Sunday, October 08, 2017

I have promised myself that this is the last “killer day” of driving. If I leave Marystown by 7 a.m. I can drive around the peninsula and then reach La Scie before nightfall. I am booked into a B&B, so much cheaper than hotels.

I am advised that La Scie will be “closed” by the time I arrive Sunday night of the long weekend, and that I should either eat a meal in Baie Verte, or bring something to eat with me, so Saturday night I squeaked into NoFrills just before closing and bought $17 of disgusting things, like Cheese, Crackers, Cereal, and a Chicken pot pie, all of which spent the night chilling out in the trunk of the car. It will not have escaped your notice that all those foods start with the letter “C”.

(early morning)

Well! I can’t say that the weather radar is comforting. My planned route is lined in red, traveling from south to north. The rain bands are sweeping across from west to east. I will be the little red blur catching up on weeks of “ RTL Petit Matin ”

I have woken early, updated some of these pages, done some banking, and by 6:00 a.m. I am ready for a quick shower, checkout, and be half an hour ahead of schedule before I’ve started. Which makes for a more relaxing drive today.

In the rain.

I checked out ahead of time at 6:30. It was dark. Dummy! I can’t see any scenery. I stopped at the local Tim Horton’s for a coffee, and started the car. To exit the lot I continued the way I had started which took me through the second of the two drive-through lanes.

The left-hand lane was occupied, a driver shouting an order through the microphone/speaker box, but my lane was empty, so I cruised silently past the box and when the two lanes merged, found myself stuck behind a car whose driver was obviously either telling their life story or asking directions to Marystown. Money was handed over, the cashier returned with a bag of breakfast, disappeared, returned with the change. The driver ahead of me set off, leaving me free to exit.

But by now I had had three minutes to think, and my brain was revved up and in gear.

Bear in mind that coming up behind me is a lady who has just ordered breakfast, whereas I am next at the window, having ordered nothing.

I suppose you already have made a guess that I collected the lady’s order and then floored it out of there, right? Would I be so mean and cruel at 6:45 on a dark Sunday morning?

And so to the southern tip of THIS peninsula. I was using high-beam for a while to see if I could spot a moose, but I needn’t have worried. Every couple of kilometres is a truck or car parked with some part of it off the road surface. Hunter(s) off looking for moose.

Where a car is parked at the side of the road, there will be moose hunters, and if a moose is nearby, they will have heard it and either frightened it to death or worse, shot it to death.

When there are NO cars parked at the side of the road, then you have to worry about hitting a moose.

I am amazed at some of the drivers here. They come up behind me, the old fart toddling along at the speed limit, and then brake just before they slam into the back of me. I am on cruise control. Did their brains not calculate that the gap between us was closing rapidly?

Phase two is to sit so close behind me that I cannot see their headlights.

Phase three is to drive behind me oblivious of the passing lane (a second lane) OR that the dotted line on our side means that it is legal to overtake providing there is no oncoming traffic.

Phase four is to recognise the passing lane/line and pull out, then accelerate past me while in the opposing lane (the passing lane being ended) or on the wrong side of the solid double line (the dotted line having ended).

What causes an impatient driver NOT to be on the lookout for an opportunity to pass, and then make the manoeuvre in the most dangerous (for me) situation imaginable. We know, you and I, that when an oncoming car appears, Mister Dunderhead will swing back into our side and basically shove me off the road and head-first into the ditch which runs alongside every road in the province, so far.

I stayed at the Marystown Hotel, and was treated to the best hotel/motel hospitality I can recall. Every staff member was cheerful and seemed to celebrate in my good fortune.

The restaurant fed me up with a tasty hot meal (stir-fried veg with sauce), after which I walked across to NoFrills to stock up with provisions, then returned to the restaurant and asked, and was given, a porcelain teapot, ditto mug, tea bags and milk for my room. Much better than the crud available in the room.

I spent the evning writing up these photo-essays and gulping down mug after mug of hot, tasty, tea.

So here I am bopping along in the early morning light. The sun is not yet risen. The land is another barren plateau with stunted pine trees.

I drive through many small towns (see map below)

Each small town requires me to slow down to 30Km/hr or 40Km/hr, and this adds greatly to my travel time. Does Google Maps allow for this in their distance calculations?

I have found that most towns set the speed limit anything up to a mile before the first house. I suppose that that means that there is no excuse for exceeding the speed limit where people live and play.

Of course, everywhere I go is the Atlantic Ocean. This area reminded me of Flamborough Head, UK, what with the grey sky, gloomy weather, windswept land.

I still cannot believe the new-looking houses. I asked tonight’s hostess about it and her explanation appears much further below.

I think that this is the quay for the ferry to St Pierre et Miquelon.

Another mile, another hunter trudging across the moorland.

The very low scrub makes me think of heather. Lakes make themselves at hone across the open spaces.

