A DAY OF ICE & ICEBERGS.
Day 46 – It was 34 degrees this morning at 7:30 a.m. Very cloudy & overcast with a little wind but no rain. We went for a drive to the end of the 2 roads that travel on each side of this peninsula.
We left the campground at 10:30 this morning. It was very cold out. We first stopped to get gas in the Honda. When Rob was paying for the gasoline, he asked if it was normally this cold this time of year. The attendant said that all the ice blew into the harbor yesterday morning and that was keeping it so cold, and it would probably stick around for about a week. We’re thinking it came in with the storm, and the rains & winds brought it into the harbor. We’d just assumed that this ice pack was here all winter. But we talked to someone later on today who said that when the ice is breaking up, it moves in and out, otherwise it stays frozen all winter. Who knows?!
We took a short road northwest of the campground to Rattling Brook. Rob (and his camera) took a walk up many stairs to Rattling Brook Falls. The village was colorful and there was plenty of ice in the Bay. We also saw that people are beginning to get ready to plant their gardens. And in several villages, community gardens were cleaned up and almost ready to plant seed.
Then we drove Route 391 to the end of the road, stopping at several villages along the way to take pictures. On the way north, it was quite unpopulated with dense forest and several lakes. In one lake we saw a Loon. Reaching Silverdale, Jackson’s Cove, Nicky’s Nose Cove, and Harry’s Harbour, we drove though the scenic little towns with views of the ice pack in their harbors on Green Bay. The further north we went, the more larger chunks we found, some of them actually small icebergs. And as the tide went out, it left some of these “chunks” on the beach (until the tide comes back in to retrieve them). When walking down to the beach to take pictures, Rob walked among ice chunks that were waist high. There was also a larger iceberg in the distance at Harry’s Harbour. Awesome. In 2019 when we drove out to Harry’s Harbour, we saw a Humpback Whale in Green Bay. It’s still too early this year for the Whales. Maybe we should come back in a couple of months.
Our campground is located in King’s Point which is halfway between the two roads we are exploring today at the end of Green Bay, Routes 391 & 392. When we returned from the first group of villages on Route 391, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant near the campground – By the Sea Inn & Cafe. It was a nice little restaurant right on the Bay with plenty of outdoor seating looking out over the ice pack. With these temperatures, they obviously weren’t serving anyone outside. The restaurant was almost full even though we didn’t get there until after 1 p.m. We had a good lunch; we split the Cream Cheese & Vegetable Dip, and we each had a bowl of the Seafood Chowder with excellent freshly baked rolls to go with the soup.
Stomach’s happy, we headed out for the next leg of our journey, Route 392. This trip included the villages of St. Patrick’s, Coffee Cove, Shoal Arm, Little Bay, and Beachside. Near Coffee Cove we drove on a gravel road called Mine Road. There had been copper mining there in the past and you could see the copper color in the rocks on either side of the road. “In 1945 there were 33 people in Coffee Cove. By 1956, the community had reached a population of 50, its highest ever as of 2020”. from Green Bay Goings On, a community newsletter, Volume 1/Issue 2, May 2023
We saw Oyster Farms between Coffee Cove and Little Bay. Every community had its own charm and colorful buildings by the Bay. On this side of the peninsula several of the villages didn’t have any ice in their harbors because of the wind direction and the currents. Then we’d drive to a different village and their harbor was packed with ice. We really liked Little Bay. In addition to it being a nice little town, we discovered a small campground (Ocean View RV Park, a town park with 4 full hook-up campsites right on the harbor – phone numbers are 709-267-3200, 709-293-1547, 807-371-1349) with an incredible view of the biggest iceberg we’ve ever seen, including what we saw on the 2019 trip. This iceberg was swirly at the top. It reminded me of getting a scoop of soft ice cream in a cup and it swirled to a point at the top. The iceberg was sitting in the bay near the Little Bay Islands and it was beautiful. We wished we were staying at this campground so we could watch the ice cream iceberg disappear into the group of islands in front of us. Beachside, at the end of the peninsula, had an ice-packed harbor including several larger icebergs in the distance. The ice pack closer to the shore had many large ice chunks in it that were chest-high when Rob was walking around them at low tide.
While he was taking pictures there, I was taking pictures from the parking lot, and at one point, he was looking thru a hole in a decent-sized ice chunk at the car while I was taking a picture of him looking thru the hole with his camera.
The high today was 41 degrees where there was no ice in the harbors; the temperature dropped into the 30’s when we were at harbors with ice pack. We drove back to the RV and it was dinner time when we got there. Not wanting to bother with putting together a meal, we went to Roy’s Pub which was only a mile or two from the campground. We had an excellent meal of Fish n‘ Chips. It’s now almost 10 p.m. and we’re finally going to relax with our books. It was a full day. When we close our eyes, we see icebergs. That’s okay. Grin.