,plastic ice cream containers with the blueberries. Our family quickly learned to hold the containers, rather than placing them on the ground as our black lab would trail behind, eating the harvest. Great memories!
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Meanwhile, I've started in on the logging truck that seemed to be following us everywhere in the maritimes. There may have been different names on the cabs, but the loads all looked identical! I'm really loving my new Holbein refillable acrylic marker - makes the detail underpainting much faster!! I wish I'd had it when working on Km Zero, too. Carol
Km 900, near Wreck House, is at the gateway through the Table Mountains, between the south coast and the opening of the Codroy Valley. We had steady easterly winds when we visited, causing fog to build up over the Table Mountains and Port aux Basques, but clearing into bright sunshine on the western side of the island and gorgeous blue sky in the valley. We were welcomed warmly by our relatives in the Valley and taken on a tour of the family homestead near the mouth of the Codroy River, where Carol's mother was born and raised. It's a place of incredible peace and beauty. After a final dinner together, we reluctantly boarded the night ferry back to Sydney. Monday we'll pack up the exhibition at the Colouratura Gallery and head back towards Montreal. This eastern trip has provided enough inspiration for years of painting beyond the Trans-Canada 150 project. It'll be hard to choose which images to use for the stops in Newfoundland and the rest of the Maritimes. Itching to get into the studio and to begin putting some to canvas, we'll be back in Montreal as soon as we can. We couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit Gros Morne National Park while in Newfoundland, so we took a day off from research and scooted up Hwy 430 from Deer Lake. What a magnificent place!! We could easily spend a week or a month here exploring the many corners of the park. CBC Newfoundland contacted Carol this morning and has set up an interview to go live on air tomorrow (Friday) morning. If you read this before the morning show goes on air, tune in! We'll try to get a copy or link to a recording for all to hear. After the interview, we're off to Km 900 and a day with relatives before catching the ferry back to Nova Scotia Saturday night. We saw extremes of both geography and weather today, starting with cold mist alternating with rain from Gander to Km 600 along Grand Lake. As we gained altitude and passed through the mountains to Deer Lake and past Corner Brook to Km 750, the sun came out and the temperature rose. The day ended spectacularly in summer after starting in miserable wet spring. It's interesting to see what gets left behind along the road - a jawbone tied up with a plastic bag and an iPhone cable (I could have used that if it hadn't rusted!) among the more usual bottles, rusted metal and bits of old retread. We also ran into Dave, cycling to raise money for cancer research, but he was too busy gaining kilometers to chat. We're still waiting to see our first moose, though. We returned to Corner Brook for the night. Tomorrow is reserved to explore Gros Morne National Park, then it's on to Km 900 and a day with relatives before catching the ferry back to Nova Scotia Saturday night. We hear that our garden back in Montreal is in zucchini overdrive and our fridge is getting full - got some cooking to do when we get back!! Stay tuned for more updates .... We took the ferry from North Sydney to Argentia on Sunday - 18 hours on board with a great seafood dinner and a good sleep in our cabin - over calm seas. After scoping out Mile Zero at Signal Hill, we couldn't miss going to Point Spear Lighthouse and wandering the distinctive "jelly-bean" row house district of St. John's. The weather was absolutely fantastic. Hardly a cloud was to be seen - not the case with cars at the top of Signal Hill, however. We were extremely lucky to find parking in the top lot as soon as we arrived, but others circled around and ended up going back down the hill to the lower lot. Today we headed down the road to Gander with a side trip to Bonavista, where we studied the puffins and watched whales breaching close to shore, but not close enough for my lens. It had been overcast all day, but it started to pour as we finally rejoined the Trans-Can (or TCH as it's called here) for the final hour into Gander. Our waitress at the Albatross Hotel reminisced a bit over the 9-11 crowding when all flights over the Atlantic were forced to land in Gander. " We all just did our part to help out," she said with a big smile. Tomorrow we go to Corner Brook. We hope the weather will be better than today! |
Carol Loeb
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