Sagas of ancestry

So as many of you know I am of Norse descent and quite proud of it. So today to my delight we went to L'Anse aux Meadows, the Viking landing site. There we got to meet some actors playing the roles of Viking settlers. One woman was weaving as her husband, an old skáld (bard), told us tales of Thor the thunderer (son of odin king of the gods, also the god of warriors and the common man, we get Thursday from his names, really good day for a storm huh) and Loki lord of chaos and trickery (and is the Norse god of magic, if he can be called a god at all for he is of giant descent), of Odin king of the gods (and the god of kings, war and many other things, his eyes and ears on the world were two ravens, one named Huginn thought the other Muninn memory, we get Wednesday from a German version of his name Wodin) and Freya the most beautiful goddess if ever there was one (also goddess of farming, the harvest beauty and fertility, we get Friday from her name) and finally of Thrim king of the frost giants (and what a cold people they be). Once the tales were over and were through I asked the old skáld and his partner, who came in as the story was being told, about the instruments they were playing, a whistle that both looked and sounded like a panflute, a flute with a single hole played by changing the distance of the finger from the end, a flat board with six strings stretched over it that was similar to a guitar except without the ability to change the notes and another wood plank this one with three strings stretched over it played with a bow like a fiddle would be. They pretty much said they knew how to play them and where they came from but that was it, i was hoping for there names so I could look them up online but hey ya play the hand you are dealt. After that dad got a picture of me with an old Viking sword and shield (interesting fact that most seem to neglect is that the shield is not just for blocking blows it is a weapon in it's own right, in a real fight on a real battle field you're just as likely to bash someone in the head or chop someone in the side with you shield as you are to block with it).

(Everything on this page that is in brackets is my own knowledge.  Where it discussing gods, the speakers did not mention these things; where it is about the shield, that is just me).

West then North

So we said good-bye to St John's Friday morning and 1,100 k's later (700k yesterday) and we are in St Anthony. The roads are good for the most part and it is windy but that's OK because it is mostly cross winds (sarcasm for Sheldon's sake (Big Bang Theory) ) and the trailer is like having a 30' X 8' sail tied to the back of the truck. I have been trying to make sure all the tanks are full to give the trailer more weight and better balance when I am towing.

The drive today was nice because it wound along the western shore. Below is a picture of James. He looks like a giant beside the stunted trees. The trees we have seen in Newfoundland are not much bigger than this. Maybe it is the wind.

This is the beach where we stopped for lunch today. We parked in a church parking lot - it was a good thing it wasn't Sunday.

In the distance you can see Labrador (at least you can on the original).

St. Anthony NL

Today we travelled up the western side of Newfoundland. There is a ferry to Labradour, but as most of the roads are unpaved, it would only be a side trip - one we'll skip for now. 

There are interesting things we've seen as we've travelled the highways of this province:

- Telephone and power poles that have a fence and large rocks to hold them steady instead of guy wires
- Garden plots in the middle of nowhere, it appears that if there is a patch of ground that can grow something, people will plant vegetables
- Cut and stacked wood, cords and cords of what appears to be community wood stacks 
- Lobster traps by the hundreds, all stacked as neatly as the wood piles (waiting for next season I guess)
- Octagonal wood boxes at (nearly) every house for garbage cans. I'm assuming it protects the garbage from both wind and animals

Arrived in Rocky Harbour

Our travels are a little bit sadder today. My Uncle Joe passed away. My cousin used the term "larger than life" to describe him and that is how I've always thought of him.  I am a blogger not a writer and I find it hard to express all the feeling going on inside me today. I wish I could be there for my family.  Know that I will be thinking of you. 

As we travel back along the Trans Canada Highway heading for the west coast of Newfoundland, the trees are all bent in one direction with few leaves on one side as they have been blown so often in the wind. My Uncle Joe didn't bend like those trees but always stood tall and strong like an oak. 

So long Uncle Joe, we will miss you. 

