Photos From the Archives (and the scanner)

I was putting away some photos and stumbled upon some other old photos that are personal favourites.

Below is a couch on fire.
I took this photo on Christmas Eve in 2001. My family had decided to swap our couch in the den with a better one that was in the basement. So my dad, my uncle, and I moved the couches around, and then we hauled the old one out in the backyard. The three of us so hated that couch - its cushions had the habit of sliding out from underneath you, leaving you slumped in a trench in the back, and the seat was too wide so that most people's feet couldn't reach the floor - so we decided to dispose of it in fire. My brother and aunt were somewhat fond of the couch, but we wanted to make sure that it could never surface again, so it was burned before they got back home.

It took a bit to get it burning (I think we may have used some oil to accelerate it), but once it caught fire, up she went. It was rather fun to stand round and watch it burn; I suggested at the time that we should make it a Christmas Eve tradition to burn an old piece of furniture, but it never caught on.


Now, what do you think this photo shows?That is the antenna on the hood of the old Corsica that I was driving back in 2001, covered in ice crystals. I came out of the house one morning in February to walk the dog before going to school, and the entire world was covered in little crystals like that.


Finally, I think this is one of the funniest photos that I have taken. Just read the sign, it says it all (a clothing shop on Princes Street in Edinburgh, in June of 2002).
(If you're having trouble, it reads: "Mr. Toskana has had an expensive divorce and now needs the money, so sale now on!")

Gros Morne Mountain Hike, Or the day I really thought I wouldn't make it

Back in August, in the aforementioned trip across Newfoundland, Patrick and I spent some time in Gros Morne National Park.

Now, if you've read about my previous travels, you'll know that I'm not opposed to a long walk. I've walked 10 miles in the pouring rain just to get to a ferry on a bus-less day. According to my Dad, I move faster than most armies when I'm out doing long-distance hikes.

However, I do have some weaknesses in hiking. One is hills. I grew up on PEI, where there may be hills all over the place, but they don't keep going up for that long (all less than 500 feet). So hills do slow me down and tire me out, but I can generally plug away and manage them eventually.

But I have a greater weakness than hills - heat. Heat wipes me out from any activity other than laying in the shade and eating frozen things. And by heat, I mean anything above 25 degrees Celsius. We can probably blame my inability to suffer heat on my ancestry; my genes expect me to be in the British Isles, not in a Canadian summer.

So what this is leading me to is the day that Patrick and I climbed Gros Morne Mountain, or as I called it, the Overgrown Gravel Heap. It was hot and humid that day - in the vicinity of 30 degrees Celsius. To do the hike, you start with a half hour walk through the woods and then a bog, going slightly uphill all the while, to get to the base of the mountain. Then you have to climb it (the rocky path up the middle of the picture below).
Midway through the first "easy" section of the hike, I felt like I was the unfittest person imaginable. My energy was gone, I was stumbling along unable to lift my feet, hunched over and I felt like I was on some sort of death march. I told Patrick so, but he insisted on me coming along, saying that it would be cooler on the mountain because there would be a breeze. Let's just say it wasn't cooler enough.

Here's Patrick starting up the mountain, amongst some of the smaller rocks we would climb through.

The photo below is looking back down the mountain from where we'd climbed so far. By this point, I was climbing from large rock to large rock - moving for about a minute or two, and then sitting down on a large rock for a minute or two. It took us over two hours to climb the mountain itself, about 400 metres (the mountaintop itself is 800 metres above sea level). It was breezier, but it was still too hot for me.
The rocky, flat top.

Looking down at one of the ponds and towards the coast on the other side of the mountain.

Anyway, the hike was finished (after coming down the other side of the mountain you go around the base and it takes even hours more) with me exhausted. I would do that hike again, but only if it were a cool day.

Camping in August

I'm going to do a few posts about my holidays back in August, since I didn't get around to it at the time. Patrick and I travelled across Newfoundland to go to PEI. We spent a week camping in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, which is the most number of days I've camped consecutively. I've wanted to do a long-distance camping road trip for quite some time (like going cross country) so this gave me a taste of what such a trip could be like. Anyway, here's a few photos of the camping specifically; I'll put up photos of the sights later on.

This is Patrick's tent that we used; it's just large enough for two people to fit in. While sitting in the tent in one campground that was dominated by RV's, I heard some kids walking pass exclaim "Wow! That's a small tent!" The owner of the campground was incredulous when he saw the size of the tent.

