like a flying jewel!

Inside the main building, there are many hundreds of panels of mounted butterflies and virtually every type of insect from around the world.  There are also many glass terrariums with live specimens including walking sticks, tarantulas, beetles etc.  One highlight was the leafcutter ant habitat in a giant terrarium with the owner describing how they have kept this colony longer than any other institution.  He told us a lot about their social structure with the queen, workers etc.  In summer season they have a working beehive making honeycombs inside their glass enclosure.

The art was neat too: A insect quilt and lots of kid's drawings

Easier to photograph the morpho butterflies when dead..... Also a beautiful Owl butterfly

The gift shop here is huge with good quality goods, most with an insect theme.  One very nice feature is an ice cream shop which they opened for us—absolutely delicious ice cream, we all agreed!

The other feature on the large Insectarium property is a walking trail that takes you down to the river right by a beaver lodge and a large viewing platform.  Several of our people saw beavers and even a beaver with a youngster so around sunset we went down and walked around and waited and finally there was activity as one beaver swam in one direction almost at dusk and a couple minutes later another swam in the opposite direction.  The best photograph right at the end of sunset shows a head with a large V of water trailing behind as it makes its way to another lodge.  The sunset was nice and very few mosquitos, fortunately.   We all thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Newfoundland Insectarium and recommend it, even if you're a little squeamish about bugs!

The next morning we drove over to the small town of Pasadena, not to be confused with California, to check out Meyer's Minerals.  From the information we had, we thought this was a high class (expensive) rock shop, but it's very different.  They started out thinking they would make products like countertops from beautiful local granite but the computerized cutting equipment cost make them rethink.  The owner, a professional geologist as is his wife, was there and showed us their showroom and lapidary lab where they make beautiful semiprecious stone jewelry. 

Labradorite--(picture taken later in St. Johns)

He has a source for genuine Labradorite up in Nain, Labrador, an Inuit area.  This gemstone when rotated in the light shines a beautiful deep blue glow and makes incredible jewelry. The First Nation people claim the Northern lights are showing in this stone. It reminds us also of Morpho butterfly wings.The shop makes all sorts of beautiful products from it including bookends, vases and jewelry products like pendants and earrings.  Maryke got a beautiful set of earrings.  Labradorite is also found in Madagascar and most of the labradorite jewelry in the tourist stores here in Newfoundland is from Madagascar, which seems to be a little less quality, as far as its blue light reflectance, and a lot less expensive.  Jamie Meyer is also involved in other commercial geological projects like a gold mine. We really enjoyed the hour he spent telling us about Newfoundland geology and his business.  Came here to buy a trilobite fossil specimen, which he didn't have, but instead I bought a neat trilobite T-shirt with 16 different species of trilobites shown!!

Well, that's all the excitement for Deer Lake—insects and rocks!  On our next post, we go to King's Point, which had a lot of interesting places to visit!  See you there!

BLOG 18—LABRADOR--the Ferry Crossing, the Roads and the Sights!

We didn't think an optional side trip to Labrador would work out, so we had our fingers and toes crossed as we got closer!  Our Rally Handbook had 2 free days in Port Aux Choix with a descriptive paragraph on the ferry to Labrador.  We were camped 51 miles south of the Newfoundland port of St. Barbe where the ferry leaves and heads west for Labrador. 

 When the Caravan traveled down from St, Anthony on Port au Choix Wednesday 5/20 morning, we stopped in St, Barbe to ask about the schedule etc.  We had looked at the website LabradorMarine.com but their schedule is transitioning from winter to spring and changes day by day, probably depending somewhat on reservations.  The ferry had left when we arrived at the terminal and a hand written sign said no agents were on duty until 1-1/2 hours before the next departure, which was 2 hours away.  An 800 phone number and the pay phone in the terminal solved the problem and got Lin to an agent who described the process.   So we made reservations for the 10:30 AM ferry from St. Barbe, Newfoundland to Blanc Sablon, Quebec which is 5 KM south of the first town in Labrador, L'Anse au Clair.  There was only one ferry back to St. Barbe on Saturday (unlike Sunday when there is a 10:30AM and 4:30 PM) so we reserved on the 10:30 Saturday, really giving us only about 8-9 hours to see Labrador. 

Fishboat followed by lots of gulls (from the ferry)

We wanted more time to explore but the group is heading south for our next campground in Deer Lake Sunday and we'd miss some activities if we stayed 2 nights in Labrador.  We had emailed the only campground in southern Labrador at the Northern Light Inn in L'Anse au Clair to be sure their campground was open and were happy to hear it was but the water was still frozen in the campground (not a problem for us) so the rate was only $15 a night!  Exploring in southern Labrador meant taking the only paved road, Highway 510, 51 miles north where it continues as a gravel road for 194 miles up to Cartwright then a ferry takes over and moves you to Goose Bay in central Labrador.  Heading south in Quebec, their road only goes about 48 miles and stops completely with all other travel along the coast for several hundred miles by ferry skipping along a route of 4-5 small ports!  So road travel in Labrador is complicated!

We originally thought 3 couples would be going but turned out to be only us in our little RV and the Lee's traveling in their pickup and staying in a B&B.  Also we were concerned about weather since Thursday was a terrible day of heavy rain, a thunderstorm and gale force winds that forced us to abandon our scheduled tours and stay in our RVs—remember we were camped right on a beach with no protection!  The rig also got a lot of salt spray from breaking waves on the beach blowing right at us.  But, luck was with us and the winds calmed overnight and the rain stopped--it's a go!

