One month

..plus or minus a day.

So, I've been somebody's wife for a month now.  How does it feel?  Well, way more relaxing than being someone's fiancee, that's for sure!  Marriage is great, but who made it so ridiculously stressful?  That was dumb.

Life is good (of course, I actually like summer, so that helps tremendously!).

We had already been playing house for a number of months before we were married, so there were no huge adjustments that way (other than finding room for gifts, gifts, and even more gifts!).

Speaking of gifts.  I'll get thank you cards out eventually.  Some day.  Probably.  Maybe....  :P

I do not yet have my hands on pics from the photographer.  Although, I have seen them.  They're A-OK! in my books, and I will be glad to have them.  In the meantime, if you were at the wedding with a camera, you should probably email me your pics.  Especially ones of people together having fun, dance pictures, cake cutting pictures, family pictures, little kid pictures, you get the idea.  I want your pictures.  :)

You may have noticed that I quit blogging halfway through my honeymoon.  I was... ahem.... busy.  I just had better things going on than sitting around writing a blog, k?  But really, you didn't miss much.  We saw vikings, more whales, did some stuff, and drove home.  I'm sure you'll hear more about it, eventually.

:)

A balmy Canada Day weekend

....everywhere but where we are!

It was 27 degrees today in Rocky Harbour Nfld - one of those rare hot days they get here on the island.  Unfortunately, we left Rocky Harbour yesterday.  We're in St Anthony Nfld today, where we purchased toques to brave the 7 degree weather.  That's right: SEVEN degrees!  Dave always says that he prefers the cooler weather to the hot weather, but this is a little extreme.  Thank goodness we had the good sense to book hotel rooms for our three days in this town of 2,500 rather than continue camping in a tent!

We're staying at the Grenfell Heritage Hotel & Suits.  'Grenfell' is a famous name in this town.  Something about a Doctor who lived here and started a hospital etc, etc...  We haven't been to the museum yet to see what it's all about.  The hotel is gorgeous!  Small, only 18 rooms, but well worth it!  We had the 'honeymoon suit' for our first night here.  King sized bed, 2 person jacuzzi, bath robes, flat screen tv, hardwood floors...  Way nice. 

Except for the water.  The water here is the colour of pee.  Like, after you flush the toilet, you turn back and wonder if you've forgotten to flush the toilet!  Yellow.  Imagine a jacuzzi tub filled with beer-coloured liquid...  It was somewhat off-putting. (It didn't stop us from using it, mind you!  But we sure didn't drink it.)  It was almost enough for us to consider switching hotels for the rest of our stay in St Anthony.  I'm glad we didn't though.  When we asked, we were told that the water is naturally yellow in this area; it's safe to drink, and in fact some of the best water in the area - it's just yellow.   ...still very weird to have a bath in. 

We've had to give up the honeymoon suite for the rest of our stay though (it was previously booked by someone else); so our new room doesn't have the jacuzzi, but it does have a full kitchen!  Which, in the long run, is probably better for us anyway.  If you ever find yourself in St Anthony Nfld, stay at the Grenfell!  You won't be disappointed.

We spent the morning exploring Fishing Point, which is just where the road ends at the lighthouse.  There's the lighthouse, a gift shop (where we did indeed purchase a toque, as well as a few souvenirs) and a seafood restaurant where we had some lunch (I ordered the most nonsensical thing on the menu: Thai moose spring rolls and rice.  That's right, spring rolls made with moose meat!).  Fishing Point is also home to "Leifsburdir"; the Great Viking Feast, (think Medieval Times, viking style).  The feast takes place in a real sod home out behind the restaurant.  It's something I would have liked to do, but unfortunately, the next show isn't until Tuesday evening and we'll be back in Rocky Harbour by then.

The adventure of the day was the iceberg and whale watching boat tour.  And man!  Was it cold!  The ocean is a chilly four degrees right now, and with a northeast wind, and the threat of rain, it was frigid!  But so totally worth it!!

The largest iceberg seen in this area well over 15 years, beached itself off the coast of St Anthony just the other day.  It was a kilometre long when the tour boat first discovered it.  Since then, it has broken in half and part of it drifted away.  But the section we saw, at 700ft long, is still way bigger than normal.  It was approximately 90ft high, and snagged on the bottom of the ocean in 300ft of water.  That is one big cube of ice!  There's currently a big crack in one part of it - I was hoping we'd get lucky and be there when it came apart, but no such luck.  Lots of little chunks of ice (bergy bits) floating around too.

We did see a puffin, but it was simply flying by and didn't look like much more than a black dot.

The highlight of the tour was the humpback whales for sure.  We spent quite awhile chasing around a 40ft cow and her calf.  At one point the calf came right up alongside the boat just to check us out (of course, that's the moment I fumbled my camera and missed the picture!).  In all, we saw 4 or 5 different whales - all humpbacks.

All in all, a pretty fun day.  Dave even admitted that boat tours aren't all that bad after all!

Tomorrow, vikings!

Western Brook Pond

Today was shaping up to be a lazy day of sitting around a campground playing computer games.  So, I dragged Dave to the nearest town: Rocky Harbour.  It was dull and dreary and threatening to rain all afternoon, and I was hoping to find some souvenir clothing.

"Town" is a word to be used very loosely in these parts.  Rocky Harbour seems to be a larger town; it at least has a few stop signs!  Actually, it's not a bad place.  A few restaurants, a hotel or two, liquor store, post office, about 4 churches, and maybe a couple hundred houses.  But we just weren't feeling the vibe early in the afternoon, so I changed up our plans and dragged Dave out to Western Brook Pond.

