L'Anse Aux Meadows

 I've been curious to see L'Anse aux Meadows since first hearing about it in university days.  But I've been to NL twice and had never gotten to that part of the province.  And it is remote and not easy to get to....but not difficult, either.  We had gorgeous weather, along with the relentless wind.  I took a tour led by an excellent guide - she was the granddaughter of the guy who showed the 2 Norwegian archeologists where they might want to start digging back in the '60s.  

Here is a replica of the "lodge" recreated for the entertainment of the tourists.  The "actors" were engaging and fun.

 

This is a very important place in the world because it is the first known European settlement in North America and dates back to 1000 AD.  We know that the Norse were there because a Viking cloak pin was found by the archeologists in 1968. Although the Norse did not spend much time at this location (off and on for 10 years), they did an amazing amount of work to use some of the resources that they found and the very fact that they could locate the place from a "rowboat" several times over continues to astound me.     

 I took a walk along the coast and encountered a large group of creative mini "lodgings" with a Norse theme.  It was a delightful discovery.  

This one was the most elaborate of the creations.  

 

Big Discoveries

One unexpected discovery  was the town of Port aux Choix and its National Historic Site.   I had never heard of it and hadn't been observant enough to notice that long, thin stretch of land off the Northern Peninsula which is the home to this very interesting spot.  It has been a temporary settlement for over 6,000 years for 4 groups of people, long before Europeans had thought of looking for North America.  The inhabitants (all temporary) were the Maritime Archaic, the Dorset, the Groswater and the Beothuk. (now extinct)  The big attraction was the travelling seals who came down the Labrador Strait on icebergs.  It was a handy place to make a harvest - hence the name, port aux choix (port of choice).  We'd seen the signs about woodland caribou as we wandered around on the barrens (and they were barren!) in the relentless wind.  However, we did see a group of moose off in the distance busily browsing near a large pond.  

Our choice of accommodation in Port aux Choix ended up being our least favourite, but I really enjoyed their turkey dinner - it hit the spot on that particular day.  We woke up to another day of brilliant blue skies (and reduced wind), so we headed back to the park and this time we found the caribou!  A highlight for both of us!

 

 

The Arch

 The Arch 

I didn't spend a lot of time following the paper map loaned to us by Mary and Gerald except when I was in the car and I followed it ALL the time.  I saw this place called The Arch on the map and it was a provincial day use area.  We hadn't seen much of that at any spot in NL and this was our first introduction to a provincial "park".  It was a popular spot and I'm pleased that I managed to get a picture without other tourists in it.  We had a good conversation with some other BC folk who had  driven to NL from Richmond.  There was a car load of women who were in despair over a lost "bag" - we searched while there.  The location of The Arch is nearly half-way up the western side of the Northern Peninsula.  It's worth a stop.  Catch it while you can!  

Twillingate to Lewisport

 Neither of us had ever been to Twillingate so this was our opportunity.  It you want to see icebergs, because it is part of the "iceberg alley", you won't see any in September.  It's still a beautiful place to visit.  On our route to Twillingate, we stopped at the Beothuk Interpretive Centre which was somewhat interesting, but I did feel that the displays still paraded our "colonial past" to a considerable degree.  They did have a note about in the building - it's something that I noticed at provincial sites - everything is only in English and that English isn't always politically correct.  There were lots of dream catchers hanging in the trees - not sure how good that is for an environment that gets lots of wind!

Our afternoon along on the Twillingate coast was a highlight.  We had beautiful bright skies and the coastline is dramatic.  We spent the afternoon walking near a large trail network in the area.  All of the towns of rural NL appear to have very good trail networks and I believe that they are locally maintained.  Every place that we visited had a "society" which was creating and maintaining trails in the area.  Those Newfoundlanders are stalwarts!  They do not have "easy" terrain.    Here is an example of Twillingate coastline.  

In Twillingate, we did stay at a "regular style" B and B (The Mermaid Inn) and at least had the opportunity to have conversation with a real NLer.  We did find that with most of our accommodation, it was operated by someone who was not "on site" and we received a door code and no interaction.  A dismaying turn in travel, to my mind.  We hiked several short trails in the area and managed to hike a trail near our B and B that demonstrated trail work in action.  The volunteers had been doing lots of work in the area - it was a rainy morning and we did not meet anyone other than one other pair of hikers.  We then headed to Lewisporte, a fairly large town by NL standards, where we had a very nice apartment and were able to purchase the last rotisserie chicken in Lewisporte on that particular Monday! 

 

 

And we did Come From Away

 I've been hearing about this play for nearly 20 years and it's been part of my plan to get to see it for a number of years.  But I didn't search very hard.  I'm sure I could have found a production of it while in the Maritimes in 2025, but last summer was all about "Anne".  This year, I wanted to see Come From Away after hearing it was playing in Vancouver (but I do anything to keep from driving to Vancouver).   An extra performance in Gander  was announced at some point in early August and I looked online early enough to be able to get two tickets for the matinee performance that had been added to the roster on Sept. 12/26.  This was the day after all the "dignitaries" had come to Gander to celebrate the huge world events of September 11, 2001.  I did love the performance (we saw it at the Joey Smallwood Theatre in Gander, NL) and it also seemed special to be watching it in the place where a good part of the story  actually happened.  The performance had a very "homey" feel to it and I enjoyed meeting my seated neighbours who had come up to Gander from St. John's to see the play.  Before our arrival in Gander, we stopped in Appledore which we'd heard about on the CBC TV news covering the Sept 11th events of 2026.  Here is located the largest beam recovered from the Twin Towers, given to the town for its part in welcoming so many citizens to the town in 2001.  

