Newfoundland

We didn't have a reservation for the ferry from Blanc Sablon QC to St.Barbe NL, but we luckily managed to get on and got one of the last spots. No motion sickness. Less than two hours. It was good.

I love Newfoundland. First off, the bugs are noticeably better than in Labrador. Not sure why the short distance across the sea makes a difference, but it does. We drove north to St.Anthony's and Luke took me for taters at Mary Brown's...a Newfoundland must! That are pretty fantastic. There was also a very friendly journalist that we met, who told us to go check out the icebergs. So we did. There was a particularly large, nice one right next to the look-out that was built to view the icebergs as they come into the harbour.

This particular iceberg made the CBC news, as a video of it breaking later on that evening:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/iceberg-video-stanthony-newfoundland-labrador-breakup-1.3672511

We then headed to L'Anse aux Meadow, where there is an ancient Viking settlement from about a thousand years ago. Technically it's a Norse settlement, since 'viking' is reserved for when they were pillaging and raping, and this was a peaceful settlement. Nothing is left (that hasn't been taken by archeologists) except the indentations of where the buildings were in the ground. The buildings were very, very small and the biggest building was for the most important resident, Leif Erickson.

Depressions in the land where the buildings stood

The settlement had about 60 people living there and they suspect they did ship repair there, as well as taking resources from the land back to Greenland. They did have a recreation of the village just beside where the actual village was. The building walls were made out of peat! It kept them cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

Peat House

Inside, they had items they would have used on display. There were very few women at the settlement, and the ones that were there were the wives of the important men. They had sheep and spun wool and knit and did weaving. I would have fit right in!

Spindles and wool

A Loom

More wooly goodness

While we were getting the tour with the tour guide, a moose and her calf appeared in the distance. According to the guide, that moose has had several offspring in the area. It was an eventful first day in Newfoundland!

More Labrador

One thing that surprised me about traveling the trans-Labrador was how few animals we saw. Aside from one beautiful red fox, we only saw a handful of song birds and some ravens. Since there is so much unadulterated forest, I'm hoping that means that all the bears and moose and everyone else are frolicking happily somewhere besides close to the road. However, the same could be said for the most northern part of BC and we saw piles of wildlife there.

We stopped briefly in Churchill Falls in the morning. All the houses look the same, the only variation being the kind and colour of truck in the driveway. At 8:30am the town was practically dead. Except for the occasional pick-up truck and small handful of pedestrians there was no sign of anyone at all. There is a large school with play grounds, a park and lots of bikes and toys in people's yards, so I found it rather confusing. It was a sunny, warm morning--where was everyone??  It is obviously a town with lots of families. We made breakfast in a parking lot next to the park, while I felt a bit creeped out at the silence. Then we went to the gas station and were immediately swarmed by black flies. So, even though there are clearly pockets of bug-free areas like our breakfast spot, it seems likely that everyone (not working at the hydro station) hides in their homes from the bugs in the morning.

We continued on driving and eventually made it to Happy Valley-Goose Bay.  It was much more interesting--cute homes, a nice new info centre, some arts and culture. Something very nice that I noticed all through our trip was that people are generally not on their cell phones. In such rural, small town places there probably isn't much need for it...regardless it was so so nice to see people not having their heads buried in their phones, oblivious to the world. I think we actually stood out, since we would have our laptops out in the coffee shop to use the internet while everyone else around us was socializing.

boat on the water in Goose Bay

We eventually continued onto the last stretch of the highway--it is the newest part of the highway that was completed in 2002, connecting the entire route. It was the worst stretch of the route too, with many many potholes, and seemed to be the busiest.

We had another terrible night of mosquitoes, even though we blocked all the gaps and vents. Then we had to hide from the bugs in the van for breakfast...which turned the van into a sauna. At least we have the luxury of doing that now that we have room and a little kitchenette!

At this point, having been mostly in the middle of nowhere for about a week, Luke was starting to develop a beard and insisted on referring to the province as "La-beard-or".

The road was so bumpy, our new bike rack was starting to regularly come loose. Luke also had his pivot bolt on his bike almost completely unscrew itself and his dropper post was starting to rise.

