Like a Speeding Newfie Bullet

For 100 years, from 1889 to 1989, the Newfoundland Railroad carried passengers and freight from the ferry at Port aux Basques, 950 miles to St. John's. It was called the Newfie Bullet. At the front of the train was a huge, orange snowplow that scooped off snow even when the train was nearly buried by it.

Today, as we made our way south, from Corner Brook to Port aux Basques...

...we admired the hardiness of the Newfoundland people who live their often-foggy summers and always-frigid winters in isolated towns by the sea. The Newfie Bullet is an apt symbol for that hardiness. We also admired the Newfoundlanders' ability to both keep separate ethnic traditions intact and meld them into a cohesive nation.

As we ate breakfast at Glynfel Inn, we noted how very British the room and menu were. We ate oatmeal, a Scotch breakfast, but we also could have ordered boiled salt cod with fried tomatoes, or kippers and tea.

An essential accompaniment to toast, in Newfoundland as in London, is orange marmalade.

The colors of the dining room, dark green and maroon, with a flower-patterned carpet, were Victorian, as were the dark, ornately carved wood chairs. And you don't get more British than heavy, draped curtains and a painting of royal coaches!

After breakfast, we drove past red cliffs, green cliffs, and rocky beaches...

...till we reached the Stephensville peninsula, settled by the French.

We paused at a graveyard by the sea, filled with crosses, statues of the Virgin Mary, and French names like Benoit and Lemoine.

Dave and Gretta both brought their beloved Panasonic Lumix cameras, and shared their best shots.

Our next turn-off was to Cape Ray, with one of the many lighthouses along the coast.

We also found the town picturesque, though bedraggled.

We took a tour of a Newfie Bullet at the Port au Basques Museum and sat in the snowplow operator's seat and on the train's bright blue passenger seats. If the snow was too deep for the Newfie Bullet to plow through, passengers and train sat on the tracks in who-knows-where for two or three days until the train could dig out.

At the Port aux Basques Museum, we were reminded of how questionable information is often fed to tourists. We were told by this guide, with a straight face, that the painting shown below was washed up on shore after a shipwreck (Ha! No water damage whatsoever?).

He was more credible when we asked him what Newfoundlanders call each other (i.e. Newfies?). "There are Irish, Scots, and French here, and sometimes strong feelings between them," he said. "What we call each other depends on how much we've had to drink." He also told us making ship models is a popular hobby in Port aux Basques. This model is of the big fishing boats that caught cod off the Grand Banks in the 1700s and 1800s.

We drove through town and found our ferry, the Caribou, named after the ferry plying the same route which was blown up by German U-boats during World War II.

We then ate a final classic Newfoundland dinner of flaky pan-fried cod with scrunchions (fried salt pork bits with a bacon flavor), potato, cole slaw, and a scoop of canned peas and carrots. We also ordered a "tucca", as in "tuck you into bed." It was homemade bread with partridge berry and cloudberry jams. Newfoundlanders have "tuccas" at night with tea.

We spent the evening hours until the ferry left checking out gift stores... ...people watching...

...and enjoying an outdoors concert with a group playing classic rock--Rod Stewart, the Eagles. It got cold and dark outside, but they sang through the night like their hardy countrymen. It was their last performance of the season.

Second City

We're moseying our way down the western coast of Newfoundland to Port Aux Basques, where we take the Friday midnight ferry back to Nova Scotia. We spent most of today around Corner Brook, Newfoundland's second largest city. Corner Brook grew up around a paper mill. Two of the three newsprint paper mills in Newfoundland have shut down in the last three years, due to both the high foreign exchange rate of the Canadian dollar (which makes the paper expensive abroad) and because people are reading fewer newspapers. So far, Corner Brook's paper mill is hanging on. Corner Brook also has a university and hospital that generate jobs, and across Newfoundland, the people say they're now drilling for offshore oil.

All of western Newfoundland has spectacular scenery--cliffs, crashing surf, glowing lakes, and dark green trees. The places are different each day, but the views are equally compelling.

And if we can't stop posting photos of coastal towns with bright houses and boats, it's because there are hundreds of them and they are each quaint and enchanting. This town is in the Bay of Islands, near Bottle Cove and just outside Corner Brook.

This man was harbormaster of his town, showing Dave his own creation made from crab shells.

There was Viking influence in this small town, even so far south. A large reconstruction of a Viking ship lay in the town square because a 2006 movie about Vikings, "Outlanders," was filmed here.

Newfoundland has some great flags. From 1907 to 1940, Newfoundland was a "dominion" of the British Commonwealth, and had the only pink flag in the world. After consolidation with Canada, Newfoundland began using the maple leaf flag and its own provincial flag.

We like quaint museums almost as much as we like quaint towns. Our first stop this morning was the Insectarium in Deer Lake, on the outskirts of Corner Book. "We're one of only three insectariums in North America," the docent said proudly.

We were lonesome for our grandchildren here, thinking of how much Michael K and Jono would enjoy the tarantulas...

...and how much Alyssa, Annelise, Sophia, and Ezra would love the butterfly house, with hundreds of butterflies fluttering around and landing on them.

Spencer and Grant might like the beehive under glass and would laugh about the Chinese ant wine made with ant extract.

Emilie and Kirsten might like the tiny, delicate cricket cages, if not the crickets that were kept inside them as pets.

And Bryce? Maybe the butterfly that camouflages itself with big, dark "eyes" on its wings that look just like owl's eyes.

At the Corner Brook Museum, the focus was on everything northern, with an emphasis on people who were willing to risk. One display showed the maps Captain Cook, a surveyor, made of the west coast of Newfoundland, before he went exploring the South Seas.

Another display focused on war brides who married Canadian servicemen in Europe during WWII and then settled in Newfoundland. Vast, isolated Newfoundland was a culture shock for many of those women.

A third display focused on the daring exploits of Bill Bartlett, whose specialty was maneuvering ships through Arctic ice. What, we wonder, do Utah's museum displays say about us, simply by the topics the docents choose?

We dropped by the Newfoundland Emporium, a combo antique store/bookseller/crafts shop. The very way the books were organized told us what was important here--whole shelves labeled "seals and whales," "the sea," "Grenfels," and "Smallwood" (the last two are Newfoundland heros--Grenfels is the doctor from the far north who visited his patients on snowshoes and Smallwood is the politician who joined Newfoundland to Canada). Then, there were the ubiquitous shelves of handmade items, next to one product we hadn't seen before--"iceberg water" for $2 per bottle.

We enjoyed the manager, a fun-loving guy who surfs off the Newfoundland coast and knows the best hiking trails.

We stayed at the Glynville Inn, a deliciously English, Tudor-style hotel, built in 1924. In many ways, Newfoundland feels like the U.S., but with more English, Irish, and Scotch influence. And there are those other cultural things--risk, the sea...