New found heart

Canadians have earned themselves an international stereotype of being “friendly, nice people.” Generally, most people are, but I also have been living in a small ski town for years where you say hi and stop for a chat with every passerby. So, when everybody seemed to say that Newfies were exactly that, I didn’t think to much into it. If you:

A) Don’t like your waitress asking the table your first names and full story giving you free dessert, free pens, and her business card.

B) don’t like people always stopping for a friendly chat in front of you to a friend in the middle of the highway

C) don’t think you are a chatty person who enjoys anything from an elderly couple who are apologizing for the curlers in her hair but just wanted to stop by your campsite to say hi to almost bumping into somebody on the ferry and they start apologizing to you like they just hit you with a car

Then no, Newfoundland is not the place for you, because everybody is over the top friendly, and everybody seems to enjoy a smile and a chitchat. The accents are fun and different, with a southern or Irish drawl to it. Newfoundland is comparable to the Yukon, in the way that there is only one main highway going in and out, a LOT of untouched land, and not many people there despite that. The land and the weather itself was raw, with dramatically changing landscapes as you drive through the gorgeous eastern point. Dotted with wind slanted fishing villages, with not many big towns to speak of, and even the big town (St. Johns) wasn’t what I’d call a big city either. Growing up, I listened dreamily to my grandpa talk very highly of the tides and the cliffs of the Maritimes. I couldn’t believe that he was talking about the same Canada I knew as a kid growing up in the prairies. Driving through this country has been a first-hand glance into just that, seeing the dramatic diversity. Not just the land itself either, every person who calls this vast land home have different “Canada’s” different ways of life, different cultures and languages. It’s been a pleasure to realize that I had so much to learn. Sometimes when the world is so big and you feel so small, especially when there are endless places to explore. its easy to forget that there is so much history and hidden discoveries waiting in your own back yard.

Before I get to poetic and ahead of myself, back to the great part of the leg that was Newfoundland. There is a hefty 8-hour ferry from Nova Scotia to “The Rock.” We scored an over night boat on the way there, but on our way back (where I am now writing this little number), it’s a long day on the water. When we arrived, a bit delusional after a broken sleep on the boat, we headed to Gross Morne National Park. The lonely mountainous area offered beaches, steeper hikes, and theater too. We did nothing on that day except swim in the ocean, lay under the wind on the sand and when sunset hour came, Yoshi and I went for a walk. It seemed the entire camp site had come down for the show. Families, retired couples, weekend warriors and everybody else was sitting or running around, booze or tea (whichever vice the more suiting) in hand. We had an early night and headed up the Viking trail to L’anse Meadows. A reconstructed Viking village made by parks Canada. Although entertaining and in a beautiful, quieted area, the beach was covered in litter. Yoshi picked up as much as he could carry and left it on the boardwalk to make a sign to Parks Canada. Newfoundland we quickly figured out has a BIG problem with litter. There are signs all down the highways and commercials on the radio, all begging you to please not litter. A lot seems to wash up the shorelines from boats. On one of our favorite beach cove swims, we sat beside an undecipherable deceased animal, and an entire window smashed in. There was just no escaping it.

The one and only L'anse Meadows

We treated ourselves to a few dinners, the first place that promised you got to hand pick your lobster with the chef down by the beach, had coincidentally run out of Lobsters. So instead we had a crack at the hourly caught cod fish. I had a Martini with ice chipped off an Iceberg. Pretty classy establishment for these car dwellers. The next place was the opposite, a shack on the water that gave us what we were promised. The might Lobster feast! I’d like to mention that Yoshi and Connor ate it guts and all. Ollie allergic to shell fish was fine watching us figure out how to eat the thing, while he enjoyed some Fish & chips. We also had the best camping experiences while here on the island, only paying for that first night in Gross Morne. Some places abandoned parking lots, but mostly by water and a treat to open the peepers to in the morning. We had a blast checking out the twinkling little picturesque villages. Newfoundland was a highlight for all four of us, it was peaceful and an easy province to explore in a vehicle. We spent a day in St. Johns, walking amongst the jelly bean houses, going in and out the cutesy shops, and mostly petting dogs. I was glad we dedicated the most time to this island, but can’t wait to see what the other Maritimes provinces have up their gleaming sleeves. I tried to see if we could go on a kayaking tour down ice berg alley, hoping to get up close and personal but it was to late in the season. It just means I will be back some spring in the future to visit this sleepy island again. I also would love to go off the beaten track and dive into the even more raw and untouched land of Labrador, while researching for the trip, I found myself one to many times unknowingly researching a very northern spot. The Inuit culture and mountains of Torngat are whispering their wonders. Plenty of places in Canada, the more north you go the harder it is to get too. Mostly only reachable by small planes, Labrador, Churchill, Baffin Islands, even the Athabasca sand dunes of Saskatchewan, and of course so much more are all on my dashboard of the future.