Scott and Becky go East

100 km, 5 h 10 min ride time  – Triple Falls RV park to Deadman’s Cove

Our goal today was to get to St. Barbe, so that we could take the early ferry over to Labrador.  It rained heavily overnight, and we took the time to dry out the tent before leaving, which meant another post-noon start.  Fortunately, we again managed to ride with the wind mostly at our backs, so we made good time – the wind changed direction from earlier in the week. The tailwind was especially nice on the long straight flat stretches where there is no sign of population. 

After 90 km, we pulled into Sweet’n Eats – which you may recall is where we stopped for wonderful fresh bread treats on our first day on Newfoundland.  Since we were quite tired, we had another delicious meal and took our time before preparing to depart.  (We can report that the chili is as good as the chowder!)  While we were eating, Scott struck up a conversation with a couple of the nurses that were having their dinner at the café.  Judy and Margie were fun to chat with as they bantered with each other and with June.

As we climbed on our bikes, Judy and Margie drove back up, and Judy offered us her spare bedroom for the night!  They had overheard our conversation about $80 per night for the hotel in St. Barbe, and took us in.  She lives in Deadman’s Cove, so it means 10 km to get to the ferry tomorrow, but it’s wonderful to have a real home for a night.  (Margie would have taken us in too, but she has a smaller house, and is remodeling her spare room).

In true Newfoundland fashion, Judy brought us home, showed us around, then left us the run of the house for a few hours.  Her older son Bradley works at the Senior’s Centre, and Thursday evening is for cards, so she and Margie had a previous commitment.  I guess we must have honest faces.

It was a real delight to spend some time talking with them after cards, and to feel like we were in a real home again, even for a few hours.

45 km, 3 hours

St. Lunaire-Griquet to Triple Falls Campground and St. Anthony

In the NE corner of Newfoundland, we discovered many interesting things.  Perhaps not profound, but  small things are interesting too.  There are many bogs, the trees are short and therefore provide no shade on a long hot sunny day, and the fresh water is yellow.  We noticed the water mostly in Hay Cove, L’Anse aux Meadows and St. Lunaire-Griquet – not as noticeable in the St. Anthony area.  A bit disconcerting when you come upon a toilet for the first time… The water is mostly from artesian springs and wells, and is quite drinkable though. 

There are also many cords of lumber stacked along the highways, and occasional teepees made from evergreen trunks.  These are for domestic heating in winter, and each household can get a permit from the government for cutting in a defined area.  The wood is cut and collected each winter by snowmobile and brought to the highway’s edge.  Some is cut and corded immediately, and other wood is stacked in teepees to dry.  Some wood piles are better organized than others, and in one case we came across a small sawmill near the edge of the road.  Each stack is labeled with a permit number, and collected in the fall for the heating season.

Today we rode from St Lunaire-Griquet to the Triple Falls Campground, set up our tent, dropped our gear and then headed into St. Anthony for a nice dinner and supplies. Dinner was at the famous Lighthouse Café with a view of St. Anthony harbor and “Iceberg Alley”. Unfortunately, today we had a view of the lighthouse (about 50 feet away) and that was about it.  The food was good (and we ate a lot of it), but it didn’t live up to the star billing we’d heard from several other people.

The fog we woke up with did not lift, and there was a light misting rain much of the day.   We’re finding that the cloudy, damp days are in some ways nicer for riding than a sunny day.  It may be damp, but the mist keeps us cool, and it is easy to add more clothing if we need it.

21 km, 2 hours
As you can see by our distance and ride time, we certain didn’t go anywhere fast today. We started off slow in the morning, finishing up some photo updates while we had Internet.

We wanted to leave such that we could head up to the Northern Delights restaurant for after noon, since we heard that Murray’s mom would be there from noon on. Scott suggested a boat tour – and Becky could never say no to a boat tour, so we also added that to our days itinerary (4 pm tour after lunch).

