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