Pat and Barb left this morning for Port aux Basques where they will catch the short ferry back to North Sydney. We have opted to stay here at St. John's a couple of extra days and will catch the long ferry (overnight) from Argentia to North Sydney. We will both arrive the morning of August 24th but about 3 hours apart.
The Irish Loop (200 miles) refers to an area that encircles the shores of Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula. The area is named after the Irish immigrants that first inhabited this part of Newfoundland, and for the geography which resembles their homeland. This tour around the Irish Loop can be done in a day at a leisurely pace to truly enjoy the scenery.
Acording to the tour book, this is some of the most fertile land in the province where you will see herds of dairy cattle and fields of vegetables as you drive by. The rolling green hills of the area are still being farmed by the descendants of the Irish families who settled there in the 19th century.
Anyway, it was a beautiful day and we hated to waste it doing chores and things, so off we went to drive the Irish Loop.
According to the books, you'll see whales, birds, etc. along the Loop. We didn't. We did see farms which is something we hadn't seen elsewhere in Newfoundland. We saw some beautiful coastline, some pretty scenery and some quaint little things that people have displayed along side the highway.
My favorite was this little fishing village - it was in a small pond across the street from the guy's house who built it and put it together. Everything is done to scale and it was quite well done.


The lighthouse seemed a little big in relationship to the boats but other than that, it was pretty much to scale. My favorite was the little fisherman standing in his boat full of fish - probably selling to the people at the table. Back in the corner of the village is a fish flake (it is a stand where they dry the cod). Anyway, once you've seen as many little fishing villages as we have in the past couple of months, you can really appreciate the detail this guy put into it. I loved it!
Before we had gotten very far along on the trail, we came up behind this bike run for Children's Wish Foundation. They slowed us down a little bit but they pulled off and we were able to get past them.

One little town on the Irish Loop is called Ferryland. It is one of the oldest European settlements in North America. The Colony of Avalon as it was named, was founded in the 1620s by Lord Baltimore, whose family later founded the American colony of Maryland.
Since we had a long way to go, we didn't stay and tour the Interpretive Center at Ferryland.
We started out on this gravel road to the Cape Race lighthouse. We drove nearly 4 miles and the road just got rougher and rougher. Even though we're in a Jeep, we didn't see any reason to keep bouncing over that road to the lighthouse which at the point we turned around, we could barely see in the distance. Cape Race is where they heard the wireless distress signal from the Titanic.

This was a pretty little valley we saw near the town of Peters River. I guess that river would be Peters River in the pix. Supposedly the ocean is really deep here near the coast and the whales come in and you can watch them from the shoreline. Needless to say...no whales today.
We finally found a bathroom stop (which are few and far between in Newfoundland) and this little Amphibian car was parked in front. The man who owned it came out just as we were looking at it and talked to Richard about the car.
This little car was 49 years old. It will go into the water and you can "drive" it in the water. It had 10,000 miles on it.
They didn't make very many of these cars. I wonder why?
Here is another little fishing village, but it is not quite as good as the other one, but still, someone had spent a lot of time building it.


We saw this sign by the highway near Peters River and St. Vincent's.
We finally got back to St. John's about 5 o'clock. We went downtown and ate at Zapata's Mexican Restaurant. El Fenix...I miss you!!! Zapata's is located on the side of the hill and parking is a lot of fun! The restaurant is small and dark though they must have another floor because some people went upstairs.
this hill is pretty steep though you can't really tell in the pix