Labrador, — Red Bay, HMS Raleigh,

Friday we left St Anthony early, saw a bunch of moose on the drive down to St Barbe—(left at 4:30AM - like way too early), but you do get to see moose.  And did get to the ferry and made it to Quebec and on into Labrador.  Drove north into fog and rain and thinking boy hope it gets pretty and my did it.  The scenery is stunning.

Below is the Point Amour lighthouse — tallest on the Atlantic in Canada, 150 plus years old and still operational.  Needs to as bunches of ships have wrecked here.

Included among the wreckage is the HMS Raleigh, yep, another Raleigh on our trip.  They do not pronounce it like we do and you may not even recognize it as Raleigh if you had not seen it spelled.  Think rally like "rally the troops"  or "rally round the flag".

Also they do not pronounce the "h" in th sounds so birth sounds like birt, and fifth sounds like fit and think like tink.  Yes indeed Patt and I are not the only ones with an accent around here.

Back to HMS Raleigh - look it up- a British warship ran aground here in 1922 trying to miss an iceberg.  A number of sailors died and the ship was abandoned.  The Royal Navy came back and blew it up in 1926 to save themselves the embarrassment of having a warship being photographed aground according to the tour guide at the museum near by.

We went as far north as the paved road goes, to Red Bay an UNESCO World Heritage site where Basque Whalers in the 1500s operated a whaling station in the summers for many decades.  There was at least one Basque whaler ship sunk in the bay recovered in the 1990s and numerous sites around the bay have been identified as related to whale oil production back when the Lost Colony was being imagined and then lost by Sir Walter.

Red Bay at its height had as many as 800 to 1000 Basque men and boys working during the summer.  More than were there today.

The kicker though on our trip has been the scenery out the car window as we have driven north, then back south.  Beautiful tundra, stunted spruce forests in the valleys and protected areas, and wide spaces.

the Pinware River makes a cut through the open space.

The road is very lightly traveled.  We stopped on the side of the road walked back to the bridge over the Pinware and got a Fish and Wildlife officer who was on the bridge to take our photo.