Actually
it rained for a total of only about four hours out of the seven days that Ed,
Bud and I spent in Newfoundland. We also had strong winds only once, which was
near Stephenville where I was stationed. I saw a road sign near there during
our trip that warned of winds in excess of 200 kilometers (125 mph) having been
measured along that section of the Trans-Canada Highway. We saw fog only once
too, and that was miles out at sea on the Grand Banks, off the southern tip of
the Avalon Peninsula. Several native Newfoundlanders told us that it was the
most extraordinary summer they had experienced in 30 years.
We
arrived at the ferry slip in North Sydney in the early evening of the day
before our ferry reservations. We allowed plenty of time for loading, although
space for a few motorcycles would usually be easy to find. The huge
ice-breaking bow of the seagoing ferry was raised up and out of the way as the cars,
trucks and campers entered through the gaping bow section onto the vehicle
deck. On our return trip, a week later, we loaded in a similar fashion but from
the stern. The total fare for a bike and rider at that time, in the mid-1990s, was
$30 in Canadian currency.
A seagoing ferry has never been my idea of
fun, but the MV Caribou made the 4½ hour trip from North Sydney to
Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland as pleasant as any sea voyage could be. Having an
extreme inner ear sensitivity, I took Dramamine both ways, in spite of advance
reports of a calm sea. I remembered the rough crossing I made in 1953 on a much
smaller predecessor of the Caribou, which was rough.
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Along Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island, heading for Newfoundland
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After
riding the bikes up the steep loading-ramp onto the ship, we were directed to a
rear corner of the top vehicle deck. They provided more than enough tie-down
straps to lash the bikes down. One strap would have been sufficient in a calm
sea, but because of recollections of my earlier trip, we used four straps on
each machine. Due to my inner ear problem, I declined the ship's dinner menu,
which was very tempting, and the prices were right. The onboard theater
presented a double-feature movie while a musical group sang “Newfie” folk songs
in a well-stocked lounge. Many passengers strolled the decks, keeping an eye
out for whales, while others snoozed in reclining chairs on the decks.
Staterooms were available at an extra charge, primarily for night crossings, but
a few hours sleep is the most you could hope to get.
I was sure that my predictions about the
weather had come true as we approached Port-aux-Basques. We could barely make
out the rocky shoreline through the light rain and mist. The captain did an
expert job of piloting the huge ship into the tiny harbor. The ship cleared the
craggy rocks on both sides with only a few feet to spare. After slowly entering
the harbor, the captain turned the huge ship 180° around, and then he backed it
in toward the dock in an area so small, you had to see it to believe it. Disembarking
also went smoothly, in spite of a steep ride down the wet steel ramp. Our motel
reservations were nearby in the town of Port-aux-Basques; so when we arrived,
we had less than a five-minute ride in light rain to reach our room.
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We lashed the bikes down securely aboard the sea-going ferry
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Traffic on the ferry crossing is said to be
up 30 percent from the previous year, and growing at a phenomenal rate. The
population of many towns in Newfoundland has increased several-fold since I was
there in the early 1950s, which was due primarily to the opening of the
Trans-Canada Highway across the island almost ten years after I left. The highway
begins at Port-aux-Basques near the south-western tip of the island and passes
through the forests of western Newfoundland past Corner Brook and Deer Lake
before crossing the sparsely populated northern expanses where it also passes the
once-famous Gander Airport on its way to the more populated and scenic areas of
the rugged Avalon Peninsula. The Trans Canada Highway ends at St. John’s, the
capital of the province. I remember traveling that route in 1953 on a narrow
gauge railway with my family, aboard a small steam-powered train that was affectionately
known as the "Newfie Bullet". Our car and house trailer traveled on a
flatcar aboard the same train.
The current highway is mostly two lanes across
the sparsely-populated areas, with an extra lane for passing on most of the long
hills. It becomes four lanes in the busily traveled, populated areas, like
between Stephenville and Corner Brook, and also while nearing St. John’s. It
was being upgraded in several areas while we were there. The speed limit in
most areas was 90 kilometers (56 mph). We had very light traffic all the way, on
the entire route from Port-aux-Basques to St. John's.
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Was once the Air Force Base hospital where my daughter Donna was born.