The back of the loaded-down truck with tailgate being used as a cooking storage space. The big bag of stuff wasn't ours, but stuff I was transporting to PEI for some friends who were moving.
Patrick, having mastered his family's old French gas stove, served as the chef, whereas I acted as the prep cook and dishwasher. Here he's cooking up some sausages and frying some potatoes I believe.
Being the East Coast, the weather was not always spectacular and sunny. On one night when it started pouring just around supper time, we fortunately had a spare tarp to set up a crude shelter so we could cook and eat in relative dryness.
Another meal, cooked on that rainy night, of chicken, potatoes and vegetables and gravy. Not thwarted by being outdoors, we ate pretty good.

"The St. John's Left Turn"

At a lot intersections in St. John's, left turns are not permitted. Since I'm still getting to know many parts of the city, I will often have a plan in my mind of how to get somewhere that will be foiled by one of these "No Left Turn" intersections. In many cities, one would just make a left turn at the next intersection and then go down that side street and turn left again to get back to the street you originally wanted. In St. John's, this doesn't seem to work most times, as it might be quite far until the next street, or because the city lacks a grid-like pattern.

So I've occasionally found myself performing a manoeuvre I have decided to call "The St. John's Left Turn" (illustrated below in a sketch I made - the path of the vehicle is the green dashes). Since turning left isn't allowed at the intersection, I go straight through it and then make a left turn off the road into the next avaiable parking lot (conveniently, there always seems to be a business with a parking lot of some size not too far from these no-left-turn intersections). I whirl around in the parking lot and then go back on the street in the opposite direction, so as to make a right turn at the intersection on to my desired street. Voilà, a left turn.

Berry pickin'

I've been going out berry picking about once a week, when the weather's good, in the last while. September was blueberry picking, and Patrick and I went out to Blackhead (just outside of St. John's) several times, walking up the hill along the East Coast Trail and then going off-trail berry hunting. (All the photos herein were taken with my phone, so they aren't the best). The blueberries were good and thick, and I now have a freezer largely filled with bags of blueberries.

This is the view of St. John's (between the hills in the distance) from up the hill in Blackhead.

The sea was quite foamy and it was reflecting off of the rocky shore, resulting in interesting, irregular shapes.

Yesterday I went out to Logy Bay with Patrick and his dad to go cranberry picking, again along a section of the East Coast Trail. Cranberries are sneaky little berries, hiding under other vegetation, and I had to be pretty much down on my knees before I could spot any of them. They were sparser than the blueberries, although I did find them in bunches when they were growing near a stream or on boggy ground.

Some unhidden cranberries:

Looking down the hill toward the coast (Patrick is kneeling down picking just near the coast).
Just before leaving to go home, we stopped in at MUN's Ocean Science Centre, where we had parked as it's at the base of the trail. They have two tanks with harp seals in them that we watched swimming around for a bit. They have a web cam that you can connect to here.

And darkness descends

Yesterday's forecast for St. John's

Something a little foreboding about one day of sun and then clouds as far as one can see.

I've been away from the blogging for a while now, but I might have enough spirit to get back at it again, at least here and there. I've got some trip photos I'll try to whack up soon.

How big is that plant in the window

My garlic plants looking out the front window (dreaming of being big trees, perhaps). This is the big excitement in my life at the moment (teaching occupies my days but it's not exciting). I planted two garlic cloves a week ago. The one on the left started shooting up within a day and is now just over 6 inches tall. The other clove, on the right, started about four days ago. I put the plants in front of the window during the day and pull back the veil curtain, and when I'm walking up to the house in the afternoon it has appeared to me as though the plant is peeking out, waiting for me to come home (I miss having a dog).

And yes, they are planted in a plastic ice cream container. I've become one of those old-lady-types who saves all my plastic tubs for reuse. Or in the case of this one, gets them from other people since I don't buy ice cream much these days. In other old-lady-behaviour news, I've also started filling a jar with boiling water to take to bed with me to keep my feet warm on cold nights, since my room can't be heated well without making other parts of the house scorching. And my hip was aching, but that was from fencing lunges.

I've planted some green onions today (by snipping off the white bulb bottoms of green onions from the supermarket; they already had little roots on them), so we'll see how that goes now. The space by the window will be getting crowded.

More cold

No, not a mistake photograph - this is a frozen pond with drifting snow blown by a fierce wind (see below).

