Author Archives: Jill and Bud

Thursday morning started with a ruffed grouse entertaining us by foraging near our trailer door.

Then we went back to Twillingate, where we’d been last year; back to the overlook at the Long Point Lighthouse to look for whales. We saw no whales. We took the trail down from the viewing platform onto the cliffs. I’m always disappointed in how little depth comes out in my photos so I decided to take a video. It does a much better job. My phone was further out than my feet and all of me was a bit closer to the edge than I’m comfortable with.

I think you get some sense of the cliff here.

Next we tried taking a path to this overlook on Top of Twillingate Trail.

It’s the first of three overlooks, but as soon as the trail got a bit steep Matey, who had been zipping along, just stopped. He stood there until we suggested that we go back down then he started happily down hill.

We made one more stop at Kettle Cove and called it an early day. We had things to do around the trailer so we took care of those.

Today started with a rabbit sighting for Matey and me.

Then on our way to catch the ferry to nearby Fogo Island we saw this moose. Bud thought it was a female, but if you enlarge the head you can see an antler, so I think it’s a young male.

So rabbit and moose, the day is starting out fine.

Every ferry we’ve been on so far has been unique. This one had a single deck, but on either side were raised “balconies” with cars on them. These were loaded when we got on.

I had to wait until we got to the other side to see how they worked.

Meanwhile, we sat up top on the sun deck. Poor Matey was in the truck because the deck hand misunderstood my question. He must have thought I asked him if the dog could stay in the truck, when I actually asked if the dog had to stay in the truck. There were dogs up on the deck but it was too late to go get Matey.

When we started unloading they let the cars to our left go first. Then an alarm sounded and the “balcony” lowered. I didn’t see them lower the ramp for those cars as our line exited next.

Our first stop on Fogo was Deep Bay. We were looking for the Deep Bay Footpath Trail, but evidently they’ve upgraded the name.

It was a nice little trail, not too steep for Matey.

Fogo is quite rocky and you could see it here.

It led up to an overlook that gave a great view of the tiny town and its beautiful harbor.

An island in the harbor had this cemetery. I wonder if they still use it, and if so if they have a funeral procession by boat.

By then it was well past noon so we went in search of food. This is my deli-tray. Notice the utensils, they are wood! At least this part of Canada doesn’t seem to have plastic silverware.

We stopped at this little cove in the town of Fogo to eat.

On one side of the cove was Brimstone Head.

We had wanted to hike up the short trail to the top but it was all stairs and we decided Matey couldn’t do it. So we didn’t get to go to the top where the Flat Earth Society has identified one of the four corners of the earth.

Instead we drove over to the Fogo Head Trail. It was just as daunting.

We took the first part down to this grassy meadow…

and admired the view of the Western Tickle.

We didn’t have a whole lot of time before the return ferry we wanted to take so decided to drive out to Tilting Cove. Along the way we passed through Joe Batt’s Arm where we saw this lovely church.

Set back away was this building, Fogo Island Inn. 29 rooms that go for $2875-$6975 per night with a three night minimum stay. Includes all meals, a half day orientation with a local community member and most land based excursions. This inn exists because of Zita Cobb and the nonprofit organization she started, Shorefast. A Newfoundlander told us about it and said to look it up, so I did. Ms. Cobb was born on Fogo Island and watched it almost die with the cod fishery. She studied business and ended up the CFO of a company involved in fiber optics. She became very rich and used her money to start Shorefast. The Inn is creating jobs for folks on Fogo Island and the profits go back to the island. I can’t do her justice here, she’s a great woman. I see now why the Newfoundlander told me to look her up. I recommend it, too.

At the end of that road was Tilting, the fishing town on Tilting Cove. This is Newfoundland and Labrador’s first Registered Heritage District.

I would have liked to spend more time there touring the old part of the town…

but after a quick look around…

we had to go catch the ferry.

This time Matey got to ride on deck.

We drove on yesterday. I’ve included this picture on our drive to show that there is traffic in some places. This is TransCanada Highway 1 near Grand Falls-Windsor.

We were driving between thunder showers.

We turned off the TCH onto Highway 340, which is aptly called Road to the Isles.

There are water and islands everywhere.

This is a very different area than the Baie Verte Peninsula, but just as pretty.

We passed pretty little islands on all sides…

and came back to Dildo Run Provincial Park for a second year.