After lunch, we had the opportunity to actually meet Murray’s mom… “Who is Murray” you may ask? Murray is a very friendly guy from Gunners Cove who we met in Perth Ontario on our first day riding. He was part of a team of people sandblasting and painting the water tower and staying at the same Motel we stayed at. It was neat being able to meet his mother. Apparently, he has been asking if we’d stopped by yet. (Yes, Murray’s mom does have a name – Grace. This, along with the name of the restaurant were minor details which we didn’t get from Murray… According to Grace, he does tend to leave out the odd detail) Our bikes and our various inquiries about “Murray’s mom’s restaurant” apparently caused some talk in Gunners Cove. We found out from Grace that we asked directions from a cousin yesterday, and her husband saw us riding before we got back to the restaurant.

Grace has run the restaurant for a number of years, and her mother Ethel had it before that, so it seems like they’re something of a Gunners Cove institution.

Our pilgrimage to meet Murray’s mom is now over. We had a lot of fun getting here, and having a quest made our visit to the Northern peninsula much more entertaining for us.

The food at Northern Delight is excellent and reasonably priced too! We enjoyed a traditional Newfoundland Jiggs Dinner for lunch. Fortunately we shared, since it was huge! Roast beef, chicken, salt pork, boiled potatoes, turnip, carrots, partridge berry pie, and there’s probably something we forgot. Highly recommended!

After our lunch, we headed down to St Lunaire for a quick tour of the Dark Tickle Jam shop. We had a chance to meet Steven Knudsen (the owner) and ask many questions about berries. It turns out that one of the things I thought might be a berry is actually quite poisonous .. oops .. guess we’ll stick to bakeapple berries, as they are pretty easy to identify.

At 3:30 pm we headed down to White Cove tours for a boat trip hosted by Captain Tobias (Tobe for short). We were the only tourists brave (or foolish) enough to go out in the weather, but it was still fun. The boat trip was rather wet, and we didn’t see whales, but Becky really enjoyed it. There was quite a bit of swell so the boat bounced around a bit. Neither of us took anything for motion sickness, which was unfortunate, as Scott spent much of the voyage feeling queasy. He still had fun though. We saw some baby eagles in their nest which was kind of cool. We also saw the house where E. Annie Proulx wrote her novel The Shipping News. Apparently she wasn’t particularly popular with some of the locals, but she and Tobe got along quite well.

Becky created some excitement by dropping her sunglasses from the fly bridge onto the edge of front deck, which wasn’t easily reachable, especially with the boat bouncing around. Sherlock (a friend of Tobe’s also on board) found a mop and used it to move the glasses into reach and successfully recovered them. Given how much the boat was bouncing, it was truly amazing they didn’t end up as fish food.

We were cold and wet when we got off the boat, so we decided to get a room at St. Brendan’s Motel in St. Lunaire-Griquet rather than riding the 25 km back to the Triple Falls RV park in the fog and drizzle.

Scott continued to feel queasy for a while after arriving at the hotel, and will be looking into various options for motion sickness before we get on the freighter. He has used Sea-Bands before, and we have Gravol, but there are probably other options too. Suggestions welcome!

We were saddened to learn of the shootings at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on Sunday morning. It is hard for us to
believe that anyone would object to a UU congregation and its “liberal” stands enough to go on a shooting rampage. Our hearts go out to the victims and the families and friends of those involved.

We had another lazy morning this morning. This is looking like a theme for us, unless we have a reason to be somewhere quickly. We both enjoy having some time in the morning to reflect and relax before getting on the bikes and going, and it is helping us to slow down.

The riding today was hot, over 28 degrees C. We didn’t expect Newfoundland to be this warm, and it’s a bit of a surprise to the locals too. Apparently, this area hasn’t seen rain in July. It looks so lush that you wouldn’t know it.  The morning fog must help to keep everything hydrated.

We followed the road north towards L’Anse-aux-Meadows,
a Viking village and the first sign of Europeans landing in North America, over 1000 years ago. It is hard to imagine people that long ago. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site, and quite interesting.  They have reconstructed a few sod huts and allow you to  go inside them, which was a definitely highlight for
Becky.  We also got a chance to talk with the “Vikings”, a number of locals in
period costume who have studied the history and the sagas, and act as
interpreters.

