Newfoundland (continued)

June 09, 2025 by Lisa Jabusch

In the US we tend to pronounce the name of the province with the stress on the first syllable, but locals stress the second syllable (newFOUNDland). Their accents varied as we made our way across the island, from general Canadian (oot and aboot) in the west, to nearly sounding Irish in St. John’s (on the east coast). I won’t belabor this now, as Steve will summarize our trip as usual, with interesting tidbits later.

Now, back to Gros Morne National Park. One of the main things tourists visiting this area do is take a boat ride into the Western Brook Pond. You should know that in Newfoundland, any body of fresh water is called a pond - even this 16km long lake:

As we had recently taken a boat ride into a fjord on the South Island of New Zealand, we passed on this activity. However, we did enjoy the stroll to get to the Pond…

… where we were kindly directed by some other tourists to take a side trail through a lovely woods. There, we found a cute Swamp Sparrow…

… tiny Scottish Primrose…

… and frogs…

… lots of frogs -

As usual, to watch the video above, tap the link at the end of this post to open it in your browser. We couldn’t really capture all the multitude of frogs hopping off the trail in front of us as we walked, but Steve captured a small representation there.

So before we proceeded up to the northern end of the Great Northern Peninsula, we had a nice last evening at the Lobster Cove Lighthouse -

With Steve’s love of history, we had to make the significant detour to the northernmost point of Newfoundland to visit L’Anse aux Meadows. This is the only known site of a Viking settlement in North America, dating to around 1,000 years ago. As we got near, the fog was rolling in…

… but hadn’t yet obscured the remains of icebergs in a cove -

I’m not sure what this sculpture had to do with Vikings, but I liked it -

That was at the beginning of the boardwalk trail through the replica of the settlement -

I included the picture above because it sets the scene of bleakness and fog, but you may want to enlarge it to see more details of the layout.

We both enjoyed our visit very much, and were thrilled to be there on the first day they started offering guided tours (June 1). Yay! We’re finally in tourist season.

We spent the night nearby, finding a nice iceberg in the cove beneath the B&B -

The next morning we did a short hike up to a hilltop overlooking the ocean…

… and coves around us -

All the little iceberg remnants were gorgeous -

As we drove back south, we passed a number of garden plots next to the highway…

… that were being readied for planting, but I couldn’t figure out how that little wooden fence would keep out moose. These plots would increase in number as we neared towns, then dwindle away after we passed through.

There were also huge stacks of wood along the highway…

… but my eye was always caught by the icebergs we drove by -

So I’ll end this note as we head east across the island province, with a reminder of the gorgeous sunsets we had on the west coast -

Newfoundland

June 08, 2025 by Lisa Jabusch

It takes a 7-8 hr ferry ride (bringing the car) to get here, from North Sydney, Cape Breton. We booked a room on the overnight ferry, and slept remarkably well. We both wanted to visit Newfoundland because it’s definitely off the beaten track for visitors to Atlantic Canada, and it’s a mix of different ecosystems. There are lakes and mountains…

… but also bogs…

… icebergs…

… puffins(!)…

… caribou…

… and moose, which we saw 2 of, but with no photographic proof. :(

The ferry arrived at the SW corner of the island, and after a hearty breakfast at a local cafe, we headed north. The first area we were going to explore was Gros Morne National Park. This lies along the western coast in the Great Northern Peninsula and extends east to the Long Range of mountains, which is the northern end of the Appalachians! A lot of this area is a boggy plain, dotted with innumerable bodies of water…

… that sometimes have cute inhabitants -

Apparently, moose are commonly seen on this peninsula, but no matter how far we tramped through the woods, or drove from one end of the island to the other, we were not fortunate enough to photograph one on this trip. I have yet to capture a photo of a full grown male with antlers, but Steve tried to help me out -

Gros Morne has beautiful territory for hiking, so we were definitely in our element here. The first trek we took on was to Baker’s Brook Falls (and included the Little Pond). We walked through a bog area on boardwalks and saw the remains of Pitcher Plants just off to the side -

The official Provincial Flower is carnivorous!

I was amazed that they would have survived the winter, and not just got completely broken down. There wasn't much for us to see, as far as vistas go...