For the next few days we’ll explore these islands.

Matey seems to be doing better so we thought we’d go back and walk the trail at Coachman’s Cove. The sheet from the Visitors Center said halfway down the trail there was another Dorset site.

Matey went right up the sets of stairs.

But he didn’t want to walk down, so I carried him down.

Otherwise he seemed okay, even showing bursts of energy.

On the way out we stopped at a lookout over the harbor.

There are some of the houses lining the inner shore.

As usual I was brought up short by the beauty.

Sometimes it felt like we were walking through a fairy garden.

We’d only walked about a half mile when we came to the end of the land.

To the east was Baie Verte, to the north French Island and to the west Coachman’s Cove.

We’d seen two camp site picnic areas but no signs of any Dorset site.

On the way back we checked out the other camp site…

where we found some ancient coral, but no Dorset site.

We walked down into Cow Cove, which we had missed because we went to the harbor overlook. There was a nice view of Baie Verte, but nothing to indicate a Dorset site.

So we had a very pretty walk along the shore.

When we finished we talked to two locals who had just built a frame for a small concrete pad. The had never heard of a Dorset site other than the quarry. Oh well.

Next we stopped at the store in the town of Baie Verte. Bud bought water and a nice looking pork roast. He wrapped the roast in many layers of plastic bags and we set off for La Scie where we planned to have lunch at the restaurant that was closed yesterday.

We sat out on the front porch…

where Matey could join us. He chose a spot in the shade.

We looked out over the harbor. We were hoping for some traditional Newfoundland cooking, but there is a heat advisory here. It was 76 degrees and the owner and chef said that was too hot to cook. She had macaroni and cheese, which I can’t eat (can’t eat wheat), sandwiches, ditto, and a garden salad with smoked salmon on a bagel.

Bud and I both ordered that, mine without the bagel. It was good, but not the Newfoundland cooking we had hoped for. Oh well.

And then we had to hurry back to save the roast pork and for me to do laundry.

It seems that all our destinations are at the shore. That’s not because the interior is not beautiful.

There are hills and lakes everywhere. But the land is stony and boggy and all the early settlements were fishing villages.

So towns came first and then the roads, which remain largely undeveloped. There’s really nowhere to stop so it’s hard to take pictures. Oh well.

By the way, the pork roast was not what Bud thought; it still had the very thick skin on it. So when it was trimmed up it was neither the cut nor the good buy he thought. Oh well.

Tomorrow we move on and there is still one branch road we haven’t explored. Oh well.

But honestly, looking at these pictures you can see that it was not a day to complain about!

Today we drove out another of the branch highways, 414 heading east. We took it to the end at LaScie. It’s always a bit startling to come from the interior highlands and suddenly see a hill and the ocean in front of you.

Bud stopped as we approached so I could get this photo. We then headed around the harbor and up towards those hills beyond town.

We ended up here and I walked to the edge…

and it was pretty dramatic.

I love the color of the water.

This fishing boat went out just past where it is now, then turned and went back into the harbor.

We weren’t yet at the highest point. See those railings up there?

We went up there. I think this may be the place where Matey stopped. I carried him the rest of the way up.

The view from the top was spectacular. Better than that there was a local man there and he’d just seen a whale. We stayed and watched the whale periodically come to the surface and talked to the man for at least a half hour. He told us it was several hundred feet deep just off this shore, which may be why the whale was spending most of its time under water.

He pointed out where the fish factory used to be and told us what it was like then. There used to be almost 50 big fishing boats in the harbor and they brought in so much cod that it kept 500 people working during the season. He worked for years as a filleter. He showed me a video of himself filleting a cod. He did it with about 6 knife strokes.

He said the valley we see here was his favorite place to hunt moose. He used to hunt seals off the farthest point you can see, walking out on the sea ice. And every little while his stories would be punctuated by one of us pointing down “There it is.” as the whale surfaced again.

When we left to go find something to eat he was still up there enjoying a view he sees every day of his life (though he said he hadn’t been up here in a while, he’d had too much work). Matey was enjoying the smells. We’d seen a red fox run down when we arrived, I think Matey caught his sent.

The local guy told us this ATV trail would take us down so Matey could avoid the steps. (He called it a bike trail, as the folks here refer to even four wheel all train vehicles as bikes).

