Not a Whale of a Tale, but a Tail of a Whale, on the Bay de Verde Peninsula

No joke begins with a punch line.  No story begins with a climax.  No mathematical proof begins with, "QED."  But this blog entry will begin with the end of the tale -- I mean the tail of the tale -- I mean the tail of the whale.

We had finished lunch in Grates Cove and had wandered over to get a closer look at the harbor light, when, driving back toward the center of town, David spotted something dark disappear into the waters of the cove.  Couldn't be a rock.  Wasn't a boat.  "I think it might have been a whale," he said.  We stopped and kept an eye on the inner bay and -- sure enough -- a whale spouted and breached and then dove, showing her fluke!  We scored our first whale of our Newfoundland trip!

 

 

But the visit didn't start with that drama.  We wanted to do a tour of the Bay de Verde Peninsula.  Now, you need to understand that Newfoundland has two peninsulas whose names sound alike to an English speaker:  Bay de Verde and Bay Verte.  However, to a French or Spanish speaker, they are not the same.  "Baie de Verde" seems to be a mish-mosh of French and Spanish and seems to mean "bay of green," or perhaps, "verdant bay."  "Baie Verte" in French means "green bay."  Well, they are close, but not quite as confusing as to the English ear.

Anyway, it is the Bay de Verde Peninsula we were exploring.  There was so much to see that we decided, the day before our big tour, to make a special trip south along the shore of Trinity Bay to Dildo to sample the food and brews of Dildo Brewing Co.  We had been here in 2018 but had not had enough time to even sit and sip a beer, let alone have a meal.  This time, we even took time after our meal to hunt for sea glass along the Dildo beach and to have our picture taken in "red and blue" chairs on the dock behind the restaurant:

 

We topped that off with a hike up the mountain at our campground.  The trail was decked with all sorts of finds, including these jawbones gracing a signpost.

The view from the lookout at the top of the mountain was expansive.  Our RV campground is called "Outside Pond RV Park," and Outside Pond is to the left in the photo below.  Winter House Pond, where we fished the other day, is in the background, behind Middle Pond.

 

 

Waking early today, we walked Ruby the Adventure Cat and made a quick exit to start our trip around the north end of the peninsula.  Our first stop was New Perlican, a small outport just south of Winterton, where we are camped.  It boasts some colorful fishing stages, which are the little huts at the inner end of the fishing piers.  Historically, stages were used to clean cod that were caught by the many fisherman in Newfoundland.  Today, the stages are used for personal purposes, which might include fishing, but might not.  Some communities have brightly colored stages -- both new and old.  Others have old ones that look like they haven't been painted since the collapse of the cod fishing industry in the 1990's.

 

 

 

New Perlican was one of the earliest communities settled in the New World, having permanent residents as early as perhaps 1620.  It boasts a harbor light, which we hadn't found in our research; when we spotted it, we went over to take a look and snap a photo:

 

 

 

The stretch of seacoast from New Perlican to Heart's Content has a beautiful trail, well known among hikers, called the D'Iberville Trail.  We had hoped to hike one of its sections, but have run out of time here; so all we could do was stop for a selfy at the trailhead and then walk a way down the trail to see what it might offer in coastal views.

 

 

 

New Perlican had even more to offer than this.  On the point near the harbor light (known as "Bloody Point" due to the many people who died in battles among the English, French and indigenous people) is an old burial ground where graves were marked by simple mounds of stones.  Archaeologists have dated the burials to as early as the 1600's:

 

 

 

Next stop was Heart's Content, which was high on our list due to its beautiful, well-maintained lighthouse.  We stopped and added it to our collection, although we could not climb it.  Because it is a Canadian national historic site, it has Red Chairs, so we snapped a photo in the red chairs and Kathy added it to her Red Chairs album on Facebook.  Sorry -- you'll have to go over to Facebook to see the Red Chair photo.

 

 

 

Not well known is that Heart's Content is also the site of the first telegraph cable to be strung between Ireland and North America.  The cable station is also a designated national historic site.

 

 

 

What tour is complete without a beach walk and a search for sea glass?  We did that in Salmon Cove as we turned up the eastern coast of the peninsula along Conception Bay.  The beach is gorgeous -- and Kathy came back with a respectable haul of smooth sea glass, including one beautiful small blue piece!

 

 

 

On we drove to Burnt Point, which has an arch known as "Mouse Hole Arch."  We found a suitable viewpoint south of the arch.  We thought the cliffs along the shoreline were as impressive as the arch.

 

 

 

By this time, David was famished for lunch.  We stopped in Grates Cove at a restaurant known as "Grates Cove Co." (or "Grates Cove Studio"), which combines art studio space with a splendid Cajun-NL-Korean Fusion cuisine.  We started with a Korean veggie pancake --

 

 

 -- and finished with Crab Etouffee for Kathy and a sort of Cod Gumbo for David.  All of it was excellent.

Grates Cove Co. was founded by Terrence and Courtney Howell. After meeting while teaching in South Korea, they explored and ate their way across the country before a sojourn in Courtney's home state of Louisiana. The two traveled back to Terrence's ancestral home of Grates Cove, Newfoundland, and started this restaurant and art studio.

Being the northernmost point on the Bay de Verde Peninsula, Grates Cove has its own lighthouse, a more modest, modern light, which we walked over to see.  As it turns out, the light was perched above the town's famous Rock Walls, which were used as garden enclosures and animal pens by the early settlers:

 

 

...And, as we said at the beginning of this blog entry: leaving that stop we bumped into a whale of a fellow!

 

There is a trail that winds among the Rock Walls, and at the other end of it from the lighthouse is a trailhead with a monument explaining the Rock Walls, which are of national historical significance:

 

 

 

It was finally time to return to our campground in Winterton, but we saved not the least for last.  We stopped at the Newfoundland Wooden Boat Museum, where we learned all about the wooden boats that were -- and still are -- used in the Newfoundland fisheries, and how they were -- and continue to be -- built by hand.  Here is a replica of the famous dory style of boat --

 

 

 

 -- and here we got to see the craftsmen working on two new wooden boats in the shipbuilding shed --

 

 

 

 -- including another dory!  Kathy was impressed:

 

 This was a long day and we packed a lot into it.  We're both exhausted, but we feel we got to know the Bay de Verde Peninsula.  Tomorrow, it's on to our next stop!