(the ocean is that blue blur at the horizon)

... so we focused on birds (imagine that!) like this cute Black-and-white Warbler...

... and the Spruce Grouse beautifully posing...

... along with multicolored fungi -

The Brook’s Falls…

... were definitely worth the hike -

We stayed three nights in the town of Rocky Harbour (note the Canadian spelling), to easily access Gros Morne park. So the next day we hiked to the base of Gros Morne Mountain.

Table Mountain was a pretty mosaic -

We crossed a brook near a nice waterfall...

... on the way to the plateau...

... with several streams and ponds -

We thought the catkins of the Speckled Alder (you can see on the bottom right of that picture above) were quite pretty -

We needed to turn around at this valley because the route to the top was closed for a month. This was for the births and growth of the young of several species of birds and mammals. So we enjoyed the expansive views on our way back down -

We did one more hike in the national park, but I'll cover that (and more) in the next post. This sunset in Rocky Harbour will close out this one nicely -

Cape Breton Island

June 04, 2025 by Lisa Jabusch

Cape Breton makes up the eastern end of Nova Scotia, and is ruggedly beautiful. Our first activity was a short hike to Egypt Falls -

I wanted the people there so you could appreciate just how wide it was. It was challenging to photograph for that reason -

Our first evening was spent at a lovely little country inn that gave us this view from our room:

At breakfast the next morning, the fog was so thick, we could only see the reflection -

We then started driving the Cabot Trail, which is a 185 mile loop around the northern portion of the island. There was astounding coastal scenery…

… and the birch trees were just starting to leaf out -

The area is known for its stunning hikes, so you can guess what we did! This was a view from the Middle Head Trail on the east coast (we drove the Cabot Trail counterclockwise) -

It was reminiscent of Acadia…

As you can see, the weather had finally cleared up. I was SO happy!

Can you see all the buoys in the cove? They mark lobster traps.

As we hiked out to the point, we happened upon…

This was the first of many that we saw on our traversing of the Maritimes. Adirondack chairs were on every porch and patio, as well as tucked along trails at viewpoints.

Remember the red sands of PEI? Well, a lot of rocks here were strikingly pink -

I like to remind you occasionally that I don’t use any filters when photographing or do any color editing of my pictures. It really looked like that! And the water was that blue.

If you “google” the Cabot Trail, you’ll probably find some version of this scene -

This was taken from a very popular scenic viewpoint on the west coast.

One of the most popular hiking trails along the Cabot Trail is the Skyline Trail. I was a little leery of having to share it with tons of other hikers, but because we were so early in the season, we were the fifth car in the enormous lot (which was nearly full when we finished our hike).

Unfortunately, the first 3 miles of the hike was pretty flat and very boring for us, so we focused on interesting small things like the lichen above, which grew all over dead branches on otherwise green spruce trees. And, surprise, we admired lots of beautiful birds and their songs -

When we got out to the boardwalk, we finally understood why everyone raves…

… over the views -

We also found out, as we finished the trail, that you can go out and back just to the boardwalk and only have to hike a total of 2 miles, rather than the 6 we did.

One disadvantage of visiting here in the shoulder season was that some places weren’t open. We missed hearing live Celtic music (which the island is known for); the one pub in a little town we stayed in specifically for this was to open 3 days after we left. And on a personal note, my late father’s favorite single-malt distillery was also closed and scheduled to open for the summer season the week after our visit.

I don’t have anything spectacular to close out this blog, other than the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean -

New Brunswick and PEI

June 01, 2025 by Lisa Jabusch

For the longest time, I would see PEI in front of mussels or oysters on menus and wonder what it meant. For those of you pondering like I did, it stands for Prince Edward Island. This is the smallest in both land and population of the 13 Canadian provinces and territories. I just wanted to give that bit of explanation before I continue the story of our travels.