The restaurant he recommended was closed on Monday so we bought some food at the grocery store and headed about four miles across the peninsula to the tiny little town of Shoe Cove. This is their harbor.

We ate at a little park…

on the freshwater pond in the middle of the town.

The whole place is surrounded by hills. The pond drains into the harbor at the gap in the hills you see here.

And my cousins and my siblings please note, Newfoundlanders still hang out their laundry.

Most of the lines are on pulleys and folks put them where they fit, even in the front yard over the swimming pool.

The information from the Visitor’s Center listed a museum in Tilt Cove, so we headed there next. The sheet didn’t mention that the population of Tilt Cove was now four.

This is another place with a pond on the edge of the ocean.

But here the surrounding hills have all been mined for copper.

We drove around the pond looking for the museum. We didn’t see it, but did see this outhouse, which we decided to use.

I never thought from the outside that it would look like this on the inside, hands down the nicest outhouse I’ve ever been in.

Next door to the outhouse was a little trailer that turned out to be the fishing and hunting camp of a guy who grew up here. Not one of the four official residents, but he was out on his porch and we asked about the museum.

Turns out the museum closed during COVID and they never reopened. Our informant told us Don, who ran the museum could explain better than he could. He then gave us a ton of information about the town and the mine.

The current four residents are:

Don, the mayor, and his wife, and Don’s sister, the treasurer, and her husband, who also happens to be Don’s wife’s brother. Got that?

Anyway, this whole area was a copper mine and that hill is all tailings.

This was a main part of the mine until a cave in. Fortunately the cave in occurred on New Year’s Eve when the company was giving a party and all the miners were at the party, so the mine was empty of people when it collapsed.

Closer inspection shows the collapse left a void…

now filled with water…

that drains out here. The red is not mud, it’s iron. The rocks all around are full of iron.

There is a pond shaft here, though I don’t know what that was for.

And here’s the capped main shaft, 2,952 feet deep. I did not walk out on the concrete cap.

This used to be the structure for the loading dock…

And all this rubble used to be the wharf.

On the way out of town we saw this unusual pile.

This looks like iron slag, but as we’d left our source of information back in town on his “bike” we can’t be sure.

In the little town of Woodstock we saw this little light house out on this pier. We stopped for a picture and a woman across the street called out about something in the lighthouse.

I couldn’t quite hear her but went to look. When I ducked in through this miniature door…

I saw this plaque.

Thanks, Glen Decker, for creating this space.

It’s a nice spot to enjoy the harbor at Woodstock.

Further down the road was this pull-off that gives a view of the harbor entrance and welcomes you to Paquet.

This is another picturesque little town whose harbor is a cove on the west side of the long inlet going to Woodstock. There was another inviting walking trail there, I think it went over those hills for a view of the ocean.

After poking around these beautiful hills and coasts all day I am again convinced that the best thing about Newfoundland is Newfoundlanders.

Saturday when I took Matey out for his morning walk he wouldn’t walk. I urged him about 150 feet, then carried him a bit further to a patch of grass. I took off his leash and started to walk forward thinking he would want to follow and roll in the grass. He did not. I carried him back and we sat outside in the shade for a couple of hours. Finally he got up and shook and we took a short walk.

Bud and I agreed not to go anywhere. Matey is 14 and has a bad heart valve and an enlarged heart. His respiration rate was way up. He is on three medications but I had started the third one, a diuretic, not long ago because his coughing had suddenly increased. Our vet told me that was a sign he had too much fluid around his heart. I started him on half a dose and he seemed much better, but after yesterday I decided to switch him to a full dose.

He finally walked a bit over half a mile and seemed more his old self.

Today we planned an easy day for Matey. It stopped drizzling about 10 AM but was still cloudy. We decided to drive up to the end of route 410 to the town of Fleur de Lys to a museum and soapstone quarry.

We thought we could leave Matey in the truck as it was still cool and cloudy. We needn’t have worried, pets were allowed in the little museum.

Inside it explained that the quarry behind the museum had been written about in 1915, but at the time they didn’t realize that it was used by Paleo-Eskimos, now described as the Dorset peoples, 1600 years ago.

Soapstone is a soft rock with a slippery feel that holds heat. It was used to make cooking pots and smaller vessels that were used as lamps.

Outside a short boardwalk led up to the quarry.

