Butterfly Iceberg Chilly Chilly Boom!

Well we have now made it to Twillingate.  The last stop on our whirlwind tour of one-to-few-nighters.  For a couple of months, at least.  For, from here, we venture to Trinity where we will be working for our keep, and then St. John's where we will be doing the same.  It will be an interesting change of pace but we shall talk more about that later.

While we have not had a whole lot in the area of Super Great Adventures since the last blog update, we have had a mildly eventful couple of days with a few fun twists and turns, in there to keep things exciting.

We left L'Anse aux Meadows after breakfast on Thursday and started making our way down to the Deer Lake area.  When we left, the weather was chilly and very foggy.  We have a saying back home that goes something like "if you don't like the weather here, drive a few miles further".  There is no place on earth where that is more true than Newfoundland.  As we made the long drive down the coast, our view and driving conditions changed considerably many times.  Sometimes it would be sunny.  Then all of a sudden we'd be blanketed in fog.  Then it would rain.  And the pattern would continue and mix itself up in as many combinations as possible.  Never a dull moment.

Since we were driving back down a road that we had already traveled, and we had a very long drive ahead of us, we did not stop for photos or anything.  Just powering down the road.  We did spy our first moose crossing, while we were in one of the little towns high on the peninsula.  It was no big deal though.  He just came up to the road from the side of a house, trotted along the side for a bit and then made his way across as the car in front of me was slowing down.  It wasn't one of those random dashes across the highway that you hear so much about and that keeps me at least slightly intimidated by driving in this place, though I am getting better now.

One thing that really struck us as we made our way back into Gros Morne is....well, you guys know that we have been moving progressively north all throughout our trip.  So we have seen trees bud but we were never in one place long enough to see those buds pop.  So we had no idea what was in store for us once we started moving south.  The last time we were in Gros Morne, last week, the forests and mountainsides were full of evergreen trees separated by these vast seas of grey, those seas being all the deciduous trees that had yet to bud.  Well  now they have bloomed and it is glorious.  And those once-grey areas now glow an almost neon sort of green.  It is one of the most beautiful transformations I've seen.  Of course the sky was overcast so any photos would have done a great injustice to the boldness of the new seasonal rebirth but I will say that it was a quite the distraction while driving and that even though we were passing through places where we had already been it made it all seem new.

We stopped at one of the day use pull-offs to have lunch and then got moving again.  It was wet and windy so we wound up having to eat in the car, which is something that happens often, but we had a spectacular view (as we usually do) so we cannot complain.  We started back down the road and were almost out of the park and then we came across Southeast Brook Falls and, as it was a very short hike, we decided to do it.  It was a sweet little spot with some great falls.

Goin' Down

Hans and falls.

Krissy and falls.

From there we headed out of the park and made our way towards the Deer Lake area.  We were headed towards Sir Richard Squires Provincial Park.  And, wow, it was way out there.  Leaving the highway, it involved driving twenty miles down Highway 422, the last ten of which were a lovely combination of dirt and gravel.  There was some beautiful scenery on that trek, including vast rolling fields filled with millions of dandelions, but it still had that air of heading towards doom.   Finally we made it to the park and ended up with one of the best campsites we've ever had.  Oh yeah, remember that Newfie weather I was talking about?  Yeah, when we got out of our car here it was in the mid-70s and there was even a bit of blue in the sky.  Setting up camp was a piece of cake and we had the hammocks set up and everything.  The campground is along a particularly active section of the Humber River.  Wild rapids right outside our site and, about a hundred yards down the river, some short but pretty wicked falls.

River is wild.

And the wild river falls.

Krissy at a slightly calmer part of the river.

Our campsite while it was still dry.  Note the hammocks.

 Now, unfortunately with the warm temps came the black flies, the bane of all of Canada.  And for some reason they totally love me.  I can douse myself head to toe in bug spray, which I did, and they will still find some means to bite me.  Which they did.  Quite a lot.  But it comes with the territory I suppose.  We slept well and, for the first time, Krissy actually found herself getting rid of layers instead of shivering within her massive cocoon.  I also took advantage of the beautiful evening and also the isolation (and the sound of a large rushing river right next to me) and I pulled out my guitar and I played for pretty much the entire evening.  I played though most of my new songs and I jammed and made up songs and practiced a few things and it was great.

Yesterday, however, it all went to poo.  We woke up and it was grey.  Nothing too bad but still nasty.  We needed to run down to Corner Brook so that we could pick up some things and get some vital things done in a place that had wi-fi.  So we secured our camp and hit the road.  While we were out the weather got worse and it rained.  And it rained.  We spent a great while in Corner Brook, hitting various mall and strip-mall stores and eating at Mary Brown's, a local chicken chain.  Every so often, when the weather is crap, we need an urban-sprawl day to keep ourselves in check or something.  On our way back to the camp we stopped by the Insectarium for a visit to a butterfly garden.  They had dozens of types of butterflies there.  The second level had live and pinned examples of pretty much every kind of exotic insect that you can think of.  Some big crazy ones in there and some serious creepy crawlies as well.  The third level had all the tarantulas (they are kept separate so that the arachnophobes don't freak out.  This place was quite awesome.  Unfortunately we wound up visiting a little too close to closing time so we did not get to soak a lot of it in as much as we would have liked but we learned quite a few things and got to see some things that we never would ordinarily see so it was a great time.