Another lake, and another stump of a mountain.

Another small town, looking as if it was built from scratch this year.

This was a beautiful sight, with the rising sun shining off the water across the bay.

This hamlet is backed by a rocky set of hills.

And here I am, two hours after leaving Marystown, arriving back in Marystown from a different direction.

Ignore the rain drops. Check out the neat bit of civil engineering. I had to laugh. At the time this bit of work appeared I was wading through a backlog of TVO’s “The Agenda”, and Steve Paikin was interviewing three lady engineers about their experiences in Engineering studies.

SUFE: Second Use For Everything. My Tim Horton’s paper cup, once emptied, serves as a bowl for cereal. Far safer to “drink” the cereal from a mug than to try to scoop some out of a carton with my bare hand.

I can’t recall why I took this photo. Fed up with the rain, maybe. But worse rain was to come later in the day.

(see comment above)

(see comment above)

I think this is the exit from the Trans-Canada Highway into Springdale. I took no photos while I was on the Trans-Canada Highway. I took photos on Wednesday and on Friday, without rain!

So here I am in Springdale. The white car, barely visible above the roof of the beige car, is partly pulled off the lane, and the driver appears to be undecided as to whether to turn right or continue straight across the intersection.

The driver of the beige car immediately ahead of me is too timid to pull out and go past.

The driver of the red Chevy Trax sitting impatiently behind the beige car is muttering “Oh for Pete’s Sake! Pull out and go around him. He’s probably a bloody tourist from Toronto”.

Seconds later, the driver of the red Chevy Trax spots the moose ambling across the road on its way into Tim Horton’s to ask for a Coffee Mousse. (Sorry!)

But it does give me a chance to trot out my spelling story:-

In England, before I was ten years old, I was studying Latin and French in preparation for Grammar School (and then University). On my tenth birthday we arrived in the gold-mining/wheat-belt town of Southern Cross. The goldfields kids were not motivated to learn.

I, on the other hand, was bone lazy and determined to do the minimum amount of work, so each morning when the teacher dictated five words and told us (all) to write them into a sentence, everyone except me wrote five sentences.

I being lazy would aim to get away with two sentences, or one if I was feeling chipper. So came the day I wrote “A Loose Moose is no Use”. One of my lesser triumphs, and it served only to antagonize the other kids, because I would then sit with my arms folded, my face smirking, while they chewed the end of their nib pens.

And here I am almost at La Scie. The French named the town La Scie, meaning The Saw. This refers to the hills around the community which resemble the teeth of a saw.

Notes

I paid off a balance of $600 from my credit card. I have put that $600 on the card while I have been on holidays, mainly accommodation, gas, and meals. I have paid for one room with cash, but in essence on this more expensive (accommodation) part of the trip, I seem to be spending $150 a day, so I am within, or close to my budgeted figures.

I should have thought of grabbing a carton from NoFrills before now. It makes a handy container for holding snack foods, and with the colder weather, stuff is just as happy sitting in the trunk overnight; there is no need to lug it into the hotel room..

I heard Steve Paikin as the producer to play a clip, as in “The clip, Sheldon, if you please” and realised how often we use “if you please” instead of just “please”. It is probably derived from the Norman French “S’il vous plaît”, which translates literally as “If it you pleases”, or if you prefer “If it gives you pleasure”, but then when you think about it, “if you please” makes no sense at all!

As I drove along today, 840 kilometres in ten hours driving, I found myself being drawn to the Gouda cheese and the bananas in the trunk. Why is this? I am not hungry. I have cereal, apples and other stuff on the seat beside me. I suspect it is boredom, and I suspect it is that boredom that is the primary cause of people stopping at roadside service outlets, and that filling up with gas is a secondary consideration.

I dislike electric windows. (1) If the car plunges into a lake, won’t the electrical circuit short out, trapping me inside the car? With the old cranking windows, winding down the window might have given me something to do and given me a few seconds to calm down. (2) I find it impossible to adjust electric windows to exactly where I want them to provide fresh air into the car without freezing the back of my neck.

Oh yes. Almost forgot: I asked the hostess about the newness of the houses and she said that they were just used to it and didn’t really thing about it. I pointed out, quite pointedly, that every place I’ve stayed in or driven past appears to have not a single old-looking house. The siding is plastic (or vinyl), not aluminium, and she says to trust her, although these two houses are new, the previous houses having burned down last year, and this house having new siding, they are basically just kept in good repair.

So I do not yet have a really good reason why Newfoundland manages to keep every town, village and hamlet looking clean and neat and colourful, whereas World Class Cities such as Toronto manage to hang on the shabby houses in the middle of professed prosperity.

To date I have driven 4,018 Km and visited 12 towns.

But at least I have done all the Heavy Driving. From this point in it is short trips. Well, relatively short.

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