Finally, we made it to the coast and Red Bay. Such a beautiful landscape!

Red Bay, Labrador, with iceberg in the background

Whaling Station, Red Bay

We ended the day in L'anse de Claire, QC, where we found a windy, bugless place to sleep at the top of a hill. We had iceberg neighbours!

the rest of Northern Quebec and Labrador

Our next mini-stop on the road was a place called Ancienne Ville de Gagnon, which no longer exists but used to be a mining town in the 1950s. The only indication there was anything there was the forest looking disturbed (trees and shrubs smaller than the surrounding forest), a couple of manholes, and some small piles of rubble.

It's amazing to think that there used to be 1500 people living here. There wasn't a road at the time, so train was the only way to get there. In 1985 the town closed and it was bull dosed and buried. Then two years later the road, highway 389, was completed and went right through the middle of the town that no longers exists.

There are actual towns along the highway, but there are no more than a handful of portable-looking buildings in a small clump. Some have a gas station, but most do not.

At one point there was a transport that had stopped to rest on the side of the road, by a pretty river. The truck was transporting timber for my home town of Thunder Bay, so I had to take a photo:

Next we passed Fire Lake QC, and there was a fairly big open-pit mine. The water in the lake and streams surrounding the mine was bright red/orange--it's an iron mine, but since I know little about such things I'm not sure if that's normal or healthy.

A bit further down the road is a much larger iron mine, Mont-Wright.

I recently read that there is a surplus of iron in the world right now, so they anticipate the mine will be slowing down. Just north of the mine is Fermont, the last town before Labrador. They have a huge work truck on display as you enter:

Standing next to it, I'm half the height of the wheel!

As you can see from the photos, the weather was beautiful the whole time--sunny and warm. It continued to be that way the whole rest of the way on the highway.

Just a few more minutes on the highway got us to Labrador and Labrador City.  It actually was a bit uninteresting. They did have a nice Tim Hortons with wifi though! (we didn't have any coffee there though, so rest assured our coffee-snobbery is still going strong)

So, before we left for our trip I bought a bug jacket since I had heard about how bad the bugs are in the summer.  All through Quebec though we didn't have any problems with bugs at all, so I was starting to think I bought it for nothing....then we entered Labrador.

I don't understand why the difference in bugs between northern Quebec and Labrador would be so profound, but was it ever. Even though we were closed up in the van to sleep, we swatted mosquitos non-stop, all night. We smushed hundreds of mosquitos. Of course they have to come buzzing around your head as you're trying to sleep, and as soon as you'd get it another one would be there almost instantly.
After two nights of this, we clued in that we had to be much fussier about where we stopped for the night. As long as we could find a breezy enough place we were fine, so we became pretty good at hunting those places down.

During the day, it was the black flies that were swarming. However, for some strange reason they weren't really biting very much...so I didn't have to resort to killing them mercilessly. There were some monstrously big horseflies though.

Trans-Labrador Highway

Before I forget (again), Luke has is own blog now too:
blog.photonstudio.net
If you're looking for more photos, less chit-chat, that's the place to go!

The trans-Labrador was generally much better than I expected. The roads were pretty decent, except for a couple of stretches that had lots of potholes and loose gravel. There was much more traffic too. There was at least a dozen vehicles a day, sometimes quite a bit more...I was prepared to not see anyone at all. We didn't bother picking up one of the complimentary SAT phones to take for the ride and I don't think we would have needed it if we had problems. I'm sure it's different when it isn't summer though.

The Quebec portion was very nice. Beautiful forests and not too many bugs. We stopped briefly at Manic-2, the smaller of the Manic hydro stations. Twice the amount of water of Niagara Falls comes out of its spillway!

There is also Manic-5, which is enormous! We sadly just missed the last tour of the day, but it was worth just driving past it.