 

It was perhaps a bit "rah, rah USA" for the current times, but the entire Come From Away experience is an emotional one. 

 

 

Visiting the Gander airport is rather fun.  It's not a very active airport any longer but played a significant role in aviation in Canada.  And I was surprised to learn that the Beatles stopped in Gander on their first trip to the US because Gander was the refueling spot for basically everyone coming from Europe.  The folks at the airport have done a good job of hyping the celebrities who were here in years past and of honouring its role in 9/11.  

Leading Tickle and Surroundings

 In August, Dave and I made the decision to visit NL and we booked our flights once I'd managed to purchase a couple of tickets to Come From Away in Gander, NL on September 12th.  I had tried to get tickets in Vancouver for earlier in the year and they were charging $306 per ticket.  I was outraged.  And western NL has been on our radar for a couple of decades.  Time to dive in!

We started by booking our first 2 nights of accommodation at the Exploits Motel (right off an exit from TCH).  Our plan had been to stay one night, but we could not get accommodation in Gander on the night of September 11th.  Something to do with a 25th anniversary of a huge event in the world???  Instead of going to Gander, we headed north of Botwood and ended up in Leading Tickle.  This particular peninsula did not have a "name" (like Avalon, Baie-Verte, etc) but I did very much feel it could have been the "bay of islands" - there were hundreds of islands visible from the town of Leading Tickle.   We started with breakfast in Botwood and even at 8 am it was "men's coffee" at the cafe - I thought I was the only woman in the place until I met the cook, a woman who looked slightly younger than me.  Food was good (I didn't realize how good until I'd had 2 weeks in NL!) and I asked her how long it took her to get the men to push their chairs in before departure (not all of them bothered) - she shook her head and said some were untrainable.

We had a couple of nice hikes - one at a campground that had just closed for the season.  The operator said they'd had a very busy summer.  We got some great views out towards Notre Dame Bay.  Another hike was a supposed "coastal walk" - didn't really get to see much coast.  The surprise discovery was the giant squid that was captured here more than a century ago in 1878.  We just happened upon this tiny park in a very remote area of NL where a replica of the squid was on display.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PEI: Departure and Afterwards

 

We had to leave the Onley House by 10 am on our departure date.  The charge is an extra $200 for 15 minutes going beyond the limit.  We had the washing machine running and the dishwasher doing a load (as instructed) which gives the cleaner(s)? 6 hours to clean up and make all the beds before the next group of guests.  We very much liked the location of the house and I'd highly recommend it

for a large group of people.  It's pricey and at this point in time I'd say it was worth it.  The ADAM family was on the road by 9:15, believing that they were heading to Halifax and their flight the next morning.  Not to be!  They were cancelled by Sunday afternoon and were fortunate enough to get a rental to Montreal with a WJ flight to Calgary/Kelowna on Tuesday evening.  They got to see even more of Canada than the rest of us even if it was a long drive.  But they made friends and drove a guy from Halifax to Moncton who offered them $300 to take him because he'd just learned an Uber guy was going to charge him $500 for the same trip.  They took him.  We await AC to see if they'll pony up with money as promised.  BTW, they were reimbursed for their flight home at the time of cancellation.

Dave and I headed over the beautiful Confederation Bridge to spend time at a bird watching place in NB but by that time NB had closed all of its trails for fire danger and we didn't get to go far.  A great place to pull in for taking good pictures of the Confederation Bridge.  It's quite an interesting little stop for information about the local area but I was so disappointed in not being able to walk anywhere!

A part of NS, that Dave and I have never visited is the Parrsboro Shore so we headed out that way to take a look because we had arranged to spend the night in Truro, NS.  One place that you could walk was at the Joggins Geological Site with all of its fossils and it was quite busy there - maybe the only place in NS where you could walk around??  Considering the time that we spent in the Maritimes, this was probably the busiest place that we visited.  That fact would compete with our visit in the evening to the "tidal bore" in Truro.  We also stopped at the FORCE institute on the opposite Fundy shore that leads to the Minas Basin.   Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy is not currently producing tidal power - a great idea and it's stagnant at the moment, but I hope this is something that will happen in my lifetime.  There's a lot of current going through the Bay of Fundy and it ought to be utilized to produce power.

After another seafood dinner in Truro, we headed out from our motel, The Tidal Bore Inn,  to watch the "tidal bore" for the first time ever.  I've been hearing about it for 50 years.  It's actually quite interesting, it happens twice a day, and there were at least 75 people there watching it happen.  I took a video and plan to post that on u-tube if I ever figure it out and will post a link to it here.