Author Archives: Jill and Bud

We are now at Gros Morne National Park and we took a hike on the tablelands today. From a distance it’s a stunning landscape.

Up close it is almost entirely one kind of rock. It turns out that this is not your garden variety rock. This is peridotite, rock that makes up much of the earth’s upper mantle. The rock and soil that we normally walk on, dig in, even mine is all from the earth’s crust. We never see the mantle because it’s miles below the surface.

500 million years ago two tectonic plates of the earth’s crust pushed together here and the mantle rock, which is more dense than the crust, did not get pushed under like normal but ended up on the top of the crust. Eons of movement and erosion have left this bit of mantle exposed on the surface. And if you’re a geologist that’s a very big deal. It is such a big deal that this area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This is peridotite, it has high levels of iron, magnesium, nickel, copper and chromium. If not exposed to the oxygen in the air the rock is very dark green, almost black. The orangey color is rust.

With pressure underground water can be forced into cracks in the peridotite and react chemically to make serpentinite. There were rocks like this scattered around.

Sometimes the serpentinite was an inclusion in the peridotite.

What adds to the strangeness of the landscape is that most plants can’t grow on peridotite. This is the Trout River Gulch. The land on the right is crustal rock and soil and supports a forest. The land on the left is peridotite; even though it has had the same timespan to erode and gets the same sun and rain, it is almost barren.

I learned that the strip of land the trail is on is the old roadbed. The growth along that is on the gravel brought in to build the road.

There are two other things to notice in this picture. The U shape of this valley is from glaciation, also very prevalent in the park.

If you can enlarge the picture and look closely at the farthest slope of peridotite, you can make out a line where the slope changes from brown mantle rock to the gray gabbro of the lower crust. If it had been a sunny day that might show up better. That is called the Mohorovicic Discontinuity. I didn’t even know I had captured that until I started looking for more information and came across a guided tour that I wish I had downloaded before the hike!

The information said even most lichen won’t grow on these rocks, but I found some that did.

I also found Moss Campion, which unfortunately was not in bloom.

Carnivorous plants also grow here. They don’t need to rely on the rocks for nutrients, they get minerals and nitrogen from insects they trap. There were pitcher plants all around.

I also found common butterwort, but not in bloom. They have sticky leaves that tiny insects get trapped on.

None of the park information mentions sundew, maybe because they are so small, but I found some. I love these tiny plants. Can you see the red spikes with sticky drops on the ends?

I also found white bog orchid, sometimes called boreal bog orchid.

There was so much to see, close and far. This is a view of Bonne Bay. It is a true fjord, a valley carved by glaciers and filled by the sea.

The trail ended at Winter House Brook canyon.

The brook came tumbling through the rocks there.

We also saw some travertine here. Calcium in the spring water that comes from the serpentization of peridotite is precipitating out as calcium carbonate, forming small patches of travertine. (Travertine is the fragile rock that forms the huge Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone. Same thing here, but on a much smaller scale with no geothermal activity to accelerate the process.) Signs pointed out that the travertine is forming now, brand new rock, on rocks that are 500 million years old!

This wasn’t a very long hike, but it was full of wonders.

Happily it was only 30 minutes from the ferry to our first campground in Newfoundland, since neither of us had slept more than a few minutes at a time on the ferry trip over.

I was not the least bit sleepy on that short ride. We were in Newfoundland!

Grand Codroy RV/Tent Camping Park was spacious…

and very well made. I was not surprised that it had been a small provincial park. In 1966 Jean and Bert Downey donated 10 acres of land to the provincial government for $1. The province developed the campground. In 1997 Newfoundland decided to privatize a number of parks and gave the family first refusal on reacquiring the land. Alice Downey Keeping and her husband Dennis bought back the campground and they continue to operate it. Their pride shows.

After a late breakfast (made later because Newfoundland is on its own time, a half hour ahead of Atlantic Time, so an hour and a half ahead of Eastern Time) Matey and I took a long amble. I let him stop and smell as much as he wanted. After that ferry ride he deserved it.

The park sits along the Grand Codroy River.

Off to the southeast you can see some pretty dramatic cliffs. After our walk I joined Bud in a nap.

Once we were a bit rested we took a short circle tour recommended by Dennis at the RV park; he even provided a map. We headed west on route 407 which crossed the mouth of the Grand Codroy River on this long, wooden, one lane bridge.

