New Foundland

New Foundland (NF) was in our minds the climax of our tour across Canada. This was because it was the northern-most and eastern-most travel point in Canada for the Jenkoz travelling troupe. It did not fail our expectations, but rather exceeded them in some ways.

Table mountains, New Foundland.

Getting to NF is an experience all of it's own. The ferry service is renowned for publishing a timetable that it rarely follows, so it wasn't too much of a surprise to find that our booked ferry was delayed for 7 hours. This meant that we travelled from North Sydney, NS at 1am instead of 4pm - a blessing in disguise for us. Kids will sleep anywhere so the trip for them was mostly taken asleep - although Ash didn't get much at all, like his parents. The UNexpected came in the form of ship announcements giving us the ETA. There were 3 separate such announcements about 30 minutes apart and each gave dramatically different ETA's until eventually we were to arrive some 2 hours later than we first expected! I began to wonder if the captain had got lost.

NOT the ferry captain ( as far as I know).

Once on the island however it was a fast exit and smooth driving out of Channel Port aux Basques to the nearest park for breakfast. Here we encountered the legendary New Foundland hospitality. There is a charge to enter the park, but when we said we just wanted to have breakfast and move on they immediately waved us through - a pleasant change from the officiousness of many Canadian government employees.

We had decided to drive for St Anthonys at the top of the western tip of New Foundland where we could go whale watching and maybe see icbergs floating past.We didn't see icebergs, rather something else we hadn't expected.

They're everywhere, they're everywhere!

The scenery along the drive along the highway to our first night's camping was quite spectaculr in places and devoid of inhabitants for much of the drive.

We stayed in a KOA at Rocky Harbour, inside the Gros Morne National Park limits for our first night - the first ever caravan park to feature a giant jumping pillow, which the kids made good use of.

Gros Morne NP is extrodinarily beautiful and spectacular. There is an inland fjord in the park which offers a hint of why it is so spectacular. Unfortunately we didn't have time for trips into the park proper and so had to content ourselves with a few roadside pics.

Scenery along the highway in NF.

The highway along the coastline from Rocky Harbour was good until we turned off the major route. It wasn't terrible, but the sudden dips and potholes couldn't be avoided or seen in many cases which made for a rough ride.

We had booked 2 nights at a park just out of St. Anthonys and drove straight past it the first time because their one and only sign is partly hidden from the road - a strange way to attract clients. On the drive into the area there were numerous signs warning of Moose, so we kept a good lookout for any but were disappointed to see no Mooses. Later we were told that the area has the greates concentration of Moose in the worldand we only need to travel at dawn or dusk to sse them. Guess what we did. Here's a clue, we are not dawn patrol travellers!

The next day saw us on a 12 metere whale watching boat heading out of St. Anthony's harbour. At first it looked to be a no show as there was still a lot of fog clinging to the coastline, but after a half hour or so we saw our first humpback whale - 20 meteres away!! The whole experience was humbling and awe inspiring when you realized that the animal surfacing so close was bigger than our boat!

Humpback whale tale near St Anthony's

Dolphins tried desperately to be noticed by leaping from the water in cartwheels and flips but they were further away and too quick to get good pictures of. The whales, in the end we saw at least 6, were far more sedate and simply surfaced, took some deep breaths in and out before going tail up and swimming to the depths for another 5- 10 minutes at a time.

The coastline was dotted with caves and one of them known as the The Big Oven was huge. More than 70 meteres high by 50m wide and travelling back into the hillside for over a 100m where it ends in a swimming beach.

Viking house as it would have been 1000 years ago.

I'm a viking tee,hee,hee

The tour took all morning and so we visited L'anse aux Meadows in the afternoon. This is the oldest known viking settlement in North America, a mere 1000 years old! After 'professional discovery' (the locals always thought it was just an Indian camp) the village was recretaed using local resources and stands as a living tribute to viking history.

Unfortunnately for us this is where Paige touched a giant Hogweed plant that later caused her and us so much pain and problems. After 2 emails to the authorities that run the site, there is still no response - a worrying sign.

Dusk patrol for moose

After dinner we made a dusk patrol of the roads to see if we could see any of the moose in the area. We were not disappointed this time. Every few hundred metres there seemed to be a moose grazing alongside the road. Another couple counted over 100 moose along the roadside in their 30 km dawn drive to the local airport - an amazing thought when you see how big these animals are. Moose must have territories and with so many living so close together it would be interesting times when moose mating season arrives!

All up, our visit to St Anthony's was a memorable experience for many reasons - mostly good.

On our travels back to the ferry, we encountered what I call a day of woe. You know how the saying goes - bad things happen in threes - that was our day of woe. It started normally enough with me breaking Jill's camera card and my coffee pot. Then the day seemed to ramp up some. As we drove the rough road back to our next campsite for the night - a car overtook us and signalled for us to pull over. Once we had done that we checked the trailer and found that the rear end had parted ways and the spare tyre was nearly dragging on the ground.

Oops. That's not meant to happen.

Not good - the wooden frame inside had rotted from years of exposure to water and the tyre weight coupled with sharp bumps as we drove along, tore the skin off the back of the trailer. A very helpful fellow traveller stopped and gave us 2 screws from his RV door to hold the skin back in place. We also tied it on using the clothesline cord for good measure. But that was not the end of it. Because we had been using so many electrical gadgets in the car, when we stopped the lights were left on and so drained the battery! We needed to get a jump start before we could drive on again.

Okay - so we left the lights on and the battery is flat!

To top things off, the evening was one of the windiest we experienced with driving rain also - with the way things had been going I was sure the trailer was going to collapse too - thankfully it didn't -I guess we had exhausted or 'bad luck' for the day.

Seabreeze campsite? - more like coastal hurricane!

It was a slow start to the last day of our island tour, so instead of it being a liesurely cruise to the ferry, it eneded as a mad dash to be sure we got there on time. Strangely the ferry was running on time so we had to too. But it wasn't the end of our surprises - just as we arrived at the exit to the ferry, customs asked whether we had any vegetables or fruit on board - yes we did - then it needs to be removed now. We mentioned that we didn't know anything about it, was there something that we missed when we came over? No we don't advertise it much!! Not much advertsising meant no signs, no warnings on pamphlets or ferry information, in fact no mention AT ALL until you arrive.

An hour later...I have them!

At least this gave us something to do while we waited to drive onto the ferry, and the ferry ACTUALLY took the time predicted so that we arrived back at North Sydney by 11pm. With nowhere to stay for the night we simply drove through the night and ended in Bangor, Maine USA for lunch the next day.