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Our first stop was Stephenville where I
spent most of my Air Force tour. The US Air Force is gone now and Ernest Harmon
Air Force Base no longer exists. All US military personnel pulled out in 1966,
after a 25-year occupancy as part of our defense and early warning system (the "DEW
line") during the Cold War. I recognized many of the main buildings,
although the base chapel has become a Zion Pentecostal Church and the officer's
club is now a popular local lounge. The base hospital where Donna was born,
houses the Harmon Corporation. The airstrip, one of the longest in eastern
Canada, is still in use, although most of the parking aprons and taxi strips
are huge paved expanses. We drove in across a large area of concrete where painted
lines now mark the vehicle travel lanes. The town of Stephenville has grown at
least tenfold since I was there. It apparently now derives its economic
dependency from a large modern newsprint mill, operated by Abitibi-Price.
Fishing still accounts for a portion of the economy, but not as much as it does
with other smaller towns that we visited during our tour.
Our next stop was Gander Airport, once called the "Crossroads of
the World" because of the massive amount of air traffic that passed
through before jets with longer travel ranges bypassed this once-essential
refueling stop. After checking into our motel and having dinner, we rode to the
airport and saw a single 45-year-old PBY-5A Catalina flying boat fire up its
engines and taxi out for takeoff. In spite of its civilian colors, seeing and
hearing it brought back memories of flying in the lovable old birds during my
Navy days in World War II. My most memorable incident while flying in a PBY happened
while we were landing at an extremely short runway in Cebu City, in the central
Philippines. We went clear off the end of the runway and got stuck in the mud. Local
residents at Gander told us that several eastern European airlines still use Gander
airfield regularly.
The next day we rode north to Musgrave
Harbor on the Atlantic Ocean where the seacoast is rugged and barren. Bud's
rear tire went flat after hitting a rough break in the pavement on our way to the
lighthouse at Cape Bonavista. After quickly plugging the hole, we used the Gold
Wing's “onboard” compressor to re-inflate the tire, and we were on our way in
just a few minutes. A few days later, Ed’s rear tire went flat after hitting a
similar road hazard, and we did the déjà vu thing with Ed's tire.
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Bonavista Lighthouse
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The Bonavista Lighthouse has been converted
to a museum so visitors can see how the lighthouse keeper and his family lived in
bygone days, and how the light worked. A mechanism of heavy weights and
reduction gears that slowly rotate the light is similar to an old clock mechanism,
only much larger. This one requires manual rewinding every two hours. Cape
Bonavista is where John Cabot landed in 1497 and declared to the King of
England that he had discovered what he called the "New Founde Lande".
Although the Vikings preceded him by more than 500 years, it didn’t seem to
affect Cabot when he promptly claimed the land for the King of England. He was
later rewarded ten pounds of sterling for his good deed.
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| Ed and Bud with a grand view of St. John's from Signal Hill |
St. John's is known as the oldest city in
North America. It has endured for half a millennium and has thrived as a major
seaport for many centuries; first, for its fishing industry with visitors from
many seafaring nations of the world, and later for Newfoundland's offshore oil
industry. St. John's burned to the ground in the huge fire of 1892; but it was
rebuilt and has grown many times larger, with homes spread out over the
treeless hills for miles.
Signal Hill stands high above the city,
overlooking the harbor and the famous Narrows that provide access and shelter
from the Atlantic Ocean. The old cannons, which once guarded the Narrows in
battles between the British and French, still point menacingly toward the
harbor entrance. The gun emplacements on Signal Hill, built in 1796, was once
called the Queen's Battery. Cabot Tower, one of Newfoundland's oldest and most
famous landmarks, stands majestically on the summit, and houses an interesting
exhibit of Marconi receiving the first transatlantic wireless message.
North of St. John's, we visited Pouch Cove, which
was one of the highlights of our visit. We stood high above the tiny cove and saw
fishermen unloading their morning catch as they filled a huge net with a few
hundred pounds of fish from their deep, flat bottom fishing boats. The bulging
nets were then hoisted 50 feet to the fishery level where they would be emptied
and lowered again.
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| The Queen's Battery, built in 1796 |
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Cabot Tower
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Fishermen unloading their catch at the fishery in Pouch Cove
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A waste drain from the fishery spewed
discarded fish parts out onto the rocky cliff where hundreds of hungry,
screeching sea gulls fought for every morsel. From there we rode on a rough,
gravel road with ruts, holes and loose stones to the lighthouse at Cape St. Francis,
perched precariously on the edge of a cliff above the Atlantic. Two workers
were painting the steep side of the building using high ladders against a
narrow ledge around the building. The older of the two clung to his ladder so
tight, it was a wonder he could use the paintbrush. I asked him if he ever
looked down. His face seemed a little pale when he answered that he tries not
to.