This is my first experience of a real winter for several years now (since early 2006), so I'm getting accustomed to cold again and also getting back into winter sports I haven't done in years.

There was some good snow earlier in the month, so after school I was heading up to Pippy Park (right in St. John's) and going cross-country skiing or snow-shoeing. The trails were pretty well groomed there due to skidoos using them, so to snowshoe I went off-trail and ended up frightening some dog-walkers when I finally re-emerged on to the trail from the bushes and spruce trees.

The other weekend I went "up the Southern Shore" (south of St. John's down the coast of the Avalon peninsula) to visit my boyfriend Patrick at the cabin (a cottage we'd call it in PEI, but a winterized one) he's living in for the winter at Kingman's Cove. We went for a walk through the woods (no need of snowshoes as it was a packed trail), but then couldn't find a return trail through the woods and so ended up walking along the frozen pond for about a kilometre in a bitter wind (and unblocked wind since we were on a pond). We walked backwards to keep the wind off our faces, and then when we reached the end of the pond we were able to walk over a hill across the barrens (wind at our backs, fortunately).


Caked with snow from the walk on the pond (all in good fun). I turn pink both when cold and hot, just the colour I'm meant to be it seems.
Part of the community of Kingman's and its cove.
The snow melted (except for frozen banks) this past week, but then froze all over the ground, so there's a lot of ice about. I've considered skating instead of walking along the sidewalks. I went with Patrick for a walk in one of the parks and ended up sliding on ice whilst grabbing hold of fences and flailing about to regain my balance like I was in Mr. Bean sketch. Unfortunately, there's no photographs to document that.

The pink snow

The yard on Christmas morning, snowbanks coated in topsoil - what happens when winds run across plowed PEI fields (you can see one in the very back of the photo).

Hockey is best kind

("best kind" = "great" in Newfoundland-speak)

So beyond writing papers that bore me stiff, I've started playing ice hockey here. One of my professors organizes people who aren't superstar players to get together and play just for fun. As he puts it, if you can skate backwards, you're too good to play with them. He invited students from our class out to get some more players. I've wanted to play hockey for years but always had the problem of finding people my age who weren't overly good, since I'm no good myself. So this seemed like a chance.

Now, if I hadn't known some guys from my class were going to be there, I probably wouldn't have gone on my own since I really lack confidence in my hockey ability (and rightly so). As it was, one friend, Andrew, convinced me to give it a try, and so I got Patrick, a fellow I've been going out with, to go with me to the used-sports equipment store to help me buy basic stuff like shin guards and gloves and a stick (I saved some money because I can fit into the large boys' size equipment - hooray for being small!). Patrick gave me his old helmet which was on the small side for him, and I already had my own skates.

To set the scene for you, it was 12 men of all ages and me. They all had full hockey gear - shoulder pads, big jerseys and padded pants, you know all that stuff that makes a person look even bigger. I wore my fencing breeches and a long-sleeved shirt, both of which added no volume, so I imagine I looked pretty tiny. One fellow told me my gear looked "old-school", like a picture of his grandfather playing hockey back in the day when they wore actual sweaters, slim-fitting pants and no padding.

I had a great time and have been back another two times for the same. I'm definitely one of the poorer players, but as the only girl I'm probably going to slide by on that fact for quite a while. We're playing non-contact which is actually a problem for me because I can't stop all that well, so I've occasionally checked someone because I couldn't change direction in time, which the fellows find pretty funny (one buddy has called me the "enforcer" of the group). Although when I've run into someone and fallen down as a result (being the lighter of the two bodies in a collision, it's sort of bound to happen), the fellows usually apologize to me profusely which I'm trying to train them out of by hopping to my feet as quick as possible and telling them not to worry.

So that's my fun new thing, and maybe if I keep at it for a few years now I might actually get better!

Marker fumes, fries with dressing, and fires

For Halloween this year, I dressed up as a tiger (I had a pair of orange tights I got real cheap once with the idea of a costume, so it stemmed from that). I used permanent marker to make my stripes, and boy do tigers have a lot of stripes! I ended up smelling like a permanent marker while wearing my costume. I was told repeatedly that my costume was very "cute", so I guess it was worth whatever brain damage I suffered from marker fumes.(I'll answer in advance that I attached the felt nose and whiskers with double-sided fabric tape, since loads of people asked me that.)