What you are seeing are the impressions left behind after the pots have been cut out.

It was a large outcrop that had been used for many years.

The softest soapstone was below ground level where it hadn’t weathered.

Bud noticed one place…

where they had chiseled around the rock for a pot but hadn’t finished. It showed the technique, but we wondered why they quit. Perhaps, we thought, there was some flaw in that rock.

It was a lovely spot…

and you could be distracted by the scenery and miss the carving. We missed these impressions on our way up, they were on the other side of the walkway.

We left the quarry and drove another block or so to the end of route 410. It ended at a turnaround that was the trailhead for this little trail. I would have liked to walk it, but Bud was worried the three short flights of steps would be too much for Matey, so we skipped it.

We’d seen this little island as we went by. A local pulled into the turnaround. “G’dday,” he said; the standard Newfie greeting. Bud asked if we could go out on the little island. “Sure!” he said, “You can go anywhere, do anything you want. There’s no restrictions.” That’s Newfoundland for you.

So we scared the crows away…

and enjoyed the little island.

When we first passed the island I saw this little blue building. “Is that an outhouse? If it is I’m not sure I’d want to use it.”

It is an outhouse.

We didn’t use it!

I did take this video to show the entrance and the harbor. I’d remarked to the local what a fine harbor it was, so well protected. “Best on the coast.” He said. The video starts looking towards the Atlantic, which is just past where you can see, pans across the entrance and ends looking towards the inner harbor which is again, just past where you can see.

I also took a picture of this memorial, still well tended. I wasn’t going to include it in the blog, but decided those who put this up might approve of others thinking kindly of Dougie and with sympathy for his family.

Shelley’s Island was indeed a place to stir your heart…

and bring you peace.

After a quick stop to view Fleur de Lys…

and its inlet from the wharf we headed out.

We hadn’t gone far when we saw a turn-off for Coachman’s Cove. Since we were all the way up there on 410 we decided to check it out.

I’m glad we did. The end of that road was a neck of land between Coachman’s Cove and Baie Verte. This is a little park on the Baie Verte side. Bud is walking past the French Oven, a replica of one found here from the days when the French fished here. It is used for demonstrations.

On the other side you could look out over Coachman’s Cove.

Someone had a nice little garden going here. There are little gardens all around on public land since many folks don’t have enough soil around their houses for a garden.

There were also some incredible rocks.

I can’t imagine the forces that could have twisted these layers so tightly.

I would love to travel here with a geologist to explain what we are seeing.

I just find it beautiful.

There were inclusions of quartz and this one looked like a fossil to me.

It’s easier for me to deal with the flowers, like these beauties. These are Harebells, Campanula gieseckiana.

This wasn’t nearly as nice a harbor as Fleur de Lys but it did have a small wharf and an old fish factory, now unused since the moratorium on commercial cod fishing.

And it still had its beauty.

There was another trail there I would have loved to take but we decided to bring Matey back and let him rest. Happily, even without the trails there was a lot to enjoy.

Flatwater Park sits in the middle of Baie Verte Peninsula, just before the trunk road branches out. Newfoundland has one main highway, TransCanada Highway 1, shown on road signs as TCH. Routes branch off of that to reach various points on the shoreline. Only occasionally is there a road that loops back to THC, or even to a branch road.

Today we decided to head east off the trunk road 410 to look at the three towns at the end of 413. These three trails were listed. We wanted to find a nice place at town level to look out at Green Bay and hike the Red Cove Falls trail.

So we drove first to Middle Arm.

It was very pretty and had several nice lookouts but the bay of Middle Arm is almost bisected by land between the town and Green Bay, so it was not a good place to watch for icebergs or whales.

We saw a sign for Falls and Swimming Hole, and we found this lovely falls. This was just a couple hundred yards off the road, so no trail.

It did look like a nice place to swim, though.

Next we decided to drive through Burlington to Smith’s Harbour and look for the Limestone Park Trail.

Before we took the trail I suggested we continue past Smith’s Harbour to King Island, which sits not too far from where Green Bay comes off from The Coish, which is supposed to be a great whale hangout. There was no overlook at all, only this view from the turnaround at the end of the road. It was pretty, but it wasn’t near the shore and the only view was back to Baie Verte Peninsula.

We didn’t see any sign of either of the other two trails in the guide, but we had seen a sign for Two Mile Falls Walking Trail, so we went there.

