Thursday - August 9, 2007

Wow, what an adventure today was, and my wishing for a nice day was all in vain. It rained all night and we woke up to rain and wind, but onto the ferry we went – we were up at 6 to pick up our tickets by 7 for the 8 a.m. ferry. The ride over was rough but certainly not enough to make us seasick. We had breakfast when we got on board then after eating we went up to a lounge on the 7th level which looked out over the front of the ship – what a nice view of waves and rain, although we did see a dolphin frolicking in the waves.

We docked at Blanc-Sablon in Quebec and then drove into Labrador and up the coast to where the highway crossed the Pinware River – very pretty. We would have liked to go to Red Bay where there is what sounds like a good National Historical Site about the Basque whalers, but we were afraid we wouldn’t have enough time to drive there, do the site and get back to the ferry by 2:30 for its 3:30 p.m. return (little did we know!). Instead we toured around all the little towns between the ferry and Pinware and they were really nice and the drive was very scenic. Fortunately, although it was raining and there were gale force winds, we could still see a fair bit. We stopped and toured a little museum which depicted life along the coast a hundred years ago and chatted for a while with the young fellow who was doing tours of it - he told me all about his trapping experiences! He also filled us in on the story of the S.S. Raleigh, a British naval ship, which sunk off the coast of Labrador in 1922 - quite interesting to hear the details.

When we got back to the ferry dock at 2:30 we were met by a couple from Vancouver who like us had crossed over in the morning just for the day and they proceeded to tell us the return ferry had been cancelled, it was still in St. Barbe, but there would be an update around 4 as to whether or not it was going to make the return crossing. You guessed it, it didn’t!! So here we are stuck for the night in Labrador and of course totally unprepared. We went back to L’Anse au Clair and got a room at the Northern Lights motel, then we headed out trying to pick up a few necessities – we got toothbrushes, toothpaste and I got a nightie but no where could I find a speck of makeup! Either women in Labrador don’t wear makeup of else they buy it all from Avon as I couldn’t even buy an eyebrow pencil anywhere. We drove as far back as Blanc-Sablon but did manage to find a deal on beer – whoopee!!

We had dinner at the motel then had an early night, all the excitement tired us out, plus, I didn’t have my computer (and the hotel had wi-fi!!), my palm, my phone or a book – talk about unprepared. There were not a lot of TV stations so it was a very quiet, boring evening. Every store we had gone into I had checked for books thinking I could buy one to read and they didn’t even sell those, go figure. I think the motel quite liked the ferry being cancelled as there were a number of us who stayed there for the night.

The motel did have a computer in the lobby so I checked my e-mail and John checked his and he had an e-mail from Steve and Cheryl, a couple we met in northern Arizona who live in White Rock B.C. and they will be visiting the Gaspesie the same time as us as Cheryl is from there, so we are hoping we can meet up when we’re there.