Tuesday, July6, 2010

Saturday we left Pippy Park in St. John's and drove to the end of Bonavista Peninsula to a campsite call Paradise. The owner was very friendly and helpful in giving us information on what to see and do. We drove to Elliston and tried to get close to Puffins but only saw them at a distance. We then drove to the Cape Bonavista light house that you see above. We stopped at the local city park and saw another statue of John Cabot who landed here in 1497, notice the light house in the background. Then we drove to Dungeon Provincial Park. The park gets its name because the waves had cut two holes in the rocks and the earth above collapsed into the open area.

Sunday, the 4th was a very interesting day. We wanted to go back to Elliston and try to get closer to the Puffins. The early morning was foggy, very cool, and misting sometimes. We still chose to try getting closer to the Puffins. We walked back and found some Puffins very close. Before they were only across on an island. Sunday morning, they were on our side. I had the telephoto lens on (6X) and took over 140 pictures very close up. The one photo below shows them across on the rocks where they were nesting. The other two photos are the close-ups.

The next thing we did was tour the Ryan Premises National Historic Site in Bonavista. Ryan was a wealthy merchant in the late 19th century. He made his fortune off the cod fishing. The historic site is a museum about the cod fishing and the area. The photo at the bottom is of one of the statues in the museum.

We drove to Upper Amherst Cove looking for a woodworking business, Paterson Woodworking. We found the business and, luckily, Mike Paterson, the owner, was there on a Sunday afternoon. We had a great visit, and he gave us a tour of his shop, and we looked through his showroom. To me, that was an exciting part of the day.

We drove to Port Union and toured the Coaker Museum. Sir William Coaker built the town and opened a newspaper that published "The Fisherman's Advocate." Port Union is the only union built town in North America. The second floor of the museum still has a lot of the old belt-driven woodworking tools that were used in the early 1900's.

Elliston is also the root cellar capital of Newfoundland.

Monday we visited Trinity on Trinity Bay and did a walking tour of six different historic homes and shops. The piece of furniture to the right is original to one of the homes. It dates to the 1700's.

This Anglican church is in Trinity.

This photo is of a mussel farm near Trinity. The floats are holding ropes where the mussels are attached and growing. I understand that it takes two years for mussels to grow to maturity.

On Tuesday, we drove to Gander and visited the Silent Witness Memorial. The memorial is for the 254 American soldiers and crew that died when their plane crashed shortly after refueling in Gander. They were returning from a peace-keeping mission in Egypt.

We also visited the Newfoundland Aviation Museum in Gander.