Museums – Page 2 – The Destinators

St John’s NL

At the southeastern corner of the island of Newfoundland, St John’s is the largest city in Newfoundland and Labrador. At this moment, about 530,000 people live in NL, and 212,000 of them (40%) live in the St John’s metro area. [By contrast, just 26,650 (5%) live in all of Labrador, though Labrador accounts for 72% of the land area of the province.] Anyway, statistics aside, we were eagerly anticipating our visit to the urban St John’s for several things we would find there: music, history, hiking, sightseeing… and a Sprinter service center.

Gander

Well rested and with the truck’s vents blowing cool and conditioned air, we moved an hour on up the road to Gander. Located on a ‘Great Circle’ route between North America and Europe, Gander was built to be an airport town for refueling trans-Atlantic flights, and for a time was the largest and busiest airport in the world. It has lately become well known for its townwide hospitality when planes were unexpectedly grounded there on September 11, 2001. On that day, North American airspace was closed and all planes were required to land. Within a few hours, 38 planes landed in this town of (then) 9,300, unloading 7,000 unexpected guest from 95 different countries for an unknown duration. It ended up being 5 days. Among locals, the stayover is now known as ‘9/12,’ and the guests are called ‘Come From Away’s (CFAs). We were interested to see this historic town. Maybe we’d have a chance to talk to some of the kind people and thank them for their generosity.

Grand Falls-Windsor and Bishop’s Falls

We headed inland from the west coast, driving along big rolling hills, almost always with a lake or river beside the road. The sign said ‘Welcome to Grand Falls-Windsor – Perfectly Centered!’ That’s a fact. GFW is in the center of Newfoundland, and it’s the largest town in the interior. It’s also away from the natural breezes that keep things cool along the coast – a feature which, during the rare heat wave that’s been afflicting Newfoundland, made for a hot town!

The Great Northern Peninsula

The ferry dropped us off in St Barbe, about two thirds of the way up Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula. It was late in the day and we decided to camp in nearby Flower’s Cove and head north in the morning.

Labrador 510 – Trans-Labrador Highway, part 2

The road to connect the settlements and resources of western and coastal Labrador – the Trans-Labrador Highway – had been in the works since the early 80’s. Dirt roads and walking trails between settlements were widened into gravel roads in sections, then paved as demand and budgets allowed. The last remaining section of gravel was paved in July, 2022 – and the road was complete!

Labrador 500 – Trans-Labrador Highway, part 1

Grand Lake from Sunday Hill, North West River, NL

The history of Newfoundland and Labrador is long and colorful. Here’s the super condensed version…. The earliest known inhabitants were Inuit (hunters of sub-arctic sea mammals, like whales), Innu (caribou hunters) and Mi’kmaq (seafood harvesters in the summer and forest hunters in the winter). The earliest European settlers are thought to have been Vikings, just after 1000 AD. Starting in the early 15oo’s, explorers from France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and England began to visit. Eventually, these folks came to be in conflict with each other and the original inhabitants in their efforts to claim portions of the newly found land in order to control resources. Perhaps the most immediately obvious of these resources was an insane abundance of great fishing. Over the centuries since, additional resources of interest have been identified all over this vast area and have included furs, forests, minerals (iron ore), and hydropower.

Festival de la chanson de Tadoussac/Tadoussac Song Festival

Tadoussac was the site of the first Canadian trading post along the St Lawrence in 1599. Its location where the Saguenay River and fjord meets the St Lawrence River made it an ideal trading site between the European and indigenous people of the region. The location is also beautiful! Current-day Tadoussac, home to fewer than 1000 people along with scores of whales, has become a popular destination for tourists (many in search of a glimpse of said whales) and second homeowners from the more southern parts of Quebec. It was also the site of the 37th annual, 4-day Festival de la chanson de Tadoussac (Tadoussac Song Festival).

Beaufort, NC

There is in this blog another post with a very similar opening photo to this one. In that post, we introduced our readers to Walker, who lives with our friends Hope and Carlos in Beaufort, NC. But the photo above is recent, and Walker is almost five years older here than in the previous photo, and don’t we all wish we could have aged as well as he!

Heading east

Well it’s been about a week and a half since I dropped Sue off at the airport in Salt Lake City. Unfortunately, there is much to keep her busy down in Florida and it doesn’t look like she’ll be able to rejoin me on the road. The upshot is that I’m gaining a fuller appreciation for the things she takes care of while we’re traveling, which include route planning and navigation as well as all or most of the food planning and preparation, among many other things. The astute reader may well ask, “Wait, then what’s left for you to do?”, to which I simply walk away in a huff.

Valdez

Valdez is a commercial fishing and shipping port with a history that is both colorful and tragic. It’s also a fun town to visit in a stunning location.

Recall that Mount Saint Elias, at 18,009 feet the second highest peak in the US, is only 10 miles from the ocean’s edge as the eagle flies (yes, we confirmed that this is the expression to use in Alaska). That means our relatively short drive to Valdez would cross yet another mountain range – the Chugach Mountains, the tallest, steepest mountains we’ve seen yet – before dropping into the city. Valdez is near the end of a narrow arm of the Prince William Sound where glacial rivers dropping down from tall, steep, glaciated mountains on 3-1/2 sides of the city turn the water a distinctive aquamarine color.