To another boat.  First, you park your car in a parking lot on the highway.  And then you walk a 3km trail through bog and bush to a ferry dock.  Then, you pay $56 a person to get a 2hour ferry tour of Western Brook Pond.  It was way cool!  I may not ever get to actually sit on the top of a fjord, but I have now had a tour of the bottom of a fjord.  (we'll also used the term 'fjord' loosely, once upon a time it was a real ocean fjord, but it no longer connects with the ocean and is essentially a lake full of fresh water.  But it is a valley carved by a glacier, and it's pretty impressive!)

This lake is 500ft deep in places!  Deeper than the water offshore in the ocean.  It's cliffs are 2000ft high.  Jagged and spectacular; pictures will never do it justice.

The tour guides were great, and the boat captain even turned the boat around twice (once for a black bear, and a second time for a moose) so that we could have a closer look.  Unfortunately, I had used up all the juice in my camera by that time so I didn't get any pics of the wildlife.  Not to worry though, apparently there are over 5000 moose in Nfld; 4 for every square kilometre of habitable space - we're bound to see one again!

One thing we haven't done while we're in the area is to check out a Gros Morne National Park pass.  You know, the fee you're supposed to pay to be in a National Park.  We haven't worried too much about it because even though we're near the park, we're really not in it.  And then we went to Western Brook Pond.  Which is in the park.  What a happy circumstance that it's Canada Day today!  Being in the park is free on National Holidays.  No park pass required.  :)

Anyway, it was a good tour of the fjord.  Dave even enjoyed it and he hates boats.  (shhh... don't tell him that I plan on taking him on even more boats!)

Coming back towards our campground, we again stopped in at Rocky Harbour.  Found a place to buy some neat t-shirts, and went to a restaurant for supper.  I had fish cakes - a typical Newfoundland thing (basically pan fried patties made of fish and potatoes).  Dave, in typical fashion, had pizza.

The campground has been a little crazy today.  This morning, the kids had a bicycle decorating contest and parade around the campground.  And tonight they had some fireworks.  It's a busy place, but it's a really nice campground.  Plus, the little rain that we have had, hasn't put a damper on anything.

Tomorrow, we head for St Anthony!

The Epic Adventure Continues

We queued up for the ferry to Newfoundland around 10:30pm Wednesday evening.  You have to check in 2-3 hours early (which would have been about 2am in our case, for our 5am ferry).  We were exhausted from driving all day though, and frankly, there’s not much to do in North Sydney after 9pm anyway!  So we took the opportunity to catch some shut eye while parked waiting for the boat.

We were in this lineup, crammed tractor trailers and other vehicles – everyone trying to get some sleep; surprisingly, there are a lot of jovial and happy people at a ferry terminal at 2am!  Excitement , I suppose.  I mean, I was kind of excited too (while Dave happily snored beside me).

They started loading the ferry around 3am.  And guess where we got to park?!  Deck one.  The lower deck.  The lowest deck.  The hole.  Drive into the boat, and then down a ramp, and then turn around and back into your spot.  And THEN, climb 4 flights of stairs to get to the main deck!

Pretty cool boat though.  Biggest I’ve ever been on anyway.  1200 passengers, 300 cars.  It wasn’t full, which was nice, so it didn’t feel crowded at all.  They’ve got a restaurant and bar, a lounge area, places to be outside on the deck, a ‘teen room’ full of ancient arcade games, computers and internet access, gift shop, and the recliners.  Oh, the recliners!  A room full of recliners and big screen tvs.  This is where we spent most of our boat ride, trying to get some sleep.  The snoring coming from that room was horrendous!  But we managed.

Finally, land!  Just around lunchtime; our first glimpses of The Rock.  Just the ferry backing to the terminal was pretty cool!  And then unloading.  Being the first ones on the boat, we were of course the last ones off.  Which was fine with me, because it meant that we were at the end of the line of ferry traffic.  Tim Hortons was still packed with traffic right out onto the road when we drove by it though!  

And then!  We drove for another 5 hours.  That’s right.  10 hours of driving, followed by a 7 hour ferry ride, followed by another 5 hours of driving!  Dave was about ready to fly home!  I let him sleep though while I drove.  The first hour of driving in Newfoundland was a taste of what the weather could do.  Wind and rain.  The highway isn’t in great shape, water pools on it everywhere, and hydroplaning is easy!  The gusty wind certainly doesn’t help the situation.  Needless to say, we didn’t make very good time in that first hour and I was starting to think that this is what our entire week was going to be like! 

By the time we made it to Corner Brook though, the wind had died down and the sun was shining.   Good thing too, because the further north we drove, the bigger the hills got, and the windier the roads.  We’re talking similar to the foothills of Alberta.  I had no idea that Newfoundland had mountains like this.   Mountains and ocean!  Finally, I’ve seen them together.

We pulled into the Gros Morne KOA campground around 7pm.  Nice little place.  Dave, the guy who only pretends to like the outdoors, and doesn’t actually care much for camping, even mentioned just how nice a place it is.  I call that progress.  One of these days he’ll be asking me to go camping.

Rained part of the night, but we were tucked cozily inside our tent.  And things were dry and sunny in the morning.

Today, Friday, Canada Day, is a do nothing day.  No plans, no driving, just hanging out.  Something we do quite well with a little highspeed internet and all of our gadgets!