We went past Holy Trinity Anglican Church…

and its cemetery which is right on the coast.

We stopped and took a walk at Cape Anguille, the westernmost point in Newfoundland.

We admired the lighthouse…

and the nearby inn. I wondered if that had been the keeper’s house; it didn’t look open.

There was no worry about the fog horn sounding on this day.

We walked a short way along the coast admiring the views.

This looked like a huge winch and it was situated so that it appeared to be a way to winch boats up onto the shore.

Driving on about another quarter mile we came to the end of the highway. Beyond this was just driveways and ATV trails.

We drove back along route 406 on the other side of the river.

Bud stopped at a little grocery store to replenish our ice cream. We hadn’t trusted ice cream to the 8 or 9 hours with our freezer shut off. I looked out at the view from the parking lot and wondered if you stopped seeing the beauty all around you if you lived here.

When we decided to come to the Maritimes we decided we would include Newfoundland (officially Newfoundland Labrador, one province). Just getting here is an adventure.

We had to take a really long ferry ride on a really big ferry. We were booked on the S/V Blue Puttees. She had 7 decks on 10 levels. Decks 1, 3, and 5 were double decks for vehicles. Decks 7, 8, and 9 were for passengers and deck 10 was the open sun deck.

The only option for a truck pulling a trailer from North Sydney, Nova Scotia to Channel-Port aux Basques, Newfoundland departed at 11:15 at night. It is a seven hour trip. You’re required to arrive 2 hours before departure. We got there more than an hour before that and there was already a long line waiting at the gate. I took this picture because three ATV’s pulled up next to us. In the distance you can see a ferry, but that’s not ours. That one is going to a port towards the eastern end of Newfoundland, a 16 hour trip.

Here we are through the gate and in line for the ferry. I had plenty of time to take this picture, we sat in line for over an hour and a half. When the other lines around us started moving, Bud and I got out and shut off our propane, as required, and put the little tags on to show the valves were off. That shut off our refrigerator and freezer until we could turn the gas back on once we were unloaded.

Finally we started loading. Here we are approaching the ramp. We’re loading through the bow. You can see the huge, white ship’s bridge above.

For as big as the ship was, the loading ramp was narrow. I was glad I didn’t have to line the truck and trailer up to fit through. This is the middle ramp, going onto deck 3. There must have been ramps above and below us, although we couldn’t see them.

Inside things opened up. Eventually all these lanes were lined with vehicles. When we left the truck we had to take everything we needed for the seven hour trip. For us that included Matey and his crate. Even though I made the reservation months ago, I couldn’t get a dog friendly cabin so Matey had to travel in his new crate in the kennel area. We could have left him in the truck, but you couldn’t return to the vehicle until the voyage was over. I didn’t like to leave him alone for eight hours or more.

Before we left the truck I took this picture of our map screen, just to show our blue arrow sitting in the water on the ferry.

We went inside and up to deck seven where we were directed to a little metal shed built outside the main cabin. That was the kennel area where we had to leave Matey. They did have a sizable chunk of Astro turf where he could pee just outside the kennel. Matey wasn’t interested, though. From where Matey was you could look down on deck 5 where there was uncovered parking in the stern.

We went back in the main part of the ship and up these stairs two more levels to our reserved seats on deck 9.

This was our seating area. Those in the know brought blankets and pillows. Bud and I dressed warmly, but we were both cold all night. My seat didn’t have the footstool, the leg rest wasn’t really long or high enough so if I tried to recline my seat I just slid off it. So I spent a long uncomfortable night sitting up and cold.

Other people slept well past dawn.

Since I only dozed fitfully, at dawn I was out on deck. I visited Matey, who was happy to see me but not happy that he wasn’t getting off the boat.

I went up on the sun deck as we entered the harbor. It wasn’t much colder than the cabin and was way more interesting.

Channel-Port aux Basques isn’t a metropolis…

but it is certainly picturesque.

That ship had all kinds of thrusters. It came into the port area quickly, then slowed and made a 180 degree turn in a very small space. Then slid right into this berth. We had loaded through the bow, but we were now stern to.

In short order we drove off the stern ramp and on to Newfoundland.

