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| 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 3rd 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.
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| Open pit mine |
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| Along the roads we very often saw small root vegetable gardens owned by people who don't have gardens at their house |
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| 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!
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| The boardwalk through the spongy swamp---Reindeer moss----and we were so glad to see the rig again below! |
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| 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.
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| Where is the access to this shed???- But it has a million dollar view! |
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| 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!!
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| The fishermen's shed and fishing stages are so colorful and sometimes there is a nice extra touch! |
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