NEWFOUNDLAND – THE LA SCIE OUTPORT MUSEUM & TEA ROOM.
Day 113 – This morning, Rob walked the Capelin Cove trail along the Harbour, looking for whales while watching the fishing activity. We hung around the RV until just after lunch today. The weather forecast was for rain most of tomorrow & dry with just partly cloudy skies today. Figuring we’d be staying at the Park tomorrow, we took a final exploratory drive this afternoon. Surprise! It rained hard when we were gone & things got pretty wet inside the screened tent & RV. That’s what we get for believing the weather forecast.
Fishing for Caplin, La Scie, NF
Fishing for Caplin, La Scie, NF
Squid Jiggin’, La Scie, NF
We drove west & south this time to a road that went to the towns of Burlington, Middle Arm, and Smith’s Harbour. All three towns were nice, somewhat more populated than most of the little towns up here & they appeared to be visited more by the summer crowds. Although all the towns here have fishing boats, pleasure boats were moored here also & several of the beaches were more sandy than rocky.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
La Scie is such an interesting town. We wanted to go the the Outport Museum during our stay here to learn more. On the way back from our drive, we stopped at the Museum, first going to the side door, following the sign for the Tea Room. The Museum & Tea Room are in an old, lovingly restored, and very colorful house. The Tea Room was small with four small tables inside and several tables outside on the porch. The woman behind the counter, Valerie, showed us today’s menu written on a blackboard. Today, besides the tea & various sweets, they were serving two items, Split Pea Soup with Biscuits & Macaroni and Cheese. Tonight two more items would be added, Crab Au Gratin & Fish Cakes, both served with a large salad & dinner rolls. They were known for their home-cooked meals. Tomorrow the Museum & Tea Room would be closed because she & her husband, the owners, had family coming in. This made our decision: rather than doing the Museum right then & having a meal at the Tea Room tomorrow, we opted for dinner at 6 p.m. after coming back to see the Museum.
We went back to the campground (not far from the Museum/Tea Room), discovered the wet RV & tent, Rob got a bucket out and bailed out the tent floor & I attempted to dry the RV dining room table area. Afterwards we sat outside in the tent for about an hour before heading to the Outport Museum. In the Tea Room, Valerie asked us to give our order in advance, saying we could wander around the Museum while she prepared our food & she would come get us when it was ready. Three of the four tables inside were occupied. (The outdoor seating was wet from the earlier shower.) As we stepped into the Museum, she said that the house had been in her husband’s family, built 80 years ago, and they were operating the Museum & Tea Room out of it. We could hear a man at one of the tables telling the others in the Tea Room the history of the town & about how it was settled by the French. We found out later that this man was her husband – she prepared & served the meals & he was the entertainment.
The Museum was small & interesting with many old pictures & artifacts, stories about the town and the people. We were called back to the Tea Room for dinner when the meal was ready. No alcohol was served. We split the Fish Cakes and the Crab Au Gratin. Both were very good. The salads that came with them were large and fresh. For dessert we were offered home-made Scones or Chocolate Cake – we got the cake. All was good. Another couple came in and got their dinner. They were from Newfoundland and were visiting from Conception Bay South not far from St. John’s. Another table was occupied by a French couple from Quebec; they had just finished eating. He spoke very little English; she was translating when necessary all the stories being told by the man at a different table who was introduced as Valerie’s husband, Larry. Larry’s family, the Whalen’s, was one of the original families in La Scie, and he was quite a talker. Later, a younger man, Zach, joined him. Zach had worked at the Museum/Tea Room for several years before going to Law School, which he was still attending. He was even a bigger talker, and between them, the two men provided the night’s entertainment, in more ways than one.
We’d gone to this small Museum with a room converted to a Tea Room and ended up with an evening full of stories, good food, and of all things, our own private concert, followed by a tour of the family’s fishing stage & dock and a first-hand look at how it’s done. Newfoundland is full of friendly, generous people.
The French couple, the Conception Bay couple, and Rob & I went into the Museum where chairs had been set up to accommodate the guests that were coming over later this evening. There were musical instruments set up. Larry & Zach (sorry, for the life of us we cannot remember the other names of the people) began playing music, Larry on the guitar & singing back-up, Zach singing lead, and he had an amazing voice. They sang several old, standard Newfoundland songs, and the woman from Conception Bay knew all the words & she was singing along (her voice was very good, too). Newfie music is good, we like it a lot, and have heard it many places on the Island. It is sort of Folk Music & every song we’ve heard tells a story, most of them about yesteryear or of the hardship of the fishing life or of the sea & fog. Soon when the main chorus’ came up, we were all singing along, too. Stomping our feet, clapping our hands. Rob made a video recording of the music.
After several songs, we all left them to get ready for their evening family gathering. When walking out to the parking lot with the French couple, we all talked about how amazing these experiences are on this Island – it’s like nowhere else we’ve been, and they seemed to feel the same. Then Larry came rushing out of the Tea Room and said, “Wait, I have something to show you.” He took the four of us over to the side of a garage to show us the family’s Squid Jigging boat, up close. He explained how it all worked. (Two women were walking by & stopped to say “hi” to Larry. One was his visiting cousin, who we were surprised to see was someone camping next to us in a Class C RV. It’s a Small World Afterall.) Then he took us all down the hill to the family wharf, took us through the fishing stage (where the fish processing is done once the fleet returns), and out the opposite door to the family dock where all their fishing boats were tied up. The first boat he showed us was for gill-netting Cod, He jumped in and showed us where the nets are kept & where the fish that are caught go. He told us that the best way to have Cod was just to boil it right there on the spot, and that fishermen would do that if they are out fishing for a very long day & needed to eat. He said that Squid are good to eat and that they are also used for Crab bait. He hopped into another boat and showed us how Cod are line caught. Not with bait, surprisingly – the Cod just bite anything. Cod is caught easily, and less than ten miles from the beginning of the Bay. He said the first boat we saw had come back from a 3-hour fishing run several miles off shore with 1,500 pounds of Cod! They don’t catch much Lobster here, the Bay is too deep and the shore too rocky. They catch Capelin, Cod, Crab, and Squid. Then he took us back to the Fishing Stage. We saw the table where the fish are prepared (skinned & unwanted organs removed), where the waste goes (a hole cut in the floor which went back out to sea), the sink & cleaning area, and the shelf overhead – the counter below – where they are packaged for their next destination. He showed us how & where the salting is done for Salt Cod – one of the main ways to preserve the Cod – practiced for hundreds of years (if not more) AND he told us how the fish would be dried, the different ways to cook it, about Cod Liver Oil, and fish tongues – the Newfie “delicacy” we’ve heard so much about but have not tried – Cod does not have “tongues” according to Larry. What you are really getting is the throat area & there are two parts; one is gelatinous & is sold as tongue, the other tastes in consistency like Scallops. The family built the Fishing Stage in 1888. What an interesting afternoon & evening!
Back to the RV, music running through our heads, we read our books & talked about our day. We really don’t think we’ll have another trip like this one. Just amazing. The high today was 79 degrees, partly cloudy to rain, breezy.