Cape Race, NFLD

We are doing what's called the Irish Loop, Southern Avalon Peninsula and this is Ferryland where one of the first English settlements in North America was founded in 1621 by Lord Baltimore. For the past decade archaeologists have been excavating his Colony of Avalon. Here are just a couple of pictures of what they've uncovered. If you notice the iron circle it's what's left of an oven and the next picture is Lord Baltimore's mansion, really not very big but this is the 1600's!! They do have demonstrations of life of the 17th century kitchen and the lady there will actually cook bread in the black pot over the fire for you.

This lighthouse was the highlight of the tour. You had to walk one km up to get there but it was worth it. Inside this white building was a kitchen where these ladies made up a picnic for you. We could order a choice of different sandwiches on homemade bread, of course with fresh squeezed lemonade and homemade dessert. They gave us a blanket and put it all in a basket and we made our way down the hill and nestled comfortably under the rocks. So fun! And the view was spectacular!

This picture is taken up the hill from where we were having our picnic and while we ate our lunch we enjoyed watching the waves crashing agains this huge rock out in the ocean.
You could see for miles and miles of open sea. It was so pretty and relaxing in the sun. It was hard to leave this place.

The picture with the flatten rocks above and the two below is called Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve where you could find some of the most spectacular Precambrian fossils know on earth. This was on the way to Cape Race and we had to stop and walk down to the shoreline. It was very windy that day, actually most days are windy in NFLD.

This is Cape Race, National Historic site because this lighthouse has the most powerful light on the western side of the North Atlantic. This lighthouse got the first distress call from the Titanic. Also a good spot to look for whales and I saw one! The ocean being so vast and blue I noticed this bright green colour in the water way out there, when up comes a spout of water and a dorsal fin. The green color you see is called the "aquapatch" which is the side fin. I have more pictures of whales, much better than this picture...coming up later!

Here we are at the end of the day at the B&B we found called The Claddagh owned by some really nice people, Shirley & Adrian. Their B&B was right across the street from a crab plant so we had a pile of crab legs for dinner that night. She made homemade bread and jams that were delicious! By sheer coincidence, the owners of the bed and breakfast were the in-laws for a doctor that Martin had taught in the palliative care program in Calgary. It was a nice end to our day.