Driving north from Maine we entered Canada…

… in the province of New Brunswick. Our main destination was the Bay of Fundy. Steve had first read of the enormous tide changes when he was in grade school, so this was definitely on our list to see. This information sign explained the reasons well, so I’ll let you read it from here:

The Hopewell Rocks are sea stacks caused by water erosion, and they provide a natural measuring stick to be able to appreciate the tidal changes. We first saw them at high tide (41 feet that day)…

… and then were planning on going back near low tide to be able to “walk on the seafloor”, but the provincial park running the concession closed before we could get back from our hike (eyeroll). Obviously, we neglected to note this before we took off on our hike. So we made a quick stop the next morning, but the park didn’t open until a couple of hours after low tide (another eyeroll), so this was the best we could see at the time (it was also raining) -

I wasn’t able to get the exact same viewpoints, but this is easier to see the tide difference side-by-side:

Friends of ours who were visiting on the same actually paid attention to the posted park hours and allowed me to “borrow” this picture, so you can see scale better -

Here’s another interesting manifestation of low tide -

As far as the hike that made us miss low tide at “the Rocks”, it was an easy walk through a lush woods…

… with beautiful early-spring Trilliums…

… and a pretty stream…

… where our hike ended -

After we descended the staircase, this is what we found -

See the little blue sign attached to the tree above? That meant the trail was down that streambed, through the water on slick mossy rocks. No thank you. The waterfall that we were supposed to see at the end of the trail wasn’t worth slipping and falling, ruining ourselves or my camera. I settled for this mini version -

Okay… so now we’ll go on to PEI. It is connected to New Brunswick by a 13 km bridge…

… that is Canada’s longest bridge and the world’s longest bridge over ice-covered water.

As we drove through the center of the island, we were surprised at how much of the acreage was farmland. The dirt is very red…

… due to its high iron-oxide content. It is sandy and well drained, making it very suitable for agriculture—in fact, little PEI is Canada’s largest potato producer! As we drove north across the island, we noticed fog coming in, and the ground began to “smoke” -

We reached the north shore, intending on checking out the red sand beaches and cliffs…

… but it was not your typical late May beach day weather -

Apparently, this is a popular place in warmer weather -

Because the weather was so nasty, we didn’t end up visiting any of the fifty lighthouses that PEI is known for. However, oysters are a big thing here, and we sampled several different kinds -

I read that PEI oysters exported today are all descended from ones originally from Malpeque Bay on the north coast, where the water is clear and cold. We were too early in the tourist season to be able to take a tour of an oyster farm, but we saw a number of bays filled with rafts for “suspended culture” (in contrast to traditional bottom harvesting) -

Oysters take 5-7 years to grow to market-size of 3 inches. There are 6.5 million pounds of oysters harvested annually from PEI.

Our last stop was Charlottetown, the provincial capital, with its quaint historic district…

The tulips were out in full force, letting us believe that spring was really here!

Acadia National Park

May 31, 2025 by Lisa Jabusch

On the first day we visited Acadia, the weather wasn’t very cooperative. At least it wasn’t raining, but it was foggy -

That was at the top of Cadillac Mountain (we drove) and it was windy and freezing. We went back the next afternoon, and this is the type of view we were supposed to have -

So that first day, we opted to walk in the Sieur de Monts Spring area…

… which was lush and green. The Fiddlehead Ferns were coming up…

… the fungi were a riot of color…

… and the birches provided a nice background -

So now on to our second day in the park. From atop Cadillac Mountain you can see the string of Porcupine Islands, as well as the town of Bar Harbor -

The coast of Maine is dotted with innumerable islands -

That afternoon, we tackled a very interesting trail - the Beehive Trail. This was one of the markings that showed us where to go on the trail -

It wasn’t a very long trail, but it was super fun to scramble up…

… and had great views from the top -

On our last full day in Acadia, we drove over to the Schoodic Peninsula, which is a small part of the park on the mainland (the main part of the park is on Mount Desert Island).

Schoodic Point had some really interesting rocks -

… that you could explore -

We kept seeing all this white stuff on the ground in the woods, so I had to get a close-up of it -

Now as we head north, we’ll bid the coast of Maine adieu -

Driving in New England

May 23, 2025 by Lisa Jabusch

Now our next adventure is a late spring/early summer driving trip exploring a number of NE states we haven’t visited before, then heading up into the Maritime Provinces of Canada. The first new state for us was New Jersey. I had read that Cape May, on the southern tip, was a popular summer destination filled with Victorian mansions…