The beginning of the trail was a highly graveled path on boggy land.

Seeing this I realized that part of the path is maintained by hand, with a wheelbarrow and a shovel.

This sign made us hopeful that maybe we would see some salmon. They are supposed to be moving into freshwater in the spring and summer.

We found a place to get out to the river (actually East Brook).

There were some beautiful views…

but no salmon.

I was content just trying to capture the beauty.

We decided to leave this lovely spot and make our way upstream a bit further.

So far the trail had been dog friendly,

but not this section. I didn’t want Matey to try and walk here as he was likely to hurt a leg. And I didn’t want to try and carry him along this as I was likely to hurt a leg. So we turned back.

We made a detour to check out the swimming hole. I realized these lovely archway signs do double duty as ATV barriers.

This was another very inviting swimming hole.

As we drove back to Flatwater Pond I thought that this was a pretty inviting place, too.

Matey and I walked along the beach here for his morning walk and were dive bombed by this bird that definitely didn’t want us there.

Just where the beach ended there was this huge bird which I think was a juvenile Bald Eagle. It had white on its wings, it was too big to be a hawk and we are not in the range of Golden Eagles.

Later we went to Baie Verte to buy drinking water as there’s a boil water notice for the campground. It’s a pretty little town and is more or less the hub for this peninsula.

They have a Home Hardware which sells most of what you need for your house, including furniture. They have an auto parts store…

and they have this Coop Grocery Store where Bud got the water. If you want to shop at Walmart you need to drive 111 miles.

We stopped at the Visitor’s Center and picked up some copies of typewritten sheets about museums and trails in the area. I also took a photo of this sign outside which listed other things to look for.

Icebergfinder.com said there was an iceberg in White Bay, which is on the west side of the peninsula, close to Wild Cove. So we drove there. We found a pretty little fishing village…

with a nice wharf,

but no iceberg.

So we drove back inland, and then out to Seal Cove. Where we found a pretty little fishing village…

and a nice wharf,

but no iceberg.

That was okay because they had a trail just outside the village. It involved a lot of steps but was only a kilometer long and gave a nice view of the harbor and beyond. Maybe we could spot something there.

Or maybe not. It didn’t say keep off, so Bud tentatively stepped onto the stairs. The second step was bending so badly he was afraid to put his full weight on it.

So we came back to the park and I replaced the caulk behind our kitchen sink.

And now Matey and I are enjoying the breeze in our screen tent because it’s hot out, it’s 78 degrees!

Tuesday morning we took one last hike at Gros Morne National Park, this one along part of the Coastal Trail. Here we’re approaching the beach along the bank of Bakers Brook. Out in the dry west this much water would be a river, here it’s a brook.

Along the way we passed this bog that itself was shaped like a stream, flowing with pitcher plants.

We were walking with the Gulf of St. Lawrence on one side…

and ponds bleeding to bogs on the other.

We passed the National Park red Adirondack chairs that remind you that this is a view worth stopping for.

Today we drove up to Flatwater Park. This is a pennisula we didn’t explore last year and I am anxious to see it, but I was also a bit sad to think that we probably won’t be going back to Gros Morne again.

This used to be a Provincial Park and is on Flatwater Pond. Again, most places would call this a lake, but in Newfoundland it’s only a pond.

Most of the campsites seem to be seasonal, and many, like this one, look like they’ve been rented by the same people for years.

Our site is a bit more basic, but nice enough. We have our Starlink deployed and so have internet and TV. I’m even using it for phone service as there is only very weak cell coverage here.

Tomorrow we start exploring. One good sign is that we saw a moose on the way in. I couldn’t get a picture because we were towing the trailer and there was no place to pull over. I don’t know if we’ll be lucky enough to see one when I can take a photo. You’ll know if we do.

After a day and a half of rain and drizzle we went out this afternoon. It was still cloudy and foggy so vistas were not on our agenda.

Our first stop was the Green Point Geological Site. I had no idea what to expect here. Turns out the rock layers were beautiful and almost vertical.

The layers of shale were as thin as I’ve ever seen.

They were also extensive. We scrambled this far thinking there was another route to the top of the bluff. There was not.

So we scrambled back.

This place is noted for the fossil finds that identify one of the layers as the boundary between the Cambrian and Ordovician periods, 500 million years ago.

