St Anthony, the patron saint of lost things (including drive shafts)

Hello from St Anthony, Newfoundland!

So much has happened, so let's back track a little before I get to our adventures in St Anthony. After our hike up The Lookout, the next day Dan and I hiked the Tablelands. This is a really unique area of the world, where essentially 2 plates pushed up against each other and literally the inside of the earth popped to the outside! There are only a few places in the world that you can see this type of rock, it's pretty spectacular! All the rocks are a rusty yellow colour on the outside, but if you were to slice them open they're black on the inside almost like granite. It was a pretty short hike through the Tablelands to a small river bed. Dan decided he wanted to hike up to the top of the Tablelands Mountains so I went back to the RV to wait. He's only getting one mountain hike out of me! He made it up but got lost in a cloud and ended up coming out a lot further down the road than he had intended, so he came back a bit later than he intended, but he came down thankfully! He said all the rocks on the top of the mountain were very square, like if you built an egg out of Lego, because they've never really encountered water to round them down.





Unfortunately, when we got back to our campsite at the KOA we discovered someone had stolen our little orange BBQ!!!! How disappointing!!! The nice people at KOA gave us a new little one for free from their shop, but it's not nearly as good as what we had. Thankfully the "camping" aspect of our trip is nearly over really, so we can survive the last leg of our journey making due with the new bbq we were given.

Sunday we went up to Western Brook Pond and took a boat tour through the fjords of Gros Morne. Talk about gorgeous! It was like touring through Jurassic park it's so untouched and lush. There were tons of waterfalls, and we even saw a bald eagle. The pond and fjords were carved out by ancient glaciers and the pond used to connect with the ocean, but over the years the land has reflexed after the weight of the glaciers left, and is now cut off from the ocean. They've found whale bones in the pond, so that's how they know it used to be connected. A little fact we learned while on our boat tour is that moose are not native to Newfoundland. The first two were introduced in the early 1900s and the attempt failed, so in 1911 they introduced 4 more. Now there are over 100 000!!! That's 6 moose/square kilometre!











Yesterday we left Gros Morne (boo!) and headed up the coast towards Lans-Aux-Meadows, the viking settlements. We stopped along the way to see an iceberg that was floating just off the coast, very cool! A bit closer to St Anthony, we saw two bull moose fighting on the side of the highway. We stopped in case the loser turned tail and ran out onto the road (a valid concern around here!). When the moose were finished, we moved along, but our sudden acceleration caused our drive shaft to literally snap right off!!! The drive shaft is essentially what makes your wheels turn, you can't do anything without it. Crap. So I flagged down a kind gentleman who took our CAA information and called for us once he was within cellphone reception again. An hour or so later a pick-up truck with flashing lights pulls up and two mechanics hop out, Wayne and Dan. They hook up (and by hook up I mean tie our two vehicles together with a rope) the Colonel to their truck and off we go, with Wayne driving the Colonel and Dan and I as passengers with him. We soon discover that Wayne worked at Lans-Aux-Meadows as a viking actor for many years, met his wife there (a fellow actor), and even had a viking wedding nearby! They have 2 kids now, his wife still works as a viking actor, and he still does viking dinner theatre and the odd day dressed as a viking for various cruiseship arrivals. Apparently being a viking actor is somewhat unpredictable, so he's also working as a shop assistant at the mechanic's shop across the street from his house. We got towed by a viking. When we got to St Anthony and got the Colonel parked, he took us over to his house and gave Dan a clean dry pair of socks, and showed us his viking wedding photos. After dinner at our hotel last night we went back over to Wayne's house and met his family and a few of his friends. We had a bonfire and Wayne set off some fireworks. His family actually reminds me of my own a little. A couple of their friends we met are from Nova Scotia, they came over for dinner and haven't left town since. That was three years ago!! It was a really great night with a bunch of wonderful warm people. His youngest daughter Emily latched onto me like a barnacle and is quite a little actor herself.


(The Newfie tow)


(That would be our drive shaft)


(The moose fighting that made us stop)


(Iceberg!!!)

Today we're probably going to go whale watching if the weather cooperates. There are apparently tons of whales, seals, dolphins and icebergs off the coast here. The restaurant downstairs in our hotel is excellent, so I think we'll be well taken care of here!

Dan wanted me to tell you to click on the ads at the side of our blog. We get a few cents every time someone clicks on it, so maybe we can offset the cost of our new drive shaft with a few more clicks ;)