Twillingate - Witless Bay - St. John's
Twillingate: From Gros Morne, we headed off to the Twillingate area, a group of islands on the northeastern shore of Newfoundland. Here, we wanted to experience the coastal life of the island, eat local meals, and see a lot of a non - tourist area.
Well, it rained or was cloudy the whole time we were in this beautiful area. But it didn't stop us from exploring and catching the typical life in this part of Newfoundland!
This is the lighthouse at the far north point of northeastern Newfoundland, Long Point. There was an intersting museum on the fishing industry which predominates the economy in this area.
A typical fishing village at the entrance to Twillingate Harbour.
One thing they have all over the island this time of year are ripe blueberries. Here's Cindy picking another basket which we used on cereal and blueberry pancakes!
Witless Bay: We drove down in driving rain and wind over bad roads, but it was worth it to get to this unique area just outside St. John's, the capital of the Newfoundland province.
On an exploring trip, we drove south to check out some hiking trails. We ended up having a picnic at the Ferryland Lighthouse (a couple of women offered to rehab the lighthouse if they could open the business). The picture on the right is our view while we enjoyed curried chicken and a unique type of ham & cheese sandwhich with real lemonade. Later we went through the Lord Baltimore Colony of Avalon, a current excavation "in progress", the colony was started in 1621.
These pictures are from the Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve. Esentially a seabird rookery, and the most observable location in North America. You walk to a point and there are tens of thousands of birds right in front of you. Fog, wind, cold just contributes to the experience. Since it was late in the season, we saw mostly Northern Gannet seabirds, wingspan of over 6 feet, and very noisy. I guess they lay eggs on the rock, on ledges over 400 feet above the ocean. We could have watched for hours but the damp cold finally got to us and we hiked the one mile trail back to the truck. The bird on the lower right is a Black Legged Kittiwake, actuallly the only seagull that dives for food. They were acrobatic in how they flew around the cliffs and chased after food. Cindy took the picture of the mating pair on the lower left that appeared not to have a chick. You can see a chick on a ledge in the picture above that, watch that first step down, about 400 feet!
St. John's and pictures from our location on Witless Bay
This is the view from our trailer overlooking Witless Bay. Except for the weekend, we have had the whole place to ourselves. The tourist season is about over in Newfoundland.
From Signal Hill, this is a view of the St. John's Harbour. St. John's is the provincial capital and has a metro population of about 175,000. The city is very old (late 1600's), very clean, and very unique. We restocked, hit a couple of museums, gas, and sampled some great Newfie food.
The entrance to St. John's Harbour, a very narrow opening which was easily defended from the promitories around it This was taken from Signal Hill also.
One day we went for a short cruise to an island to see some Atlantic Puffins. We saw many flying, but hard to get close to them (it's just too late in the season for them, also for whales). But I did get a pic of one flying. The other seabird is a Murres, a beautiful seabird, not too common, I got lucky on this shot. We also saw a bald eagle soaring over the island.
Check out the next page for our last hike in this area before heading out to Bonavista.
Location Links
Bob & Cindy's 2005 Travel Web Site