L’Anse-aux-Meadows is about as far north as the roads go on Newfoundland, although Marie Cove on the other side of the bay may be a bit further.  For our purposes, we’ll call this the northern tip of Newfoundland though.

We decided to live a little of our former life, and had dinner at the Norseman Restaurant in L’Anse-aux-Meadows – although we did limit ourselves to soups and starters. The restaurant was ranked as “one of the top 100 restaurants in Canada” a few years ago. The meal was good, but not outstanding – the butternut squash soup was very good, but the roasted root vegetable soup a bit overpowering.  The “Macaroni and Cheese” had lobster, orzo and mascarpone cheese witha hint of blackberry and raspberry.  Not quite your standard Kraft Dinner, and it was excellent!  The restaurant definitely caters to the tourist market, serving a Lobster and Caribou surf-and-turf, but that was beyond our price range even for splurging.  We suspect the locals are more likely to go to Northern Delight down in Gunners Cove for dinner – where we had a delightful lunch of crab and cod.  Very tasty, more filling, and half the price of dinner.

With a late night, no campgrounds in site, and Becky’s desire for a bed for tonight, we called up the Viking Nest B&B. For $48 we get a nice queen size bed, Internet, and a full breakfast. Not a bad deal and it doesn’t kill our budget – at least not yet!

80 km, 4 h 10 min ride time

We got off to a very late start today, but made good use of the time. We got most of our photo backlog uploaded and tagged, and had a chance to chat more with Rosie and Colby, and get to know them a bit better. We got a better appreciation for some of the difficulties you run into as a fisherman, two principal ones right now being higher fuel costs, and low lobster prices this year due to low demand from the U.S. With the tail-off in consumer spending, much less lobster is being bought (it is a bit of a luxury item for most people). Fortunately, Colby and his partners have licenses for several fisheries, so they’re able to fish Cod, Lobster and several others. In the off season, they also guide hunters who come to Newfoundland to hunt moose.

Their son Keenan was quite fascinated by our bikes, so we got some pictures with him and the bikes, and he took some pictures of us too.

The weather was great for cycling today, with a strong tailwind out of the southwest, which pushed us along quite well. The sun made an appearance after about an hour riding, so it also got quite hot out.

Everyone we’ve talked to so far have warned us about the road to Cartwright, so we may end up hitching a ride from Red Bay to Cartwright rather than riding the 400 km of gravel. That said, people have also been warning us about the Newfoundland roads and drivers, and so far both have been excellent! We have some more time to gather information and explore options, and we want to do some riding in Labrador, so we may just ride to Red Bay and see for ourselves.

First signs of civilization after 60 km.

Our original plan had been to get to L’anse aux Meadow today, but with a 1:30 start we decided to stop at the Triple Falls RV park instead. We have a lovely spot right beside a stream, which mostly drowns out the highway noise. It’s nice to be camping in the dry again – hopefully it lasts for a day or two as the forecast predicts.

The day started rather wet, so we opted for a short ride. We started out making our way to the ferry terminal from the beach where we camped with Thomas and Isabel. This was our first “free camping” on the trip, and it worked out well, despite the rain.

Our arrival at the ferry was somewhat optimal, as just as Becky bought our tickets the computer died, which slowed everything down (perhaps it didn’t like Scott’s name?). We managed to get our tickets, and those who were only 5 minutes behind us ended up waiting another 45 minutes!

The boat was clearly a purchase from somewhere in Europe, as the English listing on the signs was the third language listed. The second language was one of the Scandinavian languages, but we didn’t recognize the first (Dutch perhaps?). The boat also had 220 volt European plugs – good thing we didn’t need to charge anything. For this routing they could use a boat that had more car space and less passenger space, since some cars got left behind. In the passenger area, the boat felt rather empty – especially compared to the last 4 days on the Nordik Express.