It's hard to appreciate how large it is from this picture, but it's 700 feet tall.
View from the top:

Manic-5 is at the southern tip of the river that comes down from Lac Manicouagan, where a 5km asteroid hit over 200 million years ago. Here's an overhead image of it, from wikipedia:

There's a hike at Mt.Groulx, where you can get a view the crater. We learned about it too late to do the hike, but next time!
I did take a photo of the edge of it though:

There are some beautiful rocks in the area--maybe formed from the impact of the asteroid? Anyway, here's a shiny example:

And here the sunset from our first night:

That was the first day on the highway. More to come!

Finally, back in the travel saddle!

It was a long hiatus from traveling--about 9 months. It was good in that it recharged our OHIP requirements, and we were around for some family medical issues (which all turned out well in the end, thank goodness).
But now we're back on the road, this time traveling east. I've never been east of Quebec City (in Canada anyways), so I'm particularly excited to see this part of Canada!

We started out by going to Collingwood for a couple of days. We did a bike ride at Three Stage and had a very successful first night in the new traveling van! It is very comfortable and we're really appreciating the extra room. Plus, we camped in a field full of fire flies--so pretty!

The big highlight of Collingwood was seeing a WOLF! At first we thought it was a coy wolf, but it was awfully big and wolf-like...and after searching on the internets we figured out it was an actual wolf. It was fast and lithe, and ran through someone's back yard (in the mountains, in a forested area...but still). I wish we could of caught it and kept it as our trail dog/wolf ;)

We then headed to Toronto for a visit with friends. Friends who make us Eggs Florentine. Aww yeah.

Next we went to Ottawa to visit family. Ottawa was surprisingly warm and I finally got to swim in my brother's new pool. We discovered that someone else enjoys their pool as well--we witnessed a chipmunk diving into the pool and doing a partial lap before my brother scooped it out. They have a pad that floats at the side of the pool so that animals that fall in can get back out, and it was clear this chipmunk had done this before.

There is a horse stable close to their house, so we went to see the horses and saw three foxes in the field as well! A mom with two cubs. The cubs tumbled around, playing, while the mom came a bit closer to check us out before deciding we were harmless...or boring.

We also saw a terrible house fire, with dark smoke billowing into the sky. It was the second fire in that neighbourhood this month. With the first house, the fire razed the house to the ground. Crazy.

We went to Stella Luna for gelato as a treat too. They recently won third place in some important gelato competition for their "rick chocolate, KOVAL single-barrel organic bourbon, ganache swirl and maple-candied pecans" flavour. It was delicious! It was a great visit to Ottawa overall.

We then started making our way out east. The drive along the north shore of Quebec and the St.Lawrence was particularly beautiful and I loved the fjords at the mouth of the Saguenay river.

We finally made it to Baie Comeau (it smelled *amazing*, like sweet pine) and the start of the trans-Labrador highway!

The Animal Episode

There have been a number of fun animal interactions this summer, so I've decided to dedicate this post to them.

Just yesterday Luke was biking on a trail in Brevard NC. He came flying out of a bushy rhododendron area only to end up biking right in between two black bears. The bears took off in opposite directions. This was a first for Luke!
He also saw a very large black snake, who he had to poke off the trail with a long stick. And he saw a turkey. The turkey was well behaved.

Luke had also recently seen a big black bear in Tennessee, but it sadly was extremely skinny and out of it (presumably from hunger). Very upsetting. Apparently the acorns season was quite poor this year, so they were signs posted to expect to see more bears than normal in the lower areas, looking for food. The bear population has been soaring after they were reintroduced about 20 years ago. Hopefully this doesn't mean that a bunch of them will be starving this year.

Luke sees many more bears than I do. I suspect I'm not fast enough to surprise them, and that they can hear my panting from a mile away. I'm not complaining, by the way.

The next exciting animal encounter was back a couple of months ago, in Bellingham. We were at a beaver dam and managed to sneak up on the beaver so we could watch it for a bit. It was diving in the water and coming up every 30 seconds or so, chewing. This went on for a bit, until I tried to sneakily take a photo with my phone. The phone make a little click sound and that was enough to alert the beaver to our presence. It started swimming along, parallel to us, until ==SMACK==, it slapped the water with its tail and dove away. Very dramatic! Sadly, after all that I didn't even get a good photo of the beaver because my phone camera sucks.

