NEWFOUNDLAND – THE DARK TICKLE.
Day 123 – It was partly cloudy this morning with very little wind for a change & 58 degrees. We drove Route 436 today. Most of the small towns we’d seen last May, but they sure looked different without all the snow. It was a nice day and the scenery was lovely. Today was the end of Month #4, Trip 6. Our fourth month’s recap is at the end of today’s blog.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
We went to the Dark Tickle Company Wild Berry Economusee located in St. Lunaire. This company specializes in Newfoundland’s wild berries: blueberries, partridgeberries, bake apple, and cranberries; they make lots of different products from them. They can be sampled at the store & with prior notice you can get a tour of the factory & witness the products being made. But without prior notice, you can observe the process of making the jams & jellies through a glass window. An interpretive boardwalk leads to a bog where wild berries thrive in their native habitat.
The lower level has an excellent gift store with lots of books about Newfoundland & Labrador. You can find very nice local arts & crafts, clothing, pottery, and just about anything you could want. Upstairs there is a museum with some very old artifacts and it’s also the location of Cafe Nymphe. We’d heard the food was good so we had lunch there. It was so good, we ended going back for dinner. It is a simple, small cafe’. You order at a counter from chalkboards. Service was excellent, the food even better. For lunch Rob had Coffee, I had Partridgeberry Tea, and we split the Apple & Cheddar Cheese Panini on homemade herbed bread with Partridgeberry Jam & a small side of Carrot Slaw, and the Macaroni & Cheese served with a side salad with Partridgeberry Vinegarette. Really, really good. All the while, you are listening to an excellent mix of music, all different types, being played in the background, and you are sitting amongst the old artifacts, cute little crafts & trinkets, and old nautical maps are on the walls. There was also a showcase on an 18th century explorer. Certainly not boring.
This is also the home of the Dark Tickle Expeditions Boat Tours. We asked about the tours when we were paying for our stuff, and on a whim, purchased tickets for the 4 p.m. boat tour today. We drove back to the RV to get our boating gear & visit briefly with the girls, then drove back to where the boat would be leaving from, a small dock in St. Lunaire-Griquet. So much for visiting Viking land today – we never got that far – plans are meant to be changed.
We were the only guests on the tour which suited us just fine. The three guys who came along were wonderful, local people, one piloted the boat & brought his brother-in-law along for the ride, the other was the main guide and he was SO interesting. The boat was a Zodiac. There was a little wind, but not too much, and we were comfortable. The high today was 77 degrees with partial sun. It was plenty warm on shore, but once we got out into the open Ocean, it was colder. The boat tour lasted two hours and it was great.
We were taken to many coves and given the history of the areas in addition to the history of the French Shore in Newfoundland beginning with the European’s discovery of all the fishing opportunities here. The Vikings were here in the 1500’s, followed mostly by the French & English. We visited the site of the resettled town of Fortune & saw its one remaining house, and we got the viewpoint on resettlement from people who have lived here all their lives & have had many generations of family living here before them. We had White-Beaked Dolphins swimming all around the boat, playing with us & later feeding. Sea Gulls & Gannets flew overhead. We watched Cod fishermen haul in their nets with the catch of the day. A female Humpback Whale and her baby were feeding by rocks at the cliffs. This was really surprising to us as we’d previously only seen whales in the open waters. These whales were diving, feeding, and swimming right next to the rocks. The guide said the water immediately drops to over 100 feet deep from the shore. It was just so strange to see the whales so close to the rocks. We saw another Humpback, a male feeding by the rocks in another area. They come right out of the water at the rocks to get the bait. And on the way back to the dock, we stopped to see the Bald Eagles nest, the young fledgling who had recently left the nest and its’ parents. Dark Tickle Expeditions: 75 Main Street, St. Lunaire-Griquet, NL A0K 2X0; (709) 623-2354; www.darktickle.com. They open June 1 or when the ice clears the cove & are very busy during iceberg season with Iceberg Tours, and soon thereafter with Whale Watching Tours.
We were hungry after the boat ride & all that cold ocean air. We went back to the Nymphe Cafe and had dinner. Once again, really really good. Rob had a beer from St. John’s (Quidi Vidi 1892 Traditional Ale) and I had Partridgeberry Juice with Vodka, my new favorite drink. We split the Macaroni & Cheese with the side salad (again) and a Pizza with homemade herbed dough, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, pesto, and 4 cheeses. AND we had dessert: Rob had the homemade Blueberry Crumble and I had the homemade Partridgeberry Carrot Cake. Our food-loving friends – next time you are in Newfoundland, Ha Ha, eat at the Nymphe Cafe’!
Heading back to the campground we saw a young moose near the road & there were more, but we went by so fast, we didn’t see how many. Back to the RV around 8 p.m., the girls were not happy with us, but we had a great day. The Viking stuff will have to wait until Thursday. Tomorrow we are supposed to have lousy weather so we’ll probably just do indoor things for the day.
TRIP #6, MONTH 4, RECAP: One month ago, we were camping on Fogo Island near Twillingate, a site by the Ocean. We enjoyed seeing what life was like living on an isolated island which was located off another larger isolated island. Next we stayed at Notre Dame Provincial Park which couldn’t have been more different. It was located near the Trans-Canada Highway, fairly close to two large cities, at a campsite situated above the swimming hole, the very active swimming hole because the weather was the warmest we’ve had all year. Our month continued the same way with each location being different from the previous one, in scenery, things to do, and in weather. We next stayed at Harbour Breton on the southern tip of the Connaigre Peninsula where some villages were connected to each other only by boat. This was followed by Mary March Wilderness Park in Buchans Junction (central NF, mining towns, lots of mosquitoes), then Crescent Lake RV Park in Robert’s Arm on a beautiful lake supposedly haunted by an evil sea serpent. A highlight of this stay was the visit to the Sperm Whale Interpretation Center with the amazing Guide who knew everything you could possibly know about whales, including the story of Ambergris. Then came La Scie & our memorable eight-night stay there, where we were treated to a private concert of Newfie music followed by a tour of the family’s fishing stage complete with how the whole process is done from start to finish. From our campsite on top of a hill overlooking the harbour and the ocean, we watched the different kinds of fishing being done below. We saw Humpback Whales breach from that campsite. And Squid Jigging, now that was different. The weather was perfect almost the whole time. From La Scie we drove the sometimes-dirt roads to the now-isolated towns that had once been large mining cities. We drove to beautiful Fleur de Lys at the top of the Baie Verte Peninsula. The visit to this peninsula completed our journey around central, eastern, and south to north eastern NF and we returned to the Northern Peninsula which we first visited in May after our arrival to the Island. We saw an immediate change in temperatures as a definite chill returned to the air, back to fog, clouds, and heavy winds. We stayed at Pollard’s Point & we revisited Port au Choix & the Caribou as we worked our way back to the northwesternmost part of Newfoundland. We’ve had several days of very strong winds & some evening temperatures in the 40’s. We are now at the very nice, quiet Pistolet Bay Provincial Park, and today was a great day of eating and whale watching. Next month should include a trip to Labrador via ferry across the Belle Isle Strait. We don’t know how long we’ll stay in Labrador. From what we hear, the biting black flies are fierce. If so, we may quickly return to NF & move on to Gros Morne National Park. If the colder weather has caused the mighty flies to die off, we could spend the whole month in Labrador. Time will tell.