Tuesday - August 28, 2007

Today was another beautiful day and it is getting warmer, today it got up to about 22 in the truck.

We drove across to Carbonear then down the Conception Bay side of the peninsula, and it was another pretty drive. Harbour Grace is a pretty town and it was the starting point of Amelia Earhart’s first successful solo Trans-Atlantic flight. We had seen on TV a couple of weeks ago that they had just erected a new monument to commemorate her flight so when we saw the signs for the airport we headed up to see the monument – wrong. It was a twisty, turney, very steep dirt road and when we finally did get to the airfield there was a small plaque that has been there for years. The only saving grace of that drive was that there was a paddock beside the airfield with some beautiful Newfoundland ponies in it. Back down we went and found a visitor’s centre with a lovely statute of Amealia Earhart as well as an old DC3 – the Spirit of Harbour Grace. Oh well, the view from the airport was lovely. In the harbour is the S.S. Kyle which had a varied career – it was a coastal schooner and a sealer among other things and went aground in the harbour in the late 60’s. The town has painted it and left it sitting on a sandbar in the harbour. Harbour Grace is also home to the oldest stone church in the province – St. Paul’s Anglican and it is a beautiful church.

We meandered our way down the coast through Bryant’s Cove, Spaniard’s Bay, Bay Roberts, South River, Clarke’s Beach and North River. Bay Roberts is quite a large town, it even has three sets of traffic signals (the first ones we’ve seen since Corner Brook!) and is very pretty. We toured the Cable Building that was home to the first trans Atlantic cable and it also has a very interesting Mercantile Museum as well as an art gallery, and this is all part of the municipal building. We then picked up Highway 75 which is a main artery and bypasses all the small towns and villages and made our way back to Carbonear where we stopped at Dominion for groceries then on home.

Another nice day in Newfoundland!