13 July 2013 Exploring Fishing Villages, Highway 205

Today was our laid-back, take-it-easy Saturday on the Bonavista Peninsula. Our friends Marge and Jerry traveled north of our park to Red Cliff and Tickle Cove to see the red rocks surrounding these small fishing villages and to King's Cove where they found a great 1.7 kilometer hike to a nice lighthouse. We went south to Clarenville and found a real grocery store (Sobeys) and a restaurant (Ron's) where we helped them get creative with breakfast--we asked for a pancake with our eggs and bacon instead of hash browns and toast--they were kind of surprised, but agreeable.

After breakfast we traveled further south and then took Highway 204 east along the peninsula (lots of inlets and peninsulas in Newfoundland) to its end at Southport.  On the way we passed through the communities of Queen's Cove, Long Beach, Hodge's Cove, Caplin Cove, Little Heart's Ease, Gooseberry Cove, and Butter Cove. All the little settlements have roads that end at the sea, some at small docks with private pleasure-craft and small fishing boats, and a couple at fully developed small harbors, with large fishing boats and fees for landing, storage, and other activities. Some of the roads down were very steep and winding, and some had residential-type streets and avenues with nice homes, and we wondered what those people did for a living. We loved exploring, looking at the neat homes and yards, seeing people relaxing on the weekend, waving as we passed.

At Gooseberry Cove we ended up at a fish processing plant and large dock area for sea-going fishing vessels. We stopped to watch all the activity, talked to folks, and took pictures. Five men were off-loading a large net from a sizable fishing boat. Patrice asked another spectator what kind of fish had been caught in the net, and found out that caplin had been their catch. It had just been unloaded, and the nets were being spread for cleaning and drying.

Cleaning net that had been full of caplin

Caplin are a very small (six to ten inches in length) northern fish of the smelt family, found in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Sea birds, whales, and other fish prey on them and they are the key food for Atlantic cod (caplin eat krill and plankton). Commercially, caplin is used for fish meal and oil industry products, and also appreciated as food, tasting much like herring. 

Caplin

There was a small boat on the other side of the dock waiting to unload it catch of caplin into large tanks that were being brought out from the processing plant. The boat was obviously full of caplin as it sat rather low in the water; water was poured into the boat, and the caplin was sucked up the hose into empty containers and loaded with ice. This little boat had to wait for some rearranging of tanks, because the boat I talked about above had just unloaded their large catch, using the same machine. 

Waiting to unload caplin

Glassy water, great reflections

Dockside

We were able to watch the unloading process. Water was sprayed into the caplin mass and then they were sucked up through the 6-inch diameter hose into a large green container on the dock. When the container was full the caplin were dropped into the waiting tanks. The capacity of the green container obviously was the same as the capacity of the tanks.

 Unloading caplin

Note fish being dropped from green tank

Thought this sign at Gooseberry Cove harbor was interesting. 

Sign at Gooseberry Cove pier

I found this old boat relic at the end of the road in Southport. 

Boat skeleton

This sign was at the bottom of a very steep water access in one of the villages.

We went home, relaxed a while, and drove to Trinity to attend a dinner theater. We had some wine, cod casserole (really good), and desert of molasses cake with rum sauce. The first half of the show was some great singing of Newfoundland songs by the cast, and a few comic monologues. In the last half a skit (play) was performed, entitled "Twilight at the Bight," a spoof of the Twilight movies with the vampire Edward finding his long lost love Bella in Trinity, of all places.  Kinda hokey but fun.

Found more laundry.

Found a decorated garbage bin.

Tomorrow we leave for St. John's, where we'll spend five days. Only six more days on the island of Newfoundland.