And your next transfer is...Gander!

To reach Gander in time for 10 a.m. Sacrament Meeting, we left Trinity before 7 a.m. The water in the bay was so still and clear that we could see perfect reflections of buildings and trees.

We traveled northwest, along the Trans Canada Highway with its warning signs about moose crossing the road...and we passed a moose who looked like he was seriously considering the idea.

We drove through Terra Nova National Park, with its beautiful inlets and rushing rivers.

Finally, we arrived at the Gander LDS branch. The building was unprepossessing in the extreme. At Sacrament Meeting, there were two members, two missionaries, and the two of us. It was a very spiritual meeting, despite the small numbers. We're taking the missionaries to breakfast tomorrow morning, since they didn't feel good about eating at a restaurant on Sunday. "We've been telling people not to do that," they said.

After Church, we drove to Twillingate, on the north coast of Newfoundland. As we drove into town, a sign proclaimed, "Iceberg capital of the world." In the spring and early summer, icebergs float past the town from the Arctic.

We loved the quaint houses...

...boats...

...and spectacular scenery...

...beautiful even in the rain and fog washed in by the tail end of Hurricane Danny.

We didn't stop at the "Newfie Fog Cafe"....

...but we enjoyed rummaging through a craft store and tourist information center, and talking with the Newfoundlanders gathered there.

It sold a "field guide to Icebergs of Newfoundland and Labrador" and handmade caps, sweaters, mittens, quilts, and toys made by Newfoundland women in the winter. We asked what else Newfoundland women do to make money in the winter, and were told that some go to Alberta, along with Newfoundland men. The men work in the oil camps and the women help as waitresses and cleaning ladies. Newfoundland now has three offshore drilling sites of its own, and is trying to shift from a fish economy to an oil economy.

The store had a new product--"puffin poop," aka yogurt-covered raisins. There was also "moose droppings"--chocolate-covered nuts.

Back in Gander, as we searched for a laundromat, we came upon a "curling club" and a hockey team practicing at the community center. Gretta talked with the coach for the hockey team. His son was at a prep school in Chicago on a hockey scholarship!

Then, Gretta washed clothes while Dave checked out the Gander International Airport and the Aviation Museum. It was fair recompense after a week of Dave's driving. During 1938, Gander had the largest airport in the world, a critical refueling spot for turboprop planes flying between North America and Europe, before the jets arrived. Gretta remembers stopping at Gander in the middle of the night, when she was a little girl on a flight between New York and London.

Gander had other moments of glory, as East Germans and Cubans defected in large numbers during the Communist years, as their planes refueled in Gander. Then, on 9/11, 7,000 international air passengers were stranded in Gander, when the U.S. shut down its airspace and flights headed for the East Coast scrambled to find somewhere outside of the U.S. to land.

Time Warp

Like the house in the photo above, Trinity, Newfoundland, is a colorful place a long way from anything. We drove three hours north from St. John's to find this tiny town. It was once the center of the wildly profitable cod-fishing industry for Newfoundland. Then the cod fishing industry crashed, some 25 years ago, and Trinity reinvented itself as a time warp. No houses can be built except in the style of the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s. Trinity is full of quaint B&Bs, museums, a walking tour, a pageant, a gourmet restaurant, and a theater troupe which stages plays based on local history.

We also took a break, between pageants, plays, and museum tours, to drive to Cape Bonavista, an hour north, to see the crashing surf, the lighthouse, and the place where John Cabot supposedly made his first landfall in the 1540s, while searching for the Northwest Passage for England. (We visited another John Cabot first landfall site in Nova Scotia, complete with similar statue, earlier in the trip.)

Back in Trinity, we got comfortable in the Campbell House, built in 1840, and furnished with antiques and pine siding on the walls.

We bought a combo ticket to the seven museums in town, including restored houses, a forge, and a general store. Townspeople wore period dress to show us around.

Gretta enjoyed the vintage sewing machine and kitchens, as well as the crocheted bedspread and trunk just like her Grandmother Eyring owned.

It was disconcerting to see a display of WWI hats and gas masks and then to pass a monument next to the church, honoring the Trinity men slain in WWI.

Local ladies knit and crochet during the long winters, and then sell their creations at a local craft shop.

We took part in the daily "pageant," during which visitors followed cast members to various spots in town and played "backup singers" to vignettes of local history. We performed the Newfoundland anthem at the beginning and close of the show, along with the cast. We also sang hymns during the mock funeral.

The narrators were two old guys telling Trinity's history--one an upstanding, patriotic Newfoundlander and the other a local cynic who liked his rum. The mock funeral was for Trinity boys and men who died while hunting seals, after a freak summer storm engulfed them.

We saw Richard Whitbourne, a "windbag" admiralty judge from England who held court in Trinity in the 1600s, and we watched a mock paternity trial from the 1700s.

We heard songs about the pain of marrying a sailor who is then lost at sea, and we overheard a discussion between two matrons bewailing the lot of women in the harsh life of Newfoundland. Gretta thought of her own Calder ancestry, including her great-great-great-grandfather, a fishing captain in Aberdeen, Scotland, who was lost at sea, leaving a wife and three children who ultimately immigrated to America.

And we watched a vignette about the politics and economics of the cod industry, managed by rich merchants from England.

The tiny Twine Loft Restaurant served a gourmet dinner of tomato soup with basil, green salad with borage and nasturtium blossoms, salmon, and lemon souffle.

We finished the day at a play, "Peter's Other War," about the struggles Newfoundlanders had, in 1956, deciding whether to become an independent country or a part of Canada.