When we stopped for gas near Trepassey Bay on our loop around the Avalon
Peninsula, we learned that the main herd of 2,000 caribou had been sighted
recently near St. Shotts. So we made an 18-mile round trip into St. Shotts in
hopes of seeing the herd, but it was already gone. We spotted it later, midway
between there and Peter's River. With excitement running high, I quickly put the
bike on its side stand and ran with my camera across the muskeg-like terrain,
hoping to get close-up photos of the herd. At one point, I had caribou all around
me. The largest rack I saw looked to be four feet high with many points. I got
several pictures with and without my telephoto lens. The animals didn’t seem to
mind my presence as they continued to graze. They would only occasionally look
up to see what I was up to Newfoundland is the only place in North America where you can still hunt this beautiful
animal, although the tags are very limited.
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See size of the dominant male, and the height of his rack
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Lighthouse at Crow Head
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Near L'Anse-aux-Meadows, site of the first Viking settlement
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On our return leg across the island, we
visited Twillingate on the northern coast, and the lighthouse at Crow Head
where we stood at the edge of a vertical cliff, hundreds of feet above the
ocean to look for whales. Most visitors were content to stand behind a tall
fence and look from there, but Bud and I walked out to the very edge, which
gave me a rush of excitement. A voice yelled, "Whale", and sure
enough one of the huge mammals surfaced briefly, directly below us, and blew
water far into the air from its spout.
We also visited St. Anthony, near the northern
tip of the Great Northern Peninsula. It's the northernmost city in Newfoundland,
and the home of the famous Grenfell Medical Mission where we saw a helicopter
swoop in toward the a modern hospital while we were there. The hospital
supports a large surrounding area, including remote Eskimo communities on the
mainland, as well as from many other islands much farther north. We encountered
the only significant rain of the trip in St. Anthony. We decided to skip a side
visit to L'Anse-aux-Meadows, an archeological site of the first Viking
settlement in North America, due to the rain. The site has
been dated to around 1000 AD. It is widely accepted as evidence of Viking
contact in North America before Columbus.
On our return down the peninsula, along the
Viking Trail near Eddies Cove, we saw a group of huge icebergs in the Strait of
Belle Isle as they drifted near the Labrador coast on their way to the
Atlantic. We also passed through Gros Morne National Park on our way to and
from St. Anthony, which offers some of the most magnificent scenery on the
island, with many majestic fjords, lakes and mountains. We saw a group of huge
icebergs floating in the Strait of Belle Isle while we were returning down the
peninsula near Eddies Cove. They appeared to be near the Labrador coast on
their way to the Atlantic.
Our
last night in Newfoundland was spent at Plum Point on the northern peninsula
where we enjoyed the best food of the trip in the small motel dining room.
Aside from many identifiable items, they served a full menu of traditional
Newfoundland dishes like, fish 'n brewis (cod fish with hardtack), cod tongues
(a gelatinous bit of flesh from the cod's
throat), cod-au-gratin (baked cod in an
au-gratin sauce), scrunchions (pieces of pork rind), and other Newfoundland specialties.
We found that the major difference with the food in Newfoundland was their over-easy
eggs and breakfast sausages. The eggs were usually only served over-hard, no
matter how we ordered them, and the sausages were always bland. Once during the
trip, we stopped at a McDonald’s for breakfast, hoping to get their spicy
sausages, but they served the same bland, almost-tasteless sausages.
As we stood on the dock in Port-aux-Basques, a small musical group stood
nearby singing Newfie folk songs like "I'se the Bye", which
translates to "I'm the guy", and "The Squid Jiggin'
Ground". (squid jiggers are special hooks for catching squid). Their music
sounds a lot like a mixture of the Highland fling and the Irish jig. The
performance seemed like a perfect end to a perfect visit.
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Small musical group at Port-aux-Basques
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Most people on the island were outwardly friendly and hospitable toward
us. It was normal for a stranger to approach us and start a friendly conversation.
Whenever we asked for information it was always given with a smile. They laugh
at the traditional "Newfie jokes" and will tell you a few right back.
Newfoundland is aptly called "Canada's Happy Province."
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