Wednesday August 12th
Happy Birthday to Dave!! What a cool place to spend a birthday! And the sun was shining!
I made him pancakes for breakfast with maple syrup and we took Kato into town to do a bit of shopping at the local store.

I love the homey feeling of the boardwalks that criss-cross the community, archways designating the ones that lead into individual homes. It is a confusing network of bridges over streams and little water falls, leading up and down around the houses. One of our new favorite Newfoundland bands 'The Once" have a line in one of their songs 'and it's row upon row of the people you know' and that about describes these outport towns.

We stopped to chat with an elderly gentleman who was raking up the newly cut grass in his yard. Now if you happen to have a five by five foot plot that you can use for a lawn, that is pretty good on these rocky shores! He was interested in our cat and proceeded to tell us a tale that I made out of the thick Newflandeese spoken in these parts. It seems he found a tail-less cat, 'probley from one of does shipwrecks off deese shores, and she 'ad five little ones in 'er, yes b'ys she sure did. and two dem had proper tails, two dem 'ad nune like 'er, and one 'ad a leetle curl of a ting, bent like.' and he crooked his little finger to show us. 'Yes b'ys she lived wid us near on 18 year she did.'
George Fudge showed us the painting of his boat posted by his 'bridge' and told us he used to go out fishing every day, 'but not no mores no. I stays at home now,'

We thanked him for his stories and continued on our walk.
Kato had a hard time on his walk. He is fine in the unpopulated places, but I think all the noise and smells overwhelm him in these places. He loves to meander and smell every flower and 'people' article left around and gets lost in the smells, but then here are the ATVs that whip up and down the boardwalks that cause him to leap off the walkway cowering. There are also D.O.G.s. here, and they bark at him. Cats, who are used to this being there territory are also a concern on our walks. Poor kitty.

The little grocery store had lots of canned and packaged goods, but also had the eggs and such that we requested. A snoop into the freezers found little freezer-bags of brussels sprouts and broccoli, much better than the wilting produce found in the cooler. They may have been locally grown! They only had large cans of 'beef flavoured' cat food, which was suspect. There were little containers of fancy dog food, and I thought we could try Kato with one of those and see how he liked it. I had counted the cans we had left from last year, and felt we had enough to not ship more this year, but had neglected to check what they were. There is one flavour he will not eat. It is called 'cabin fever' and he will not touch it. So of course half the tins left were those. We were going to run out!

Dave went on ahead and I let Kato meander, but he had reached his limit. An ATV, followed by a cat, a small dog that yapped at him and bigger dogs a bit further along and he was done. He refused to budge and hunched down growling fiercely with tail swishing.

I knew better than to pick him up in that mood so I waited it out, talking to him. The young woman with the little dog picked her up and carried her away waiting until Kato had passed, which was considerate, but now we both waited until he calmed down.

I nudged his leash and got him to reluctantly continue on. I ran so he would run too, trying to make a game of chase, but he was not in the mood. Yikes! We got back to the boat and he leapt aboard.

We had arranged to bring our boat over for a diesel fill up at 12:30 and as we were getting ready to do that we noticed the two power boats coming in. We helped them dock on the opposite side of us, the dory that was taking up that whole dock had left in the morning, so both their boats could fit, nose to nose.

We took Mysti-Cal over to the ferry dock and Terry from the grocery store ATV'd over to grab our lines and set us up with diesel. Dave did the filling up while I monitored the levels from inside, then we came back to our 'still available' dock spot, just in time for a sailboat to come in. Dave helped them dock in behind us, the visitor docks now choc full. Two Ontario boats, one Michigan and now one Australian, from Caloundra north of Brisbane. Geff Nunquam and Chris Melco. This couple had been cruising for twelve years and Dave was eager to hear stories of places we planned on going as our destination is Australia.

While all this was going on a man came down to the docks and asked about our dingy. Dave was busy with lines and such so I chatted with him. Originally from Ontario he said, but had fallen in love with Newfoundland 23 years ago. He wanted to know about our dingy and asked permission to take pictures of both our boats. He told me he had seen our boat come in yesterday.

He told me he was an illustrator and used the photos for his illustrations. He worked for Downhome magazine, which we happen to get from our little variety store in Norwood!
"Hey Dave" I said,"This man is the illustrator from Down Home Magazine!"
"Oh!" Dave said, 'You're Mel De Souza! Wow, so great to meet you!"

We chatted a bit about his experiences and love of Newfoundland, the beauty and wildness of it. He bought a house here and lives here in the summer months, returning to Ontario for the winter and it turns out his daughter is a doctor for the community for the powerboat people from Meaford as well. You just never know who you are going to meet on a dock.