Yesterday we visited the reconstructed Fortress of Louisbourg (pronounced Lou ee boor with just the suggestion of a “g” at the end). We almost didn’t go because it was a fairly long drive towards the north end of Cape Breton Island and this is a holiday weekend in Canada, so we were afraid of crowds. We are learning…Canada has less than one eighth the people of the U.S. so a Canadian crowd outside Toronto or Vancouver is not a thing to worry about. Besides, the place is huge, it is the largest historical reconstruction in North America.

We took a shuttle over a mile to the entrance. Our shuttle group got a brief introduction inside this building which was the only of the buildings outside the gates to be reconstructed. Notice the sod roof.

We were greeted at the gate by a man in a 1744 French uniform. I later asked another docent about the uniform colors, since I expected red to be British. But in the French army at the time the red uniform was for the commander of the gun. He would have had a blue coat to go over this. I may have the terminology wrong (the docents were all extremely knowledgeable and gave us a ton of information) but it was about like a sergeant.

We entered across an actual moat and through the Dauphin Gate, the main land gate.

Bud is standing on the far side of the lift bridge across the moat. In the foreground you can see the counterweights and one of the two chains with handles that allowed them to pull up the bridge.

Once inside the gate you got to see part of the fortifications.

The main visage of this fortified town faced the sea. The French came here in 1713 after loosing Acadia (mainland Nova Scotia) and Newfoundland to the British. They still held Quebec, Isle Sainte-Jean (Prince Edward Island) and this island, Cape Breton Island which they called Isle Royale. They were looking for a site to protect the entrance to the St. Lawrence River and to protect their cod fisheries.

There were better sites for defense, as low lying hills overlooked the fortress with only marshy lands to act as a deterrent to attack. But there were no better sites for cod fishing. The harbor was lined with beaches, a scarcity along this coast, and needed to dry the fish. And it was close enough to the cod banks to allow the fishermen to make 3 or 4 trips a day. According to the docent, the fishermen were backed by the King who wanted lots of cod to feed the people in France, and they overrode the military.

Despite the good defenses on the seaward side, the British did take this place, twice. The first time was in the spring of 1745 when they recruited 4,000 New Englanders with promises of wealth. The men were dropped off in the marshes and hauled cannon on sledges through the wetlands to a position on the hills. They began to bombard the fort. Meanwhile, the British Navy blockaded the port so no supplies could get in. In 46 days the French surrendered. The British required the New Englanders to stay to keep the French from coming back. They were crowded and poorly provisioned and a quarter of them died. Three years later the fortress was returned to France in exchange for some land in Europe. One docent said that was the real start of the American revolution.

Then in 1758 the British attacked again, this time with 13,100 troops and 150 ships with 14,000 crew. The fortress held out for 7 weeks.

Looking around it is almost impossible to comprehend that after the second surrender the British razed the fortress to keep it from ever being used by the French again.

The walls and fortifications were blown up and the buildings were dismantled and carted off to provide much needed materials for buildings elsewhere. When the fortress was made an official historic site in the 1920’s there was nothing left but foundations.

But there were people who thought it should be reconstructed. In the 1950’s the project began. They requested any information that the Government of France could provide and got 17,000 documents on microfiche.

These included detailed street plans…

and architectural details of all the government buildings.

When anyone of property died there was an inventory made of their possessions and these were included in the documents.

Teams of archaeologists, architects, builders and craftspeople worked together. In 1961 construction began. Much of the labor, skilled and unskilled, came from the now unemployed coal miners in the area.

Several years and 26 million dollars later they created a place of living history.

A place where you can see the craftsmanship of the people of the time, in this case the Mi’kmaq First Nation.

Their surroundings are recreated with accuracy…

and you can get up close and personal.

And there were people demonstrating the old crafts. This wasn’t just a display of tatting. A woman was actually making this lace. Unfortunately she was on break when we were there.

We spent four hours enthralled with it all and would have stayed longer but our feet gave out!

We are now at Battery Provincial Park just outside St. Peter’s, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. This is the view from our campsite.

The whole campground is well spaced with great views.

This lovely mown trail leads down from the campsite…

to this view of St. Peter’s Bay off the Atlantic.

There are a number of trails with a scattering of benches…

and views…

and some ruins. The French had a gun battery here and later the English had a small fort.

We drove down next to the park to the St. Peter’s Canal. It joins Bras d’Or Lake to the Atlantic. As a friendly native explained, the “lake” is actually an inland sea.

