#35 St. Anthony’s part 2

Tuesday July 23

The weather did not clear as expected, but Derrille and I headed for the whale watching tour.  We needed to be there at 8:30 for the 9:00 departure. Fog hung over the bay and the wind made its presence known.

With jeans, tees, sweatshirts, parka, woolen hats, ear muffs, scarves and mittens we joined about 35 people on a 42 foot boat. (A boat shorter than our RV!)  

With the waves rolling between 3 and 5 feet, and the wind biting our faces, we rocked and rolled into the North Atlantic.  Our tour guide offered lots of interesting information, which included the fact this bay freezes over 2-3 feet in the winter.

The fog hovering over the rocks created a bit of an eerie feeling.

 We passed a large sea cave, where a stranded man survived 6 days before being found.

We spotted Minke whales ( about 25 feet) twice.  They do a fast puff when they  surface and barely come out of the water, unlike other whales who send up a spray.

  

Coming back in after 2.5 hours we were treated to a rare sighting of a Fin Whale (about 66 feet).  The dorsal fin you see is a long way from its tail.

Lynn and Jay met us at the dock.  People on Facebook asked about the temperature.  We think it was about 48 degrees F, with a wind chill factor and foggy day thrown in.  I rarely get cold and I was very, very cold. Like many of the boat tourists we headed to Tim Horton’s for hot chocolate, lunch and donuts.

Now we could again feel our hands and feet, we all headed to the Grenfell Properties.  The first stop is the interpretive center to learn about the life of Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell… 1865-1940.

 What an amazing man!    He was born in London and became a doctor.  He also joined the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fisherman. 

The mission provided medical and spiritual services to the North Sea Fishermen. In 1892 he went to Labrador to check a fishery.  What he found were deplorable conditions.  He was the first doctor to visit the region.  He then dedicated his career to help the lives of the people of Labrador and also Newfoundland.  He traveled by boat or sleds or walked to practice medicine.

 He built hospitals, established schools and orphanages, and got other doctors to help.  He and his wife did fund-raising to support the work of the mission.  The hospital at St. Anthony, which is a state-of-the-art facility, came from his work.  An artist Jordi Benoit created large tile mosaics for the rotunda.  We didn’t go see those. 

This was the Strathcona , one of his hospital ships.

The Physicians Window is one of three stained glass windows in the Washington Cathedral, in Washington D.C.  It commemorates the relationship of medicine, law and education to religion. The three parts of this window depict Christ the healer, flanked by Louis Pasteur the great medical scientist and Sir Wilfred Grenfell, the “Labrador Doctor” famed for his many missions of mercy.

A drive up behind the hospital leads you to the Grenfell House Museum.  Grenfell and his wife built this home in 1909. After he left the area, mission workers used it until the Grenfell Foundation could turn it into a museum.  The beautiful house overlooks the bay.  Nice stop!

Main level rooms

Upstairs Rooms......we had a striped chair similar to the one pictured with the dressing table.

Returning to our cars, Jay and Lynn’s driver’s door handle fell off into the parking lot. hmmm

Wednesday  July 24

We took a ride to Rodderick in search of live moose…..even though they are not known to come out during that time of day.

 We stopped at the Green Moose Interpretive Center.  The stuffed moose was all we saw…live ones!

Our new habit is to follow the road to its end.  This highway ended at Englee. What a quaint little town!  

In Englee, homes sit on the bay with their fishing boat moored outside.  We did learn that the conical shaped traps are used for snow crab fishing. (middle photo)

A stairway hike led to the top (136’)of the hill.  The guys walked up the Barr’d Island Trail. The Canadians are really big on stairs up the hillside.

We drove out to Bide Arm, a small peninsula west of Roddickton.

The Ashton Heritage House is in the tour books.  It’s sign says “I was towed”.  It didn’t have a sign to stop in, so we kept on going.

Wildlife !!!   Perhaps a mama grouse.

On the way home we stopped just short of Main Brook and followed the signs to the Underground Salmon Pools.   Yet another graveled, pot-holed road bumped us along to a parking lot.

From there we followed a gravel path through the forest.  Birch forests can be found all over the island.

The trail went over a bridge with an almost dry creek.

A short distance further we found this beautiful creek.

Here the water flows right through the rock mountain for about 200 yards and empties into a pond on the other side.

 This is the only known place in the world where salmon migrate through an underground cave and come out the other side. The water flows under the rock in the middle of the photo. We didn’t see any salmon, but we enjoyed the hike through the woods.

This ground cover is actually bakeapple berries, I think.

As a side note, I fell off a couple of steps on the bridge.  They had raised the center of the bridge, and I just didn’t see the steps down.  Being an expert at clumsy, I got up and continued on.

Tomorrow to Deer Lake, Corner Brook, and then to Baie Verte