Pictures and an Ocean Ride

We went to Cape Spear and took some pictures. The wind was howling so hard that it would have blown over the tripod. The wind blew at 70 k for most of the day. The gift shops here at at Signal Hill were both closed.

Here is the three of us at the most easterly point in North America.

The wave were really angry.

I went on a puffin and whale tour on Obrian's today. The boat was really being tossed around in the waves caused by the rollers leading up to Katia.

Here are a couple of pictures. The first one is a puffin and the second one is a fin back whale.

BCers in Newfoundland

We have seen more BC license plates in Newfoundland than anywhere else.  Even in the campsite before the ferry (in NS) half of the plates were from BC.

We have met people from Langford, Cranbrook, Abbotsford, and Ucluelet, among other places.

Today, Paul met people with another Duck Toller - although their is much younger than Abby.  Will and Christine are also keeping a blog (http://www.kvarnoguesthouse.ca/roadtrip.htm).

Speaking of Abby, our duck toller, she is doing okay - she has good days and bad days and is definitely showing her age.  Kody, our Bernese Mountain Dog is "helping" by finishing off her food whenever she doesn't want it.  We walk them separately now because Abby's pace is much slower.

As east as we can go

Today we went as far east as you can go on the North American Continent.  We were at Cape Spear.  It was very windy but the waves were absolutely gorgeous.  We took a picture of the three of us on the east coast!

Downtown St. John's reminds me of San Francisco - lots of very steep hills and colourful row houses side-by-side all over the place.  Water Street is similar to Government Street in Victoria with lots of little specialty shops and lots of cruise ship tourists doing the shopping.

We also went to Signal Hill - the place where Marconi got the message.  We wanted to go into the gift shop but it was "closed due to weather".  The gift shop out at Cape Spear was closed with a sign that said it would open again yesterday . . . must be Newfoundland time.

Tomorrow, Paul is going on a boat trip to get pictures of Puffins.

Nerd, nerds and history

Hi everyone, sorry it took so long for me to post again. So I guess I'll start with the last few sites we stayed at for the past few nights. When we arrived on Newfoundland we stayed at grand codroy which had nice sites and great wifi. The next place, gates of the north, was also nice and even if the wifi wasn't good, which it was, there was another 7 to choose from. The final place we stayed at, country inn rv park, was horrible it had some nice site but none of them available so we ended up in a parking (<- auto-corrected 3 times without getting the right word) lot and the showers had fungus in them and only the nice sites got non super flaky wifi. Now we are staying at pipi park in st. Johns which is nice, with beautiful sites that seem like provincial park sites except for the price and although they say the wifi is free it costs $10, let me explain the sites that the wifi is in cost $5 more than other sites and they don't have trees in the, in my opinion $10 is a low estimate when choosing between trees and a gravel road with a lawn.

Yesterday in st. Johns we found a nerd store called Sword and Steele which was great, they had magic the gathering, warhammer, D&D, comics (but unfortunately no manga) and dice. The reason I mention the dice is because I am obsessed with dice and these people had some from a metal smith somewhere in the states, they bought out a month of his work making dice, and these dice are awesome with strange patterns for numbers and decretive indents and bulges throughout. The warhammer tournament I came for never happened but I got a great conversation with the store girl since for most of it no one was there plus I bought a D&D book which always makes me rather happy.

Other than that we went up to signal hill, which was a cool historical place with so much wind it reminded me of home. It was kinda like fort rod hill but smaller. Did you know they only used one gun to defend the harbor in st. Johns in WWI. Signal hill is a good name for it because you could see flag signals for miles around.

Until next post.

St John's

We drove from Gander to St John's today. It was very windy and the trailer was a handful. We also had some fog but the temperature is still warm.

We were going to go shopping but forgot that it was Labour Day so it becomes a job for tomorrow.

The roads here are are the best we have seen across Canada. The drivers are the most patient and courteous that we have seen as well - unlike Ontario drivers who are a menace even here.

