A surprisingly nice day trip.

While Friday was an “obligatory” day to visit the largest city in Newfoundland, Saturday was a thoroughly enjoyable day of driving the Newfoundland peninsula between Trinity Bay and Conception Bay.

There were several possible day trips from where we were staying in Holyrood but I wanted to go as far away from cities and people as possible in a day.  We headed west on TCH 1 and got off at Highway 80. 

The east side of the island is definitely more populated than the west side; but there are still miles and miles of beautiful coastline and rock formations….like this one.

This was Shag Rock.

From the north side, you could see that Shag Rock was actually more than one island.

We also came to this red rock with green hair.

While we stopped to get pictures of the green haired red rock,

Chuck went up and talked to this fisherman who was cleaning cod.

Today was opening day for cod season.  Cod is protected and has a limited season.  The limit is 5 per person a day and 15 per boat.  In other words, no matter how many people there were in the boat, there could be no more than 15 cod in the boat at one time.

We next stopped in the town of Heart’s Content to go to the Cable Station Historic Site. This was one of the many “surprises” we find on our day trips that unexpectedly end up being so interesting.

It was here in the little fishing community of Heart’s Content that the first transatlantic cable was laid way back in the 1800’s and the cable station was still operational until 1965.  The cable station turned the fishing town of Heart’s Content into kind of a boom town with all the employees of the cable station.

Heart’s Content was chosen for this station because of its deep harbor making it easier for the ships laying the cable to come into the harbor.

The employees were paid very well. The cable station built apartments and duplexes for the employees to live in, a church, and a school.  This caused some resentment from the local fishing community families.

During World War I, many women began working in the cable station; and those who exceeded at their jobs were paid as much as the men.

The building and all of the equipment inside had been preserved very well.  This is where the cables entered the building.

This was some of their earlier transmissions in Morse code.

How would you like to sort these wires?

During its operations, they continued to improve their technology with equipment like a submerged repeater.

This was one of the typewriters used for transcribing the messages.

This typewriter had some sort of recording tape on it (kind of like a desktop computer with a tape drive?)

All of the communications were done via Morse Code.  Can you tell what this Newfoundland word is in Morse Code?

(Post a comment or email me and I will email you back to see if you got it right.)

It was a very proficient operation and the best means of communication between the eastern hemisphere and the western hemisphere for many, many years.  Just think – some of the most important communications of the world happened because of this office in Hearts Content, Newfoundland.

We stopped in at a craft shop in the building and spoke with Valerie, Tara and Muriel who worked there in the building. They kept saying “Oh, we love listenin’ to ya’ talk.” And we responded, “We like listening to ya’ll talk too.” We could understand these ladies much better than some of the other Newfies we have spoken with. Tara said she thought it was because they make a conscious effort to slow their speech to tourists. She said that if we heard her talking with some of her friends, we wouldn’t understand her either.

After we left the building, we walked across the street to the beach where the cables came in from the ocean.

The cables were several thick wires twisted together.  You wonder how in the world did messages get transmitted from these?

We were trying to decide whether to cut back across the peninsula on Highway 74 here at Heart’s Content so our drive would not be so long or go all the way out to the end of the peninsula. Tara (from the cable station) told us that we were only about 45 minutes from the end so we decided to drive all the way out.

As we drove through the town of Heart’s Content, we saw some of the duplexes built by the cable company for  their employees and their employees' families to live in.

We also saw this candy-striped lighthouse out on the point.

The town of Heart’s Content is now just a small fishing community once again.

Next, we came to the community of Turks Cove…

…where we found a Newfoundland swimming pool (one of their many ponds)...

…with people actually swimming in it.  (Are you kidding me?  That water has to be freezing!)

We next drove through the town of New Chelsea.

Next, we came to New Melbourne…

…where, of all things, we found people surfing.

The waves were powerful and beautiful.

Quite the contrast:  waves for surfing in the summer and firewood to keep warm in the winter.

We saw this travel trailer boondocking way out on the point.  Now that would be a nice place to camp.

A little further up the road we could see the waves coming in and crashing against the rock cliffs.

We headed toward Grates Cove at the tip of the peninsula.

Another beautiful little fishing community nestled in the surrounding steep hillsides.

I was busy snapping pictures while Chuck was looking for whales or icebergs with his binoculars (do you see us?)

As we left the town of Grates Cove, we spotted these rock walls up on the hillside.

This was another Provincial Historic Site where settlers had built rock walls to keep their roaming domestic animals out of their vegetable gardens.

We headed back south on Highway 70 and found this hidden pulloff that was absolutely stunning.  If it weren’t for the very bumpy road, this would have been a great place to boondock.

We traveled through several more communities on the east side of the peninsula.

Chuck spotted what he thought was snow under some of the rocks.

But it was a big hole running under one of the cliffs forming kind of an arch.

We came upon this sign as we entered the town of Blackhead.

But we couldn’t find the Methodist Church.  We stopped and asked a lady at a grocery store and she said the church was no longer there.  It was just a marker showing the site of where the first Methodist church in Canada had been located.  So we drove back and finally found it.

I finally got a picture of these wild pink flowers we would see growing all along the highway.

After stopping in Wal-mart in Carbonear for a couple of items I had forgotten at the grocery store on Friday, we headed back home.

This was one of those special days that we didn’t expect to be special.  And that’s usually the way it is.  Like the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia, the Western Brook Boat tour in Gros Morne, and even the bike ride on the rail trail in Kutztown, Pennyslvania, we were not anticipating anything all that special when we started.  But with the history of the cable station and the beauty of the coastline, it turned out to be a surprisingly nice day trip.