We had a quick lunch and headed up the path Mel had pointed out that should take us up around and to the top of the cliff behind us called 'The Friar', leaving Kato aboard.
We climbed the steep boardwalk up past the houses and past the Diesel generating plant, (still shake my head, really? Right beside a waterfall???) and up into the bog-lands. There is a lake up here maybe 500 feet above the town that supplies the drinking water, and we could see where ATVs had made muddy trails through the bog..Long stretches of granite provided a less mucky walk as we tried to ascertain where the path Mel had pointed out was! We followed a boardwalk bridge over a stream, but it led to the lake, so we headed back and tried to figure out a way up the cliff.

We could not find a trail and wondered if it had grown over. We did not want to be walking over the plants here, being aware of how long it takes them to grow in this environment, they are fragile, so we headed back and thought to follow a stream bed, Jumping over a little rapid, and up we went. The reward for our efforts was not the path we were looking for, but we did find Blueberries and a lovely view from the waterfall.

Back down, Dave tried another route and we found more blueberries and more Labrador tea to replenish our stock. Yes, this was the trail to the famous Friar, but by now it was almost four and the fog was rolling in. Not much point doing that climb in the fog, so we opted to walk over to the cemetery. Blueberry picking was good, but I had yet to find Bakeapples. Chris from Aussie land had said she had seen lots of them over this way, but I thought perhaps she had mistaken them for bunchberries, which were plentiful. I saw none. The elusive Bakeapple, I had yet to see any growing, and really wanted to before leaving Newfoundland. There were pitcher plants and lots of the regular bog plants, so alive and diverse amoung the tuckamore I could spend hours just exploring them, but we opted to head back down to the boat. I had a birthday dinner to prepare and needed to ice that cake now that I had invited all six dock-mates and some people from the store for cake at 8:00!
Dave wanted to get some pictures from the helicopter pad so meandered up there while I stopped by the store to pick up a few more 'dog food' dinners. The power-boat crew was in there holding Dave's umbrella. 'You guys leave a trail don't you? One guy joked and the other asked what we had left up the hill on our hike. "Nothing but good thoughts". I swore them to secrecy, that they would not tell Kato it was dog food I was buying for him.'


Just before supper was ready the rain came in and it poured!

To add to the sudden bleakness of the day, when I took the cake I baked yesterday out from it's hiding place and tried to remove it from the pan, I found that although the outside was a bit blackened and the initial knife had come out clean, parts were still gooey inside, and it broke in half. What to do! I put it back in the stovetop oven and put it back on to bake, which even after another half hour only served to blacken the outside, while it remained still gooey inside. YIKES! I tried putting it back together on a pan to use the regular oven, which did bake the middle, but blackened the bottom dreadfully. Oh well, this is what we had, So I iced it with a coconut sugar, macadamia nut and rum concoction.

Dave's favorite pan fried crumb coated cod, with a fish sauce I made, brussels sprouts in parmesan, the last of the amazing French potatoes I had saved, with truffle salt, and some cauliflower. At least dinner turned out and the nice bottle of wine I had saved washed it down nicely. We listened to some great music and had a couple of dances after dinner here in our little salon. At 8:30, glad no one had come for cake, I lit a candle on the worlds ugliest cake and sang Happy Birthday. Cutting off the charred bottom, it was still edible, but barely.

We got out the guitar and banjo and Dave started playing when we heard a knock and in came Bill, Suzanne and Marty drinks in hand and a box of cookies for Dave. The ugly cake was still on the table and Marty gallantly ate some saying he liked it. Kind of him. Dave played some songs and we heard their stories of Bill's boat trouble and the unbelievable service he found here. People giving up their weekends to help him rebuild his transmission. Parts being brought from Gander, 'My sister's over there picking up her kid from the airport, she can bring that in for you and we can get you on your way...' Only in Newfoundland will people turn their attention from their own business to help a total stranger not loose a cruising day. It is that spirit of co-operation and helpfulness that meant survival to these communities, is 'bred in the bone'.

Both couples are retired from their various jobs, Bill from financial planning, Lauren a marine biologist, Suzanne, financial planning, real estate and marine biology, and Marty a doctor specializing in root canals. They had guessed Dave a teacher and were surprised at him being a children's Lawyer. They could not really understand what I did. Inter-dimensional- communications specialist, (I do have fun with this...)

'Dumb it down for me' Marty said.. 'Like working with neurons and brain stuff? Suzanne asked? 'No', Dave said 'like talking to dead people.' Well, not really, but it is far too complicated to explain sometimes, and this was one of those times. 'I help people get their lives on track, kind of help them get all into one place, focused, or help them resolve grief, or remorse, to understand their lives and make better choices' I said.

'Oh', Suzanne could make sense of this, 'You help people and that's what counts.'
We played a couple more songs and listened to a few more stories of how they met up in Hastings while cruising the Trent Severn waterways. We of course live fifteen minutes north of Hastings. That's how this world really is.
We heard a generator go on in the boat across from us so thought we may as well run ours too as we got ready for bed, charge up the batteries that were a little low.