While we were in Tennessee we saw a lot of insect action.

Gross caterpillar nest

This was a spider/caterpillar show down. The spider kept trying to bite the caterpillar, but just got mouthfuls of fluff. The caterpillar wriggled until the spider jumped back, then it managed to get free of the web. Caterpillar wins!

Grasshopper that looks like a leaf. One of these jumped on my face a couple of days later.

Then there were the orb spiders. These were everywhere! They make very pretty webs and aren't poisonous, which is good since both Luke and I got a number of these on our heads as we were biking.

I've never seen spikes like these on a spider before! I went to the Big Fork Ranger Station to ask about what kind of spider these are. Both rangers gave me a funny/grossed out look and proclaimed that they don't know anything about spiders (these spiders are *everywhere*, so I was surprised that they didn't know anything at all about them). Internet and google came to the rescue and identified it for us. Not sure what they learn in ranger school, but spider identification is not in the curriculum.

I met a couple of very nice gentlemen from the Asheville area yesterday and learned from them that the long-leggy squirrels we've been seeing in the area are 'boomers'. They are super fast and acrobatic. I also learned that the chestnut-looking nuts are buckeyes, and that they say that if you carry one around with you, you'll stay healthy. I also learned that the buckeyes are partly poisonous, and they say that if you want to know what parts you can eat, ask the squirrels. 'They' have charming sayings, I think.

July and some August

Soooo, after Ed's visit we went up to B.C. and revisited Pemberton, Squamish and Vancouver. First we checked out the downhill trails in Abbotsford. I rode Squid Line, while Luke did some more ambitious stuff up higher.
We spent a lovely few days with our friends Phil and Mary-Lin in Squamish. There was good coffee, eating, swimming and biking. So sweet!
We then went to Vancouver to see our friends Holly and Alex, and to see Luke's brother Andrew who just moved to Vancouver a month before. We did the grouse grind with Andrew (and watched some of the horribly cheesy lumberjack show at the top), and Holly is always up for some difficult biking with Luke.

After a great couple of weeks in BC, we headed back down to the Bellingham WA area. We made a trip out to Anacortes, Levenworth, and the Mt.Baker area too. As I had mentioned, Luke's bike frame had cracked and we had to wait for the replacement frame to show up.
Here's a cute moment from our trip out to Mt.Baker. We were having breakfast at a little picnic area and I found this little mouse trapped in the bathroom.

It must have been in there for a while because it was very hungry and very lethargic. The very first thing it did was jam an old spider web in its mouth, and then proceeded to eat and eat and eat everything else it saw. It got progressively more spunky and eventually it was energetic enough to hop away into the woods.
Here's the view from the river right next to the picnic area. I wasn't able to capture the vibrant blue of the glacier water (I need more lessons from Luke it seems).

Luke's frame came just in time for us to meet up with our friend Ed, who brought his family along this time too! They did a big road trip of Canada and the US this summer and we were lucky to spent a couple of weeks with them.
We started in the Port Angeles area of the Olympic Peninsula, then headed over to Duthie (which was a huge success because Duthie is the best!). We then went down to Hood River and Bend Oregon, and ended the trip with Sun Valley Idaho. The last two times we went to Sun Valley we were pretty much rained out, so it was nice to actually spent some time on the trails this time. Luke even found some gold in a river!

We went to a great area just outside of Sisters Oregon that had....LAVA! It was the Dee Wright Observatory, where they made a little building out of lava rocks a bunch of decades ago. Here it is, with the moon still in the sky:

I learned a lot about A A Lava, thanks to the plaques along an info trail that was made. This is a kipuka, the little islands of tree that were spared during the most recent lava flows.

Are our bikes going for a ride without us? Har har!

The observatory had these neat little windows which identified the volcano you could see as you peaked through.

Here are some more snowy volcanos, along with the A A.

We're now in Jackson and Driggs WY. We were rained out the last time we were here too, so we're doing unfinished business. The traffic and amount of tourists is pretty horrible in Jackson, since it's so close to Yellowstone. I would hate to see how busy the park is right now. Luckily things get much less crowded once you leave Jackson.