Friday 5/22 we got up early and the wind had moderated and sunshine!  We drove off at 7:15AM to make the 51 miles trip north to St. Barbe to catch the Labrador Ferry.  We arrived at 8:40AM and paid for our ticket ($29.60 each way for RV & driver plus 1 passenger.) We drove on board the ferry at 10AM and went up to the lounge as no one is allowed on the vehicle deck while the ferry is underway.  The ferry was comfortable with a very busy snack bar and the ship had very little rolling on the transit across.  We saw a few smaller icebergs from a distance on the way over.

The ferry landed at Blanc Sablon, Quebec at 12 noon  and we drove off at 12:10 Newfoundland time.  In Quebec, it's Eastern time or 1-1/2 hours earlier but Labrador stays on Newfoundland time!  We looked around on the Quebec side, saw a young beaver, then drove to Northern Lights Inn to pay for our campsite ($15 + 13% Newfoundland Harmonized Sales Tax!) so we didn't lose it!  Shouldn’t have worried about that!  We were the only ones camped that night!  

Labrador, like Newfoundland, had an unusually severe winter as did the northern U.S. and like a lot of Newfoundland so far, the roads in Labrador are in bad shape with lots of potholes and slow going in places.   

We drove north and turned onto a good gravel road to L'Anse L'Amour and stopped at the archaic gravesite memorial on the side of the road.  It's the grave of a child from 7500 years ago and now just a mound.  It's the oldest known funeral monument in North America!   

The beach down the road was very interesting with a very tall cliff just above where we heard a bird calling.  We think it was a female rough legged hawk looking for prey as it flew over!  Beautiful bird! 

We continued down the road to Point Amour Lighthouse, built in 1857, a Provincial Historic Site with Bonnie, the interpreter on duty. We met the Lee's there, paid our entry fee and looked at the exhibits.  The interpreter asked if we wanted to climb the 122 steps up the circular staircase and go up to see the light. Sure we did!  So up we climbed and fortunately there was a landing at about every full revolution with a clever saying at each one to entertain you while you caught your breath! Finally at the top, we could see the large Fresnel lens with its light and a good view of the sea.  Back down, we looked at the shipwreck exhibits of commercial vessels and 2 Royal Navy warships that went aground here.  Also an interesting series of very old charts as far back as the 1500s!

Back on the highway north again, we went up several steep grades over 800' from sea level at the lighthouse.

When we had lunch in the rig somewhere off the road we saw a small animal running around, which we later decided was a young beaver.

At 5PM we came into Red Bay and as we expected, the Red Bay National Historic Site wasn't open for the season for another week or so and there was still some snow on their road. The park takes in many of the old fishing and whaling related structures.  This was originally a large Basque whaling station from the 16^th Century!  The town is very scenic with a large well protected bay.  

As we were driving around, we found a group of inukshuk sculptures and later the remains of the shipwreck of SS Bernier with its rusty hull still more or less intact.  We were really sorry we didn't have more time to spend in Red Bay as it's a fascinating place.  In summer, they have re-enactors working, which would be very interesting to see. 

 

Wreck of the SS Bernier

Poster of the archaeological excavations in Red Bay

We left Red Bay about 6:30PM and returned to the Northern Lights Inn to order a large Greco Pizza, which we had seen on our earlier visit.  20 minutes later, we headed across the street to the campground, plugged into the electric and had a delicious 5 topping pizza meal! It was very quiet that night and we slept very well and then got up early so we could take a quick drive as far south into Quebec as we could get before we had to return to the ferry dock. 

We left camp at 7:55AM in a light rain and fog and drove about 15 miles before we had to turn back.  Each village we passed was very tidy and well-kept and it was different seeing all the French signs here.   

 

We couldn't walk up to the top---steps were under a deep load of snow!

We climbed up a couple of steep grades on the road and came to Brador River Falls, a high, wide and very fast moving waterfall coming down the mountain and off to the sea.  The force of the water and the roar of the falls were very impressive!  This river is part of a hydro project. On the way back, we had to drive down the grades we recently drove up and were amazed at the road sign warning of an 18% downgrade, probably the steepest we've ever driven!   We really need to come back here and do more exploring!

We were back at the ferry landing at 9:15AM and watched the ferry come in at 9:20.  We finally parked on the ferry at 10:10AM and we were the last ones on—a very full load on the vehicle deck!  We arrived back in St. Barbe at 11:45 AM but these ferries have ramps on both bow and stern and turn around to unload so you can drive straight off and guess who was the last off the ferry??  Yep, us at 12:10 after all the trucks and autos finally departed!

When we were close to Plum Point, we saw our first red fox crossing the road so quickly that we have no photograph.  We stopped for lunch at South Castor Harbour and heated up a bowl of Anderson's green pea soup which really hit the spot!  Shortly after, we saw another male caribou near the road but up in the snow. (see pictures in Blog 17) Well, we made it back from Labrador, happy for the experience, but it would be great to have more time because there is a lot more to see and do! Next time!    

 

Like clouds, you can see a lot of forms in icebergs!

Reflections

Labrador is as rocky as Newfoundland                       Large barren tundra like areas and roaring rivers

 

More icebergs and small bergie bits on the beach