We said our goodbyes to Thomas and Isabel, and Paula, Dave and family after disembarking. It was sad to go our separate ways after spending so much of the past four days together, but also nice to be in our own space again.

When we left Blanc-Sablon the fog was so thick we could barely see the shoreline. Fortunately, the fog lifted a fair bit (but not completely) in Newfoundland. It was much warming than we expected, especially with the fog. The weather report says 22 degrees but feels like 29. Knowing what 29 feels like in Ottawa, neither of us are sure about the “feels like” 29, but it definitely felt nice and warm, which was good because it was rather wet at times. It rained on and off, but most of the heavy rain was during our lunch break.

We took a brief detour shortly after getting off the ferry. There was a sign to the “Viking winter site”, but the interpretation centre looked rather abandoned. The road was more of an ATV or 4-week track, but we decided to follow it rather than the highway. The GPS indicated to us that the road did join back up with the highway. It was a rather amusing distraction and probably some good practice for other roads. Becky saw her first Newfoundland moose, but we’re sure there will be more! We stopped to talk to Ross who was collecting kelp for his garden. He was quite intrigued by our bikes – they continue to be conversation-starters. Ross is back from a tour in the oil patch, and enjoying gardening the organic way, not least because kelp is free, compared to $50/bag for fertilizer.

We stopped in Flowers Cove at “Sweets ‘n Eats” for lunch, which was delicious! June fed us a great chowder and delicious fresh-baked buns, and we sampled some sweet-bread with raisins (much like a loaf of hot-crossed buns). The sweet-bread was just coming out of the oven, so between the scent and the free sample we were hooked! We now have a loaf we need to eat in the next day or two, but that shouldn’t be too hard.

Given that the tent was wet and we were wet and Becky wanted to do laundry, we decided to stay at a B&B tonight. The prices for B&B outside of L’anse-aux-Meadows and St. Anthony are quite inexpensive (under $50 for two), so we figured we should take advantage of it while we can. We’ll probably try and do some free camping for the next couple of nights while the weather is good.

We’re in the Coziest B&B in Green Island Cove, near the end of a series of small fishing villages. Rosie and her husband Colby are great hosts, and the B&B is very nice. Scott has taken over Colby’s shed (more like a barn) to hang our wet tarp and tent – fortunately he doesn’t mind.

Rimouski is a beautiful town at the beginning of the Gaspe Peninsula. We had several errands to run, including picking up our new bike shorts from the Rimouski station A post office. This was the first time we tried to use “Poste Restante” (General delivery) to receive a package, and it worked remarkably well. We also stocked up on some groceries and camping supplies, since Rimouski is our last large town until St. John’s, which is several weeks away.

The ride from the campsite to downtown was quite nice once we discovered the shoreline trail. There are beautiful bike and walking paths around Rimouski. One of the paths goes along the shoreline of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It became very clear by the smell and the lack of water that this area was tidal. With every deep breath I was reminded of my childhood and the smell of the sea.

I do wonder if I am beginning to feel the first pangs of homesickness. It is not unexpected as we have been travelling through a province where we don’t speak the language well and the culture is different than what we are accustomed to. I am looking forward to Newfoundland and being able to communicate with people more easily again. Physically however, I’m feeling quite well. Given we’ve been riding for 7 days I’m very happy how well my body is adjusting!

Scott says:
Communication continues to be our biggest challenge. Although we are comfortable enough with French for activities of daily living, it’s a challenge to learn anything about the person we’re talking to. I had a brief chat with some Boy Scouts from Quebec City who were interested in our bikes. It appears that Quetzel (s.p.?) is a synonym for recumbent in at least some parts of Quebec. We’ve seen a couple of them on the road – a long wheelbase recumbent similar to a Longbike. The most common question we get is “do you have a motor on that?”, to which our usual response is “seulment mes jambes” (only my legs). Fortunately the bike questions are fairly consistent, so we have a chance to think about our answers in advance of the next questioner.