{"id":134,"date":"2014-07-16T20:23:08","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T00:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/?p=134"},"modified":"2014-11-26T11:32:20","modified_gmt":"2014-11-26T16:32:20","slug":"july-16-red-bay-into-the-life-boats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/july-16-red-bay-into-the-life-boats\/","title":{"rendered":"July 16: Red Bay \u2013 Into the Life Boats!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Veendam<\/a>

A Veendam Lifeboat and Tender<\/p><\/div>\n

The title is accurate and misleading.\u00a0 At Red Bay, Labrador, there is no cruise terminal.\u00a0 The ship anchors off the coast and some lifeboats double as ship-to-shore tenders to shuttle passengers back and forth.<\/p>\n

Red Bay is where this trip became interesting.\u00a0 You do not get to places like this easily.\u00a0 This village of 170 inhabitants was overwhelmed by the 1200 passenger cruise ship. No more warm weather, mostly a tundra landscape, and only here and there some stunted trees.\u00a0 The weather was generally gray, with some occasional sunny and foggy periods, temperature just above 50F (10C), but no rain.\u00a0 Got out the winter coat, but it was actually very good walking weather.<\/p>\n

\"Red<\/a>

Red Bay Harbour<\/p><\/div>\n

We got up fairly early to catch a tender to meet our \u201cLighthouse Tour\u201d.\u00a0 This was a 75-minute ride at a pretty brisk pace over a very bumpy road in a school bus.\u00a0 Occasionally you were ejected from your seat, only to come crashing down again.<\/p>\n

\"Point<\/a>

Point Amour Tour Schoolbus<\/p><\/div>\n

The scenery was not spectacular, but very impressive.\u00a0 If this does not make sense, it was the utter desolation and stark beauty of the landscape.\u00a0 This is about as isolated as it gets.<\/p>\n

\"Pinware<\/a>

Pinware River<\/p><\/div>\n

If you are going to the store, prepare for a three-hour ride there and a three-hour ride back again.\u00a0 You better make sure you don\u2019t forget anything important.\u00a0 In winter, people travel by snowmobile.\u00a0 Not like (hardy? ha, ha, ha) New Englanders who do this for sport, but out of necessity, and you carry a survival kit.\u00a0 Oh, yes, gas is about $10 gallon out here.<\/p>\n

At the end of the ride was Point Amour<\/em>, where the tallest lighthouse in Atlantic Canada stands.\u00a0 This romantic sounding name may have actually evolved from the original French Point aux Morts <\/em>(Place of Death) because of the numerous shipwrecks there.<\/p>\n

\"Point<\/a>

Point Amour Lighthouse, Labrador (by Arjan Post)<\/p><\/div>\n

One was the British HMS Raleigh<\/em>, which in 1922 was the flagship of the North American British Navy and shipwrecked trying to avoid an iceberg, killing 11 sailors.\u00a0 We spent 100 minutes walking around the area.\u00a0 There was a nice shore walk.\u00a0 We saw some left-over wreckage of the HMS Raleigh.<\/p>\n

\"Wreckage<\/a>

Wreckage from the HMS Raleigh<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Wildflowers<\/a>

Wildflowers on the Trail<\/p><\/div>\n

After the return to Red Bay and visiting the information center and a small museum, I wandered out of town over some paths into the tundra until there were no fellow travelers left.\u00a0 I was alone with the tundra wild flowers, and sea urchin and crab skeletons.\u00a0 Walking on tundra is like walking on something that is a cross between a sponge and a trampoline.\u00a0 I stumbled on a local cemetery.\u00a0 I have never seen such a well and lovingly tended graveyard.\u00a0 There was an abundance of flowers at every grave.<\/p>\n

\"Red<\/a>

Red Bay Cemetery (by Arjan Post)<\/p><\/div>\n

We took a lot of pictures.\u00a0 We will upload what we can as soon as we get to a decent Wifi spot.<\/p>\n

Photos \u00a9 2014 P.J. Gardner<\/a> & Arjan Post. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title is accurate and misleading.\u00a0 At Red Bay, Labrador, there is no cruise terminal.\u00a0 The ship anchors off the coast and some lifeboats double as ship-to-shore tenders to shuttle passengers back and forth. Red Bay is where this trip … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-cruise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1330,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions\/1330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}