Boats going from one side to the other go through a lock. This lock is unusual because the high side is determined by the tides. We visited at a very high tide, and you can see that the water level on the ocean side…

is higher than the “lake” side. At low tide this would be reversed.

We watched as a couple of sailboats locked through…

from Bras d’Or Lake to St. Peter’s Bay.

We took a short walk along a shoreline trail…

just far enough to see the lighthouse that guides boats to the canal. The lighthouse sits at the entrance to the campground, we are camped up on the hill beside it.

We might have walked further, but we’d spent an hour or more talking to a couple of Maritimers, Paul and Cathy. He grew up on Prince Edward Island, she in Nova Scotia. They spent 25 years in Kitchener, Ontario and the last five years full time in their motor home. People here are so friendly, it reminded me of the people we would meet sailing.

Beautiful scenery and wonderful people, what more could you ask.

Today is our last day at E & F Webber Lakeside Park, a small RV park north of Halifax.

We were booked into site A19, a spacious, shaded, full hook-up pull through site that was pretty level. But alas, no TV. So after spending one night there we went in search of an alternative.

We found site A09. It’s still a full hook-up pull through site, but small enough that Bud had to do a lot of wiggling to get the trailer on the level part, not going down the hill and not in the huge hole just past the right rear corner of the trailer. The main park road passes by the side and front of the site, so it’s not at all private. And, despite how it looked to our apps that locate the Direct TV satellites, still no TV.

Lake Charlotte is still a beautiful place to be.

Yesterday we played disc golf on a course about a half hour from here. It was just a little 9 hole course so we played two rounds.

The ground was very unusual to me, though I’m learning it’s common here. The brown you see is not dirt, it’s dried sphagnum moss. There were places if you got off the fairway you were in a bog and had to be very careful where you stepped.

Today we took a long drive to do a short hike. Nova Scotia seems like the inverse of Prince Edward Island. Instead of rolling farmland with small areas of rough land, we saw rough land everywhere with small areas of rolling farmland.

Most of the hike ended up along a logging road, it was pretty though, and Matey could be off leash.

Then we cut into the woods on this newly made gravel path.

We appreciate the work some volunteers had done, because the ground here is not level. Plenty of places to sprain an ankle!

Our goal was Fantum Falls. I took a video to show the volume and speed of the water.

You could see the falls pretty well…

but it was hard to capture it in a photo.

Since the trail to the bottom of the falls had ropes to assist you, we decided not to do that one.

I was thrilled to spot these ghost plants or Indian pipes growing on the bank above the falls. Monotropa uniflora is a flowering plant with no chlorophyll. It is a parasite on the mycorrhizal fungi that form a symbiotic relationship with tree roots. M. Uniflora takes the water and minerals the fungi provide the trees and the sugars the trees provide the fungi. Their range is wide but they are very uncommon.

This one was growing alone nearby. You can see the inside of the flower better in it.

So even with no TV and a hike that was mostly on a logging road and not being able to get to the bottom of the falls, rugged Nova Scotia is wonderful!

We are in our third province since leaving Maine. When I made our reservations I was looking for a public campground and found this small city campground in Lunenburg. I am so glad we came here!

This small fishing port is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It has a beautiful harbor…

lined on the far side with lovely homes.

On our side was the business district…

with narrow streets,

and plenty of places to shop and eat.

We went to the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic. We learned the town was settled by a group of the only French speaking Lutherans in the world. When their small independent land was taken over by Catholic France they took advantage of a British offer to come to Nova Scotia. They were farmers but soon learned to fish.

They were joined by others from Europe, mostly Germans, and the town became an important fishing and boat building site.

A highlight of the museum was a chance to tour the Theresa E. Conner and speak with Philip, a docent on board. Philip was a former fisherman and his father fished using the dory system like aboard the Theresa E. Conner. A dozen dories were carried on deck. Each dory went out with a two man crew and set long lines with 3 foot lines and baited hooks along their length. The ends were marked by buoys. The men would go back and pull in the lines and fish and return the fish to the schooner. They went out three or four times a day and also had to clean and salt their catch. The ship would stay out up to 8 weeks until the hold was full.

