Leaving Red Bay

Wade and Blanche started off the day with a breakfast followed a few hours later by a traditional Labrador dinner. (Dinner is our lunch, supper is our dinner) I didn’t get the names of all of the food (I’ll try to fill in later), but I know I had salt beef, rabbit, pork, greens, potatoes, gravy, peas pudding, and cloudberry pudding. I think remember all of it. All of was great! I love trying new foods – I’ll try almost anything twice; if I don’t like it the first time it might just be a fluke.  :-)

Afterward their nephew and his girlfriend took me the hour drive to Blanc Sablon to board the plane. I had to leave a few things behind (the stove and fuel containers) that he promised to post back to me when I get back home. Otherwise it was a rush through the hand-check security since they don’t have an X-Ray there.

We went up in the air, taking off from the tiny Blanc Sablon airport, and landed just a few minutes later in St. Anthony. A few more folks got on making it a full plane. Around a half-hour after we touched down we took off again headed to St. John’s. The long leg of the flight in the Dash-8 lasted an hour and a half. The scenery that I saw out the window was as spectacular from the air as it was from the ground with the mountains, trees, water and the speckles of little towns scattered about.

Landing in St. John’s gave me the biggest surprise of the trip: a fellow I met on my way west in Gander, John, was there to pick me up! O. M. G.

I gave him the address of the blog while there and he checked it out on Sunday morning and saw Ennie’s post that I was flying to St. John’s. There’s only one flight from in from Blanc Sablon each day so he took a chance. Just about anyone I’ve met out here has been the nicest people I’ve ever met. We found me a hotel room, dropped my big crates off and went off to have some beers in an Irish pub on George Street (if I recall correctly). Beer is good. Seems a lot of Irish settled in St. Johns which explains the theme. A band came in to set up for some live music as we were getting ready to leave.

Before dropping me off at the hotel he took me up to Signal Hill where Mr. Marconi tested out his newfangled wireless gear. (Guglielmo Marconi: his name is fun to say!) I looked over to Cape spear a few miles south down the shore to see where I was standing in the rain just a week prior.

He dropped me off at the Battery Hotel for the night and I had an overpriced steak. That’s life. At this point it’s only money, eh?

Settling in to my room I looked out my window seeing a view that would be worthy to be on a post card. Wishing I had my real camera working I snapped a few shots with the small one hoping to capture a bit of the scene. Again, that’s life.