On George Street they hosted an event called Mardi Gras to celebrate Halloween on November 1. I've not run into anyone yet who knows why they call it Mardi Gras; from what I know that's a pre-Lent day.

On said Mardi Gras night, I got to try fries with dressing and gravy, a local variation on fries with the works (the dressing is what is known as stuffing to some people - what you have with turkey or chicken). It is one of the best foods I have ever had. I will not describe it any more as my mere words will do the taste no justice.

Bonfire Night (aka Guy Fawkes' Day) still seems to get some attention round here, mostly in the form of people setting stuff on fire (not in the form of organized community bonfires like in the UK). There's been a few stolen cars set ablaze; a couple in the soccer field near where I live.

Along the southern shore

On the long weekend, I did some hiking on the East Coast Trail on the peninsula jutting out from Fermeuse (see map). I forgot to bring my proper camera with me, but my phone worked well enough to take a few pictures.

A view of the rocky stretch of coastline along the trail (it went through the woods with offshoots to viewpoints at rocky cliffs along the way).

These stones, on the top of a very high cliff, appealed to my sense of symmetry.

We walked right out on the top of this archway, looked down over it's edge, then walked farther down the path to where I took this photo before we realized that it was open underneath.

I saw some of the twistiest trees in my life during this walk. Along one little stretch of woods, it looked as though all these trees had laid down in surrender or perhaps to die:
These particular trees nearby seem to have laid down to writhe in agony before dying:
Oddly enough, the trees on the other side of the path were all fine - like one side of the path was cursed.

Cleaning the Plastic Forest

This morning I joined volunteers with the East Coast Trail Association for a clean-up of a section of the trail below the municipal landfill. Plastic bags, styrofoam, newspapers and anything else light has blown down from the dump and filled the forest below. It's been called the "plastic forest" in the media, and there's an article here about it.

Bags had entangled themselves in the branches, were entangled in tree roots buried in the ground, and were wrapped around the bases of tree trunks. I unwrapped some 40 bags from the base of one tree. Someone compared it to being able to tell the age of a tree by the number of rings, so I joked (in the loose sense of the word) that perhaps we could tell the age of the dump by the number of bag layers.

This photo shows a heap of bags that I pulled out of a little hole to the right of the heap. Some were buried as far down as a couple of feet. The woods just kept growing around these things, the roots wrapping all around some bags and all the trees were pretty healthy-looking. So for all those nae-sayers who think we will bring about the end of all the ecosystems on Earth, well I think we may hinder them some, but life is pretty tough and adaptable.

I spent some time with a small rake trying to pull bags out of the tree-tops which was really tricky in some cases like this tree where the bags have pretty much tied themselves on to the branches.

The mound of bags of garbage that we picked up. It was a bit odd to be picking up plastic bags to put them in large plastic bags that are going to go back up to the dump from where they came in the first place. However, the garbage at the dump is now being buried straight away, so at least most bags won't be able to blow down the hill any more.

A closer-up of Sugarloaf Mountain where the trail continues on to.

Hiking and screeching

On the weekend our student society held it's first event, which we called the CFA event, that standing for "Come From Aways" (people not from Newfoundland). We did a hike along the East Coast trail out to Cape Spear, the most easterly point in Canada. Here it is, with a line of secondary education students walking toward it (we had fabulous weather for it - clear skies, and a wind of course).
This is just some weathered wood I thought looked cool. Couldn't call it driftwood as it's on top of a very high cliff.

In the evening, we gathered again to go down to George Street for supper and then across the street to one of the bars for "screeching in" in which 17 of us participated (an initiation for non-Newfoundlanders I suppose you could call it). It entailed a performance of sorts by some fellow in a sou'wester, and we all had to eat Newfie steak (bologna), drink a shot of screech (we were warned not to let it come in contact with our skin), kiss a (frozen) cod, and in response to the question "Is you a screecher?" reply with: "Indeed I is me ol' cock and long may your big jib draw". And of course we were each presented with a certificate to commemorate the occasion:
I had no idea that man was acting on behalf of the Queen!

It's been a while there now

I've been in St. John's 19 days now and not written a word! How unlike me. Well, things were a bit hectic with the move since I had to find a new place to live at the last minute, but all worked out well and here I am settled into the life of a student again. My program (intermediate/secondary teaching) is pretty busy, so you probably shouldn't be expecting me to write as much as I did when travelling (and it would end up being stories of my research papers if I did). I will try to pop something up here when I do get out and see the province.