I wish I understood more about geology. The rocks were fascinating anyway.

There is almost always a spring on any hill or cliff and there was one here. A spot of green among the rock.

These barnacles and snails that live just below the high tide line didn’t appear to be impressed that they were on layers used as a benchmark by geologists around the world.

From the shore we went to the woods. This is a little trail around Berry Head Pond about 4 miles from Green Point.

It led through the woods and the across a bog that was dotted with pitcher plants.

I was happy to find that they were in bloom now as we’d seen them blooming last year in August.

The bog was on a slope above the pond. We were walking on a boardwalk and could hear water flowing but couldn’t see it. I finally saw it rushing from beneath us down to the pond. The whole bog seemed to be draining under our feet.

The pond was quite large…

and it drained away into the vegetation again. This is such a different landscape here. It’s like a sponge sitting on a rock with water flowing everywhere.

Plants and flowers grow thickly…

though due to the harsh conditions they are often small, like this tiny old larch tree in the bog.

It may not be towering forests, but it’s very peaceful and even on Canada Day we had this trail to ourselves.

Yesterday, after one last walk on the coast, we said goodbye to L’anse au Clair and Labrador.

This time we were loaded on the ferry all the way to the front, where the deck slopes down to the ramp. I was glad to see they put a chock under our tire.

The truck was out in the open, but at least it, and Matey inside it, were somewhat sheltered from the wind. It was a cold day.

Here we are at the island side, just before we went down from the viewing deck to get back in the truck. Notice the arc of the lifted bow section.

We’re back at Gros Morne National Park at the very nice KOA. This afternoon Matey and I sat out in the screen tent with a view of the large, lonely mountain, Gros Morne.

Compared to Labrador, we are almost crowded here. Labrador has two and a half times the land and one eighteenth the people. The whole province of Newfoundland and Labrador has fewer people than the Buffalo metropolitan area. Labrador has less than 30,000.

Bud is sure in Labrador there is a greater biomass of bugs than people. I still need the screen tent to sit out here, but I don’t need to wear a bug jacket to set it up.

It was a lovely, sunny day today so we went out touring. This is the entrance to the harbor at Rocky Harbour with the Lobster Cove Head lighthouse in the distance.

I took that picture from the parking lot of Harbour Seafoods, which sells wholesale and retail. On our drive south from the ferry landing we’d noticed that there were lots of lobster traps stacked on the shore. Bud thought the season had ended so wanted to get some lobster for us before they were gone. The season ends Tuesday, so there was still lobster to be had. Later Bud ordered some cooked and cracked which we had for our supper.

We then drove up and over a steep little hill to look at the entrance to Bonne Bay, the main fiord in the park

Looking back from the crest of the hill you get a nice view of the seaward side of Rocky Harbour.

We drove around through the main part of town to…

the Lobster Cove Head lighthouse. The park guide told us the flag was being flown at half mast to honor an unknown Newfoundland soldier killed in a battle overseas in WWI whose body had just been recovered and was being repatriated on Canada Day, July 1st.

We got a nice view across the entrances to both the harbor and the bay.

The best place to see whales in this area is in Bonne Bay. These would be Minke whales, as the humpbacks don’t come here anymore. The capelin that they love have been fished out of these waters. After lunch we drove to Norris Point, a little town that sits on a point extending into Bonne Bay.

We walked up this lane to reach the shore trail on Burnt Hill.

We had great views of town…

and the bay, but no whales.

It was another nicely done trail. This wooden part was on a hill, so roof shingles were nailed down the center for traction.

I guess the chain here is to let you know where the trail goes, as it’s on the wrong side to keep you from slipping down into the bay.

Besides losing the majority of the bugs, another advantage of getting back to this campground on the island is that I was able to have a Starlink kit delivered. Starlink is a satellite internet service that works virtually anywhere. We found our portable dish TV antenna is too small to be effective this far north. And our Verizon home internet only works in the U.S. It’s not supposed to be a mobile device at all. After the usual frustrations setting up any new technology I was able to get an account, get things going and get Bud’s YouTube TV linked to it. Doing this blog is now much easier, this is the fastest internet service I’ve had in the two and a half years we’ve been on the road.

So although Labrador was an experience I wouldn’t want to miss, all in all we’re happy to be back on The Rock, even if it does rain for the next two days.