When you drive the highways in BC you are usually driving in the valleys and there are mountains on both sides (and sometimes a cliff and a river right beside you). Driving across the prairies you can see for miles because it is so flat. It sometimes feels like you could drive off the edge of the earth. Once you get to Ontario and points east it feels like you are driving on top of the world (compared to BC) because there are no mountains. You are driving near the highest elevation around. It is completely different visually when you get to the top a hill and you can see for miles instead of the side of a mountain.

Gander - 9/11 ten years later

We arrived in Gander for the evening.  We are lucky to find a spot for tonight - if it was next weekend we will not likely be so lucky.  Gander is celebrating 9/11 ten years later.

Gander airport was built in 1938 in preparation for the war and, at the time, had the world's largest runway.  That runway was used to land 38 flights when the US airspace was closed during the 9/11 crisis.  Next weekend as they celebrate the 10 year anniversary they will be receiving a piece of steel beam from the former World Trade Center.

Driving today there was a little more traffic, but still not too much.  The roads are good - though at the bridges there is usually bumps.  We stopped at one information centre today and it was closed for the long weekend (huh!).

Pictures and more

We have been busy moving from place to place and I have been taking a few pictures but have not had time to post any so there are a few here:

We could see this church from the campsite we stayed at in North Sydney ( Little Bras d'Or ).

From the ferry to Newfoundland this is a Cape Breton Lighthouse.

This was the view off the stern of the ferry. The trip was 7 hours and there were a number of photographers on the top deck hoping to get pictures of birds and other sea creatures along the way. I had been up since 3:00 am and went downstairs and slept for long awhile. Apparently I did not miss much.

After we got the trailer parked because I has slept on the ferry I was awake enough to drive down to Rose Blanche which has an historical granite lighthouse. On the trail out to the lighthouse there was an information plaque for a community that you could see in the distance. The community of Petites is only accessible by boat.

And here is the Rose Blanche Granite Lighthouse. I have a large number of images that I am happy with like the one below. I processed a number of HDR images that worked out really well.

One of the differences we have noticed with the campsites since we left "western Canada" (that is Ontario and west) is the campsites have something extra. One had soccer fields, volleyball courts, shuffleboard and a pitch and putt golf course (and more including 2 swimming pools). Everything was free to use including the clubs and balls.

In New Brunswick the campsite had a waterpark with a good size pool and waterslide.

In Nova Scotia and here in Newfoundland we can hear music well into the night. In Nova Scotia it was a jam session in the campsite hall with a number of people from the campground. Last night they had a sing-a-long one of the buildings. Tonight over the wind we can hear singing and someone playing the spoons and earlier it was the accordion.

Deer Lake, NL

We had a short travel day today, only going as far as Deer Lake, just a couple of hours away.  This was probably good as we spent some time this morning chatting with Ken and Nancy Beazley (http://thebeazleyclan.com/) - another photography and accountant mix - go figure.  We just relaxed and enjoyed the sunshine this afternoon; and did some checking on the cost of a traveling satellite internet service.  The cost per month is reasonable but the setup is too expensive - at almost $7,000 for the internet disk (much more expensive than sat TV dishes), we decided that we'll stick with cell coverage.

We are planning another couple of short days before we get to St. Johns.

Newfoundland and Labradour

We have arrived on "the rock".  The first thing you see after you get off the ferry and drive down the Trans Canada Highway out of Port Aux Basques is the Table Mountains.  While not high by BC standards they are impressive.  Most of the greenery is shrub height.  Even the pines seem to be small with many of them being no taller than a man.  The ocean is a beautiful blue and you can see out to the edge of the earth.  Newfoundland definitely has a beauty all of its own.

Sydney and area

North Sydney, where we are staying is to Sydney, NS what Sydney, BC is to Victoria. It's a smaller community just outside the larger one where the ferry runs from. The city of Sydney NS appears to have a much better highway system than Victoria. However, both coasts are beautiful.