I arrived here to an evening and a day of fog, so it was that long before I could even see the place I was living in. Since then the weather's been pretty good though, lot's of sunny days and I've not had to walk to the university in the rain yet (it's rained mostly at night).

My first weekend here I was down around Signal Hill with some fellow students, and we walked along the paths and staircases and picked wild blueberries.

There are loads of wild blueberries around here; I've been out walking in the woods elsewhere since and am always finding some. Berry picking seems to be a provincial past-time. I'm certainly for it.

My first days here I was surprised to here girls calling other girls "b'y"; I'd always thought it was a term reserved for males. I wouldn't refer to a woman at home by "buddy" so I just figured it would be analogous, but I stand corrected.

I learned that the "fishing net" I found in the hall closet is for covering up the garbage when you put it out to be picked up - to keep the birds out of it. I had wondered why the sidewalks were covered in "fishing nets" on certain days.

Newfoundlanders out-do even Islanders for friendliness, so it hasn't been hard to get to know people. I've been meeting lots of people in my program as well, from Newfoundland and the "Come From Aways" (of which I'm now one, despite being Away currently). Been downtown a couple of times and for a hike on the East Coast Trail from Blackhead to Fort Amherst. I've gotten involved with our student society in planning events, joined intramurals and ran a road race for the first time in my life the other day - 3km and I came in 9th place in womens' with a time of around 12 minutes.

The Harbour from the Battery.

One of the hills in the downtown (I navigate back from the downtown by going up). I won't be rollerblading down there! It's not even one of the worst.Waves reflecting off the rocks below the East Coast Trail.
Gulls in queue.

Why I never made it to Newfoundland before moving here

Because the trip takes about 20 hours not including waiting-for-ferry time.

See this Google map of getting here from PEI.

Yes, that's right, there's no road through Newfoundland along the south shore. Up, over, and down again.

The Badlands

I met up with some of my friends from Edmonton: Jocelyn, Amanda, Anna, and Ross in Drumheller, Alberta. We were camping for the weekend, so we spent the Friday afternoon/evening setting up, cooking over the campfire (Ross is a good campfire cook) and just hanging out.

The farming plains of southern Alberta:

Saturday morning, Ross went golfing while the rest of us went to the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleotology which has a great collection of dinosaur skeletons, skeletons of other prehistoric creatures and loads of fossils. My favourite was this little guy, who clearly looks like a pre-historic Ey-ore and its name is even Erysis?

We met up with Ross in the afternoon and all piled in one car to go see the hoodoos (the pillars in the picture below). They're formed by erosion, so of course they're also changing due to erosion, getting smaller but then new ones can form as well. The hills in the background are typical of the Badlands with the sedimentary layers forming stripes.

Then we visited the old Atlas coal mine (there's still coal in Drumheller, but it's not being mined any more because it's more the household cooking type so not in demand anymore - although with the price of other fuels going up, who knows?) and we got to ride on the restored, battery-powered (so it didn't produce any source of ignition) coal/man train and climb up the tipple.

Then, on the recommendation of our tour guide, we went down a gravel road to check out the ghost town of West Monarch (once had 500-1000 people living in it). This is what it looks like now.

Anyway, the road was fine except to where there was some puddles, which when trying to avoid we fell into a grass-concealed ditch-of-sorts (perhaps created by spinning tires before?) from which we tried valently to extricate ourselves, but to no avail. Here you can see our attempts to build up height and traction under one wheel (there was conveniently a scrap heap nearby so I scuttled under the barbed wire fence to bring back useful things).

So we ended up stuck out in the heat waiting for a tow truck, after I had said earlier in the day "Wouldn't it be terrible to be stuck out here in this heat?" (thinking of all the old cowboy films). And after having wondered whilst on the bus the day before if cactus plants did grow in the Alberta Badlands, I discovered first-hand (literally) that they do when I got this fellow stuck in my forearm and then hand:

Anyway, the getting stuck was an unexpected adventure, but dinner that night, once we got back to the campsite, never tasted better.

On the Sunday after we broke camp, I went up to Edmonton with Ross and Anna, and I stayed with Anna's welcoming house until I flew back. Anna and I wandered around Edmonton and the university campus, both of which have become massive construction sites since the days when I was there.

Then it was time to fly back to Charlottetown and end my holiday to prepare to move to St. John's (and find a new place to live, but that's another story).