Day 34 and pick up Day 28 of 49

We had a travel day today.  Did not take any pix because it was over cast or raining and the wind was and still is blowing like mad.  Rog said as we were traveling that if we were not with a caravan he would have just parked it and waited it out.  We are all here and all is fine.  It is a cold wind and gusts are pretty big at times.  We are hoping it lets up soon, but for sure in the morning so we can do some exploring on our own.

We had to get up and out early, because Merry has this cough and we needed to see a vet.  That is easier said than done in Newfoundland.  These villages we are going to are small and remote.  We had to travel 160 some miles to get to the closest one on our route.  The vet did not think it was her heart, although she does have a merer, but she is not showing the signs of heart failure yet.  So she is thinking it is an infection in her throat and gave us meds for that.  Merry does not get much sleep because of the cough and neither do we.  Hope the meds kick in soon for all our sakes. 



Now I will talk about our day 28 or so... they are starting to blur together since  I have not been able to blog them right away. 

This is a water tower in Bonavista that was done a while back to commemorate 500 years of the creation of this village.  

    

  
The Ryan Premises National Historic Site of Canada commemorates five centuries of commercial fishing on Canada's east coast.  A 19th century saltfish mercantile complex consists of five buildings, including storehouses where the smell of saltfish still lingers in the air. 


At the museum they gave a demonstration of how salted cod was prepared in the 1800's  It was very interesting and was done with a stuffed Velcroed cod.   I learned a lot.  



Here he has taken his wooden knife and "cut" the cod open and gutted it and showed how they would put the cod's liver in a special bucket for processing.  Then he "cut" the back bone out and now a round cod fish is flat for drying.

The guts and the liver.

Snap off the head. 







  Weighing the salted cod. 

The racks they would place the cod outside to dry.  They would place tree branches down first then fish.  This would allow for more air flow around the fish.


  Rog holding a salted cod.
 The Newfoundlanders have a dish called, fish'n brewies.  It is made with salted cod and a hard bread called hardtack.  They soak the hardtack and cod to moisten both then cook and serve with scrunchens ( crisp bits of salt pork) on top.  I tried some the other day and it is very tasty. 



Mathew is the name of the ship captioned by John Cabot in 1497as he sailed across the uncharted Atlantic.  It is a magnificent full scale recreation of John Cabot's ship built by Newfoundland Shipwrights as a legacy to the hardy little ship that brought Cabot and his crew to the "New Founde Landes" over 500 years ago. The ship is beautiful and is in a building so very hard to get a pic of it because you are just to close.






This is the oldest build in Newfoundland believed to be built in 1733.  It is part of the Mockbeggar Plantation

It may well be the oldest  identifiable fishery plantation in existence on the Island of Newfoundland.  The residence that now stands was built in 1872-73

  


this is inside the lighthouse looking up at the lights.

It was built between 1841 and 1843 to mark the entrances to Bonavista and Trinity Bays and to aid mariners headed for Labrador. It is the fourth oldest lighthouse in Newfoundland. The two-story wooden building is built around a masonry tower surmounted by a lantern. The first lamps and reflectors came from the Bell Rock Lighthouse in Scotland. This apparatus was later replaced by a catoptric system from the Harbour Grace Lighthouse on the Isle of May in Scotland