Sunday, July 7, 2019

NEWFOUNDLAND – GRAND BANK & FORTUNE.

Day 72 – We slept in this morning, lazybones. It was 57 degrees, a little windy, a little foggy, and hazy at 8:30 a.m. We hung around the campground visiting with the girls & relaxing until after lunch. The sun had come out & it was warming up. We left about 1 p.m. to go south to visit the Provincial Seamen’s Museum in Grand Bank.

Click any picture below to see a slideshow.

Play time!

The Provincial Seamen’s Museum is a large, stylish building that really stands out when you drive through the town of Grand Bank. The lovely mural on the side of the building is also a reason to stop & take a second look. The Museum was opened in 1975 but it is so modern & immaculate inside that it looks brand new. There are two open, airy floors. The lower floor houses the current exhibit on one side (the exhibits change; this season’s theme was “Labrador & Newfoundland From A to Z”), and on the other side there was an amazing showcase of everything related to the sea & the seaman’s way of life. The top floor housed everything related to living on the land back in the old days. Downstairs there was an auditorium where visitors could pick their choices of short informative videos from a list. In between touring the bottom floor and the top floor, we stopped to see a 15-minute video called “54” on the 54 seamen who died on the ice during a tragic disaster. (Because of the harsh weather and the environment here, disasters used to be a regular occurrence. But it just points out the resilience of these people.) The Museum was quite interesting and the artifacts on display were amazing.

Provincial Seamen’s Museum, Grand Bank, NF

Fish and Brewis, Provincial Seamen’s Museum, Grand Bank, NF

Fish (salt cod) and Brewis (hardtack), Provincial Seamen’s Museum, Grand Bank, NF

Provincial Seamen’s Museum, Grand Bank, NF

Hooked rug, Provincial Seamen’s Museum, Grand Bank, NF

Provincial Seamen’s Museum, Grand Bank, NF

Lighter blue is shallower. Notice the Grand Banks South and East of Newfoundland, Provincial Seamen’s Museum, Grand Bank, NF

Then we drove south to the next town, Fortune. After passing through Fortune, there’s a fairly well-maintained gravel road that leads to the rocky cliffs at the Ocean and a nice lighthouse. This site is called the Fortune Head Ecological Reserve. It was gorgeous out and the scenery was outstanding – the water a beautiful shade of blue with some deep turquoise areas, the waves crashing on the rocks, and the incredible cliffs. From the website: “The rocks in the superbly exposed low cliffs represent the geological boundary between the Precambrian and Cambrian geological eras. Additionally, the fossils here represent the first skeletal creatures from 540 million years ago.”