We were lucky to catch a glimpse of Bluenose II, built in 1963 to the same specifications as the original Bluenose. That fishing schooner, built in 1921, was entered in and won several international fishing schooner races, ultimately winning the last of those races held and bringing the trophy to Nova Scotia. An image of Bluenose is on the Nova Scotia license plate and the Canadian dime. Bluenose and Bluenose II were both built in and sailed from Lunenburg.

We enjoyed just walking around town…

looking at the many colorful old houses.

Some are on their own…

and others are in rows.

There were a lot of flowers, too;

including these giant Scotch thistles. (I learned these are an invasive.)

We came across St. John’s Anglican Church. Built in 1754, it was a symbol of British authority.

In 2001 two thirds of the church was destroyed by fire. The congregation built it back using the original plans. Some skilled builders came out of retirement to work on this project.

I loved the constellations painted on the ceiling above the alter.

I tried hard to capture the unique beauty of this place, but it’s someplace that is much better in person. If you get the chance, come!

PEI is a checkerboard of farm fields and woodlands…

surrounded by lovely coastlines. Since the island is only 139 miles long and between 4 and 40 miles wide you are never far from the sea.

They are known for potatoes, lupines,

and mussels.

Provincial roadways can turn to gravel…

and the capital, Charlottetown, has no sky scrapers. Here you are looking at Charlottetown across the harbor from the site of the first European settlement (French). The embankments are from Fort Amherst which the English built here after they defeated the French.

There are no really wild places but one thing Prince Edward Island has lots of is groomed walking/bike paths.

We saw them everywhere, and they appear to be well used…

and well made. This path wound on nice gravel through this wetland to the bridge and beyond.

On one three mile loop we saw fields (we think this is barley),

woods (unfortunately this sole stand of sugar maples was badly damaged by Fiona),

and a vista that included a pond in the foreground and the dunes of the shoreline behind.

I have wanted to visit Prince Edward Island ever since I read Ann of Green Gables years and years ago. Now that I’ve been here I think it turns that old adage on its head. It’s not an exciting place to visit but it sure would be nice to live here.

On Monday we crossed the eight mile long Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island.

We drove across the island to the north shore and Cavendish Campground in PEI National Park. Note that the site looks more than a little ragged.

On September 7, 2019, post tropical storm Dorian pummeled this area. There were strong winds and a significant storm surge. The inland trees here were mostly a monoculture of white spruce, and they were old. 90% of them fell. The park service cleared the used areas, but left the others to provide wildlife habitat and build soil.

The damage was mostly right in this part of the park (which has three sites along the north coast).

Then on September 23, 2022, post tropical storm Fiona hit. This was a much longer storm with heavy rain and strong storm surge. It affected the entire island. The damage in this photograph is at a disc golf course we went to in the middle of the island. The course was in a “sustainably harvested forest”, most of which is now gone.

Fiona ripped up the dunes in the National Park. What you see is a dune that lies between the Gulf of St. Lawrence and New London Bay. This is the bay side of the dune, the surge must have overtopped the dune here.

I’m pretty sure Fiona is responsible for stripping the leaves off these birches, leaving dead twigs at the ends of many branches and adding to the general dishevelment of the campground.

It has made nice habitat for the snowshoe hares judging by our sightings. (I had just tapped to take the picture of the hare in front as the second one jumped out of the brush.)

We have one more day here and I hope to do a little more exploring before I write up a more general entry for this island. Stay tuned.

Everything has been pretty uncrowded in New Brunswick, so we were a bit dismayed to have to park in the third lot out from the entrance at Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park.

We hoped it warranted the crowds. First we walked just under a half mile on a pleasant but unremarkable path through the woods.

We chose to go down the ramp rather than the stairs. It was all the way at the north end of the beach. There were mud flats but not much else.

We came around the point and saw the rocks. These are called the flowerpot rocks for obvious reasons. The bases are under water at high tide and are eroded. This is a small one.

They got larger as we walked down the shore.

There were passages among the rocks.

Slots

and tunnels

and fantastic shapes.

The bottoms are covered with seaweed.

Uncovered mudflats went out for yards,

but happily, walking in the mud was optional.

Visiting Hopewell Rocks is probably on the list

for everyone coming

to the New Brunswick shore

of the Bay of Fundy.

We thought it was worth braving the crowds, but we didn’t want to hang out the four hours to wait for high tide. They rent kayaks to paddle through the rocks then!