A long drive today - but in the Jeep

We had heard that the "Irish Loop" was a drive that we should do from Saint John's, and since it was predicted to be sunny today and we had gotten naps yesterday, we decided to do it today. Wow - God created such a beautiful place in His creation of Newfoundland!!!

This was the route we took today.

google maps link to the route we took today

There are bodies of water on every side at almost every turn - either bays and the North Atlantic, or beautiful clear lakes, or streams that are brown with the color of peat - water everywhere.

Witless Bay - many wildlife watching tours go out from this area.

 

Tors Cove - beautiful islands in the bay.

A "pond" alongside the road - we noticed white things in it...

Beautiful water plants!

So lovely!

On to the town of Ferryville, with excavations of one of the first colonies in North America, Lord Baltimore's Colony of Avalon, 1621. We did not take the tour of the excavations, but again enjoyed the beautiful bay.

One thing we noticed as we drove along is that sometimes the electric/telephone poles were embedded in a container of stones.

This is an example of the container of stones holding a pole.

It seemed to be used where the land was marshy, probably hard to give the pole a solid foundation otherwise.

At a point on our way south (we think after the town of Renews), the trees pretty much disappeared and there was just moors with low growing shrubs. This picture shows the lakes that so often crop up on the side of the road - each so beautiful! This area was very near Chance Cove Provincial Park.

We had wanted to drive out to Cape Race lighthouse. The route took us along about 12 miles of gravel road along the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve.

Beautiful greens on the land and blues in the sea!

Crashing waves....

Little cottages along the way - this one beside a stream...

When we got close, we could see that the stream was orange-brown colored with peat, like we had seen in Scotland.

After a bumpy ride on the gravel road, and many stops to admire the views, we came to Cape Race Lighthouse.

We had been enjoying our trip so far that we had forgotten why we had wanted to drive out to the light house - a museum with information about wireless communications:

The Myrick Wireless Interpretation Centre had many displays about wireless communication (we hope to learn more about Marconi when we visit Signal Hill in Saint John's), and especially about their role in getting the communications from the Titanic as they were the communications station that could receive the messages from where the Titanic was when it hit the iceberg. The Myrick family have always been involved with keeping the light at Cape Race and were also operators of the wireless at this location.

We finally left the Cape Race area at about 4:30pm to head back to Saint John's. We continued on the Irish Loop, though without as many stops as we had made on the way south. We look forward to continuing our explorations of Newfoundland!