Tuesday - August 7, 2007

We woke to sunshine this morning which unfortunately didn’t last long but it didn’t rain other than a couple of drops so we aren’t complaining. John checked the latitude here and it is the same as James Bay, no wonder the temperatures are in the mid to high 60’s.

We went into St. Anthony this morning and stopped at Tim’s for coffee and there were all kinds of people walking around and coming in, we thought there must be a bus tour in town. After Tim’s we were heading into the middle of town and all of a sudden we could see a cruise ship out in the harbour and tenders running back and forth, guess that is where all the people were coming from. We drove up to Fishing Point so we could get a good look at the ship and John got some pictures and what a busy place it was, all the locals plus all us tourists were out to see the cruise ship. I turned on my phone and was pleasantly surprised to find I had a signal so we called Kel and my mom and got a bonus when my sister answered mom’s phone so also had a good chat with her. We wanted to hear how Kel and her family’s trip to Quebec City and Presquile went and she said it was good but it was extremely hot so made it difficult for sightseeing.

We went to the Visitors Centre here which was all about Sir Wilfred Grenfell, a doctor/Justice of the Peace/Preacher who came from England to Labrador and Newfoundland in about 1892 to care for all the people in the fishing outposts. He used schooners as his mode of transportation as all the fishing posts were inaccessible by land, It was a really good display about his life and the hospitals, schools, medical outposts etc. for which he got funding to set them up and keep them running. The people in the fishing outposts were very poor and TB was rampant, so there were a lot of orphans because a lot of parents died of TB so he also set up an orphanage for all these children. After that we went and toured his home, which was also very interesting.

We stopped at the municipal offices/library and were able to get on the internet so I got caught up with my e-mail and posted my blog. Thanks John for being so patient while I did that!!

After that we drove out to Goose Cove, then stopped at the grocery store on the way back through St. Anthony then on the way back to the park we drove out to St. Anthony Bight - both of them were pretty little fishing villages.

After dinner we went for a walk around the park, but there was no sign of a moose tonight. The mosquitoes were out in full force so we walked around the park once and called it a day.