I usually like to drop a lot of knowledge in this blog but I can not profess to know the difference between butterflies in the least so I will just say that this one looks cool.

This one looks cool too.

Look at this awesome butterfly.  That is it.

Hans partying it up with the coolest Australian stick bug ever.  

After the insectarium we headed back to the camp and were hoping that the rain would stop but it didn't.  Our plans to cook dinner failed to pan out so we ate sandwiches in the car and then went into the tent to wait out the rain.  It never stopped.  And the temperature went down, way down.  We woke up this morning with the temps in the mid 30s and the tent was completely soaked.  Needless to say breaking down camp was a bit of a drag.  But we did it and hit the road for the next part of the adventure.  It was a shame that we did not get to fully soak in the beauty of this park and enjoy more than one evening of beautiful weather and hammocks and all that bit but that's the way she goes.  Can't let it bring us down - just gotta keep movin'.
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Ten miles of this was one thing when it was dry.  Wet was another trip altogether.

Oh yeah, further down on the paved part of this road there are a lot of houses and yesterday one of them burned down.  When were were leaving for Corner Brook the road was blocked off and we saw the smoke and flames before we were detoured.  By the time we got back, the house had completely burned to the ground.  The fire department was there but there was nothing they could do, apparently.  This morning it was still smoldering.  Very sad.  It could never be good to lose your home to fire but to do so in a place like this is even more heartbreaking.  I know nothing of the circumstances but I do wish the best for anyone affected by this.

Anyway, so today we got on the road and we hauled it towards the Twillingate area, which is sort of in the middle of the northern coast of Newfoundland, within a cluster of islands.  We were booked to camp for three nights at Dildo Run Provincial Park (yes, it is called that...get over it).  When we made it to Grand Falls-Windsor we stopped at Tim Hortons for lunch and to use the wifi.  We looked up the weather for where we were going to be staying and it turns out that the temps are in the 30s all weekend, with wind chills in the high 20s.  So that answered that.  Krissy got on the horn and tracked down a B&B for us, right in the middle of Twillingate.  We made it and the spot is fantastic, right on the water.  Tomorrow we are booked to go on an iceberg boat tour and the boat is right next to this place as well.  We went out driving around, checking out the islands.  We made it down to the Long Point Lighthouse which is, I will admit, not the most attractive lighthouse but it's one to check off the list.  There are trails near the lighthouse that we took and they run very close to the cliff edge.  With the dense fog rolling in and the fog horn going off, this was a pretty intense little walk.  Hopefully the fog will clear up tomorrow so we can get some good photos even though the ones we got are pretty spooky at times and that makes them pretty cool.

The misty cliffs of Twillingate.

The ghostly visage of the Long Point Lighthouse peering over the trees.

This little bergie bit is just a taste of what is to come.

An old root cellar near the lighthouse.

Over near the lighthouse trails.  I am not sure what's up with the red and yellow pieces but they are all over the place.

From there we drove around the Twillingate islands and checked out the icebergs.  We are no strangers to ice, after the last week, but there is no pack ice here, getting in the way of the bergs like around the Great Northern Peninsula.   And the bergs here are huge.  Not as big as what we are going to see in Trinity next week, or so we hear, but these are pretty awesome.  We will get a closer look at them on the boat tomorrow but here are a few for you guys:

That's about it.  Spent the evening in the living room of the B&B, chatting with the other guests.  One of the guests is here from Austin and she is totally traveling by the seat of her pants.  She is not traveling for as long as we are but she is perhaps even bolder than us, traveling as her whims direct her.  One of these days we will travel like that.  Already we are learning that nothing is truly carved-in-stone  - you just buff out that rock and do something else.

There are also a few people here from Norway and they have been on the road for only a week but have really gotten around this island, seeing all the important sites (in fact, they were in L'Anse aux Meadows, in the exact same B&B the day we left....travel worlds are quite small sometimes).  Like I said before, I love hanging out with all the fellow travelers and getting to know them and know their adventures and sharing destination tips and whatnot.  That has been one of my favorite parts of this trip, all the friends we've made along the way.  Some were just friends in passing, others we will likely keep in touch with for years to come.  This of course is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, as we are going to be fully immersed in this sort of environment for the next nine weeks, at both the Skerwink and the City Hostels.  While I will admit that the idea of staying and working in those hostels has the both of us quite nervous, in a way, I am looking very forward to all the conversations I will be having in the next couple of months.  Should be no less than awesome.

Tomorrow we are going on the iceberg tour and may hit up the local winery for a tasting and perhaps more.  Our time allotted for this area is three days but we are only booked here for two.  Not quite sure what we will do with that third day but we might just head straight to the hostel or find someplace else to stay in the meantime.  We'll see where the wind takes us.  Whatever happens I am sure it will be awesome.

I don't have a funny photo or quip to end on so you can just dig these two butterflies.