 Nova Scotia has some bilingual signs also - except they are English and Gaelic. There are three universities here that teach Gaelic and there are even radio stations in Gaelic.

 Did some puttering (laundry and groceries) but mostly just enjoyed the day and the scenery.

Mad Scramble dash

So before Irene hit we had reserved seats on a ferry to get to Newfoundland, but we had to stay at the campsite instead of moving on to (by the earliest predictions) avoid being hit by Irene.  So we had an 6 hour day yesterday and a 8 hour day today.  Yeah not the nicest thing we've had to do, nicer that having to get up before 4 am so that we can arrive at 4 at the ferry terminal so that we can catch the 6am ferry which we have to do two days from now.  At least the night before I won't be kept up till 11:30 pm by mom's live hour for her course, that was last night.  (man that was annoying I only use 24 hour time so I can never keep am/pm straight)

O yeah, hurray we got back to an ocean today!  Say hello to the Atlantic. 

So onto yesterdays campsite, it was kind of nice with a beautiful pool, but there were complaints (from other campers) that the power/water were to far away so they could not connect.  The area was grassy (no paved sites) with trees, and definitely a party place, you know the kind of place that a whole group of people meet up with their trailers and throw a party, not the kind of place we like to stay.  Today's place is on CapeBreton island, and has one nice and one not so nice shower, again it is grassy but the trees are more scattered. Tomorrow we reach the ferry terminal, do some shopping and sleep so that we can get up at 4.  

I've always wanted to see this

We have arrived on Cape Breton Island and are staying in North Sydney.  From our campsite we have a beautiful view of Bras D'Or which is a huge lake in the middle of the island.  We got our first look at the Atlantic today.  The Trans Canada Highway is not the scenic route, but it was the quick route which is what we wanted today.  Tomorrow we can go shopping and then we have to be at the ferry terminal at 4:00 a.m.

We chose this campsite because it is close to the ferry terminal.  It is a great choice.  Very peaceful.  There is a walk along the water and this evening we saw a great blue heron as well as some ducks - Paul is going to go down with his camera tomorrow after dinner.

Atlantic time zone

We are now in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Did you know that NB is the only official bi-lingual province. It is nice to now be able to read the highway signs without having to figure out the translation. NB seems to have a lot of rolling low hills so far.

Just a short stay here as we need to get the NS as our ferry to Newfoundland leaves at 6:00 am Friday morning. So we aren't even unhooking the trailer tonight - ready to get a good early start in the morning.

It is bright and sunny though which is definitely a nice change.

Storm has passed and we are fine

7:00 am EDT
Sometime during the night the wind and rain slowed down. We woke up this morning to cloudy skies and fairly light winds. We will walk around the campsite later and see how everyone else fared, but we are fine.

The sun has just peeked out from behind a bank of clouds. Life is good

Storm Update 9:00 pm EDT Sunday

We are still getting pounded and now it is dark and we can't watch the trees being blown around.

The wind is a steady 60K with gusts over 90K. It is raining so hard sometimes it sounds like someone is knocking on the door.

It is supposed to peak after midnight (with gusts up to 120k) and the forecast says the wind will be down to 40K with gusts to 60K in the morning.

We are dry and warm - the furnace is on.

I am not looking forward to taking the dogs out tonight.

Storm Update 05:00 pm EDT

The storm is here and we are getting pounded. The wind and rain have been getting worse as the day goes on.

The winds are are 60K+ and and gusting much higher, the rain is coming down in sheets. The roads in the campsite are now "flooded" with an inch or two of water.

We are watching things being blown around the campsite. The neighbours couple swing has been turned over. Another's awning has been blowing in and out (it is in the collapsed position but the wind has got underneath it a couple of times).

We are OK. I am wet because Abby needed to go out awhile ago. The trailer has been rock solid and we only notice the really heavy gusts. We still have power and internet. I guess I'm not going to BBQ tonight.

The brunt of the storm is not expected until early tomorrow morning (2:00 Monday).