Ray and Lori's Bogus Adventure: From Port Aux Basque to Rattling Brook Falls

We had had a busy few days of driving and site seeing. As my last entry says we took that gawd awful ferry ride from North Sydney to Port Aux Basque. We arrived in Port Aux Basque at about 1:00 am and by 1:30 we were tucked into our hotel snug as a bug. When we left the ferry in the dark, we could see that the landscape was pretty rugged with lots of barren rocks. In the morning after breakfast we decided that we would tour the little town of Port Aux Basque. Well there was not much to see really, narrow winding streets that more or less created a bit of a semi circle and had us back at the hotel. We did the local school, grocery store, a couple of banks and a small hospital about the size of Mission's hospital. The landscape was definitely barren with lots of rocks and very few trees. Kind of reminded me of the road from White Horse to Skagway.

Port Aux Basque is a fishing village and as it is very sheltered it was used by many as a shelter from the elements. It is an ice free port facing the Gulf of St Lawrence, so is a natural shelter for both the fisherman and the ferry from Nova Scotia.

We had a long drive ahead of us as we had planed to get to Corner Brook and possibly head farther up the western side of the Province. The weather was very overcast with some showers. Absolutely no sunshine to be seen. The further north we went we seemed to be losing the rocky terrain, and found ourselves in a heavily forested area of mid sized spruce trees. Might have been a few cedar trees in the mix but definitely nothing with the pine beetle destruction as we have at home. The landscape was so similar to northern Ontario or the Interior of BC. Shorter stubbier trees.

Just north of Port Aux Basque was Table Mountain. This beautiful range of mountains is sort of like a plateau. It has great hiking for those inclined to do so. Ray and I,,,,,,, not so much. We did meet a couple from Toronto who had taken the time out of their drive to hike the mountain, but at 518 meters, it was not exactly our cup of tea. It would have been a great motorcycle ride if the weather was cooperating.

We decided to take a jaunt into Stephenville, which is about 25 kms off of Highway 1. In order to get there we had to take the Stephenville Crossing. The crossing is the easternmost limit of the St George Bay. It was very windy and as we had to cross a "low" point in the land we were level with the sea. It was so beautiful that I had to take a photo of that waves that were crashing on the short. I thought that I was going to blow away when I took this photo.

After the crossing we went into Stephenville. Stephenville was at one time the home to a United States Armed Forces base. Among other things this base was used as a refuelling stop for transatlantic military flights during the war. The airport is now owned and operated by the local Airport Authorities. In 1990 this airport is one of five Canadian airports that is a designated emergency landing site for the USA space shuttle.

After leaving this little town of approximately 8,000 we continued north. We left the ocean behind and driving through terrain that you can pretty much see anywhere. Even through you are following the coast line, in order to see the coast you have to leave Highway 1 and on poor secondary roads you would need to travel from 15 kms to 50 kms. As the day was raining and miserable, and with Ray saying "once you have seen one beach, you have seen them all" (sound familiar?) we declined to take these sojourns.

Our next stop was Corner Brook. With a population of almost 20,000 Corner Brook is the largest city on the west side of Newfoundland. As you drive down the hill into the town you can see that the main employer is likely to be the pulp and paper mill. The fairly large town is located on the Bay of Islands at the mouth of the Humber River. Even with the rain you could see that this was a beautiful old town.

Reading in our travel guide there was a large gift shop called the Newfoundland Emporium. We had seen many signs along the highway advertising this as a great shop to gifts from home crafts, knitting by the locals etc... I plunked the address into the GPS and away we went in search of this gift shop that would allow me to spend tons of money on nothing! We arrive at this decrepit store which had promised in the write up to have a Newfoundlander dog on site. True to the write up, there was a big old black Newfie dog at the shop taking up quite a bit of space on the floor. She could barely lift her heavy head from the store... but I was happy that I got to see one of these magnificent dogs. There was 3 floors to this emporium. Level one had some 2nd hand items and the big dog. We went up to the 2nd floor and mixed in with all the 2nd hand "junk" was some hand knitted socks, hats and mittens. also some beautiful sweaters and scarves. The only problem was they really did not smell very good. We went back down to the 1st floor and were going to continue to the bottom floor, which was the basement,,,,,but there was a horrendous smell of mould. We steered away from there! So this was a 2nd hand store, with some "antiques" in the basement that also had some knitted items made by some of the locals. We did not buy anything and feeling somewhat deflated left town. We did drive through the town looking for a "mom and pop" type place to eat but could not find anything.

Continuing north and then east on Highway 1, we decided that we would head to Deer Lake as the travel guide had listed a nice B&B in that little town. Dear Lake is the gateway to the Great Northern Peninsula, which we had originally want to drive. The Peninsula is scattered with small towns and from what we had seen so far, a lot of these places are closed for the season, so the farther north we went, we may not have anywhere to stay. In the early years, the residents of Deer Lake were loggers and trappers with some farming (although we saw no farming at all in this Province,,,, anywhere). In 1955 the Regional Deer Lake airport was built and today is the main employer of the town of 5,000. The airport serves 55,000 annually which considering the small size of this town is a lot of people passing through.

The B&B we stayed in was called the Birds Nest, and thinking that we were thrilled at the thought of staying in the home of some true Newfies and hearing stories of the area. When I booked the room over the phone, I spoke with a woman who was definitely a Newfoundlander. Imagine our surprise when we arrived to find the host was the husband of the woman on the phone. He was from England and a true Englishman! His wife worked out of the house and we never did get a chance to speak with her. He ran the B&B and did a beautiful job at it. The home was warm and welcoming and all four of the rooms were rented. We briefly met the other guests in the morning at breakfast, with the exception of one couple from Lake Huron who run their own B&E.

The next morning we headed off for the day. Our goal was to get to Gander and spend the night there at another B&B. We continued on Hwy 1 which was a great highway. We did go off the highway to go into a couple of the coastal towns but the roads in where not great. Most of the towns were a distance off the main highway and as Ray did not like the roads, we didn't go into many. At the Springdale turn off we stopped at an Information building on the highway. The lovely lady there directed us to leave the Highway for about 10 mms to Rattling Brook Falls. She said that it was a must see, and you had to "walk" in for about 1/2 km to get a good view of the falls.

Rattling Brooks falls is 800 feet and is actually two falls. One flowing about 30 feet above the other. We did park on the roadside and took a walk through the walked in on a well kept path and then a boardwalk complete with stairs. The last 109 steeps steps, Ray took while I stayed at the bottom and got chewed alive by black flies.