20020610

June 10, 2002

Day 32

Start: Eastport Peninsula Sunshine Park, Eastport, NF
End: 
Miles: 0

The high today was 57f and the low was 44 last night or early this morning. The wind was calm all day. It was cloudy all day, with a few sprinkles before breakfast.

We concentrated today on touring the Eastport peninsula. After breakfast, we hopped into the truck and drove east through Traytown to Gloverstown. Traytown’s a little fishing village, while Gloverstown is a service center for the peninsula. It has the body shop, the auto parts store, the ship repair facility, and the other facilities that couldn’t be supported in a small town or village. What you find in the little towns here are the local church, a store with a few fresh items and a little meat and a fair selection of household 
necessities. There may also be a small restaurant, a gas station, a credit union branch, and a pharmacy. There are lots of B&B’s here, but they seem to us to be extra bedrooms in the family home, from what we can see.

We returned to Eastport and headed north to St Chad’s and Burnside. St Chad’s is a little village, and Burnside isn’t much bigger. But Burnside has a little building containing the Burnside Archeology, Gift Shop, and Museum. From this center, the boat tour to the various archaeological sites and digs leaves.

The two ladies in the multipurpose building were very friendly, if a little hard to understand at times. The guidebook notes that the “dialect of the local people has 14th century Cockney and Dorset ancestral origins. But they gave us a thorough tour first of the archaeological items on exhibit there, then a discussion of what else we should see in the area, and finally giggled with us at the items in the tiny gift shop. We bought a couple of unique items – I bought a rock painted with the legend, “Newfoundland Door Stop” for a dollar.

We did a short hike to a scenic lookout point that showed us the layout of the islands and reaches in the distance.

We came back to Eastport then, and took off to the east and northeast, to Salvage. They pronounce Salvage with the accent on the second syllable and the second “a” is long, as in “age”. The Canadian flag at the town building was at half-mast, as was the flag at the Anglican church. There were quite a few cars at the church, and a hearse. By the time we could turn around and get out of town so we wouldn’t be interfering, there were several more cars arriving and a family was walking up the street from their home all dressed in 
black. It’s obvious someone of status in the town had died and the funeral was about to start. As we left at 2:00pm, the bells were tolling to start the service. 

Salvage was founded in 1710 and is the oldest village in the vicinity. It can’t expand, since all the flat or near-flat spots are occupied by houses, or sheds, or the fish plant.

We returned from Salvage to Eastport and left in the only remaining direction, south. We went first to Sandy Cove, at which there is a real beach. It has fairly fine sand, no rocks or gravel, and some really cold water. I suppose it might be ok for swimming in mid-August after several warm days. At each end of the beach are rocky outcroppings that form the bookends for the beach.

The other village is Happy Adventure. Yup, that’s the name. It’s a nice little town of houses; sort of a bedroom community for the other little places, I guess. The lodge of the “Sons of United Fishermen” is also located here.

Having run out of directions in which to travel, we returned to the little house. Since we missed lunch, we broke out the grill and did a steak and baked potato with salad mid-afternoon dinner. After a bit, we worked up the energy to take all the laundry to the camp laundromat. Now we have clean clothes for our jaunt to St John’s, where we’ll stay the next three nights (maybe four).

There’s hockey on the tube tonight (Detroit leads Charlotte 2-1 going into tonight). I think every hockey game is broadcast in Canada. They’re true “fanatics”.