“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Eric would prefer you make lemon meringue pie, or perhaps a lemon cake, but lemonade is alright, and it rolls off the tongue, which is important for old sayings. Margie, the tourism Queen for the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador has definitely heard that saying. Jaques, tourism King of Quebec, has old world charm and a sexy French language that makes everything sound desirable. Even a simple bakery in Quebec sounds cool when Jaques says it. “Boulangerie.” There are no lemons in his basket.
Margie, on the other hand, has an olde English, with a slight trace of salty Leprechaun to work with. Her enormous Province of mostly pine trees and mosquitos can be a tough sell. That’s not a lot to work with in the advertising biz; a real lemon as they say. Then Margie figured out the key to life. Everything can be a lemon or everything can be a tall glass of lemonade, it just depends on how you look at it. Don Draper figured that out when he described the Lucky Strike coffin nails Roger asked him to pitch as “toasted.”
The Avalon peninsula in Newfoundland is a large blob of land below the main city of St. John’s. A two-lane bumpy road runs along its perimeter connecting the various cute-as-a-button but incredibly similar towns that dot the coves on its coast. No one in their right mind would drive around this loop for a lot of reasons, like gas is $6 per gallon, the road will ruin your suspension, and the towns are very similar to the one right next to where you are probably staying. No one would purposely circumnavigate the Avalon Peninsula (A.P.) unless they got lost, but they just might drive the Irish Loop. The Irish Loop has its own pamphlet to pick up and road signs to remind you that you are doing something epically fun.
On a rainy day in the A.P., which in no way limits which day it could be, we accidentally headed out on the Irish Loop. After four weeks on the Rock, we find ourselves thinking things like, if you’ve seen one jagged glacier cut, wild fragment of forlorn coast, you’ve seen ‘em all. There is a ton of that on the Irish Loop except they all are named for a Saint. All the big Saints are here, Mary, Joseph, and whoever Shott is. Top Saintly billing went to Vincent. St. Vincent must be the patron Saint of whales, and that is definitely Whales and not Wales, because his little slice of Newfie Ireland is top of the Margie’s must do on the southern coast list: Watch whales from the beach.
At St.Vincent’s Beach, humpback whales hunt small, sardine-like fish called Capelin by corralling them against the shoreline. When the Capelin are pushed up against the steep beach, the whales glide through the sardine-like buffet for happy hour. Large sea birds cheer them on and take a shot at the watery buffet table too by soaring overhead and then tucking their wings and crashing into the mass of Capelin like torpedos dropped from an airplane. It’s pretty dramatic and fascinating to watch which is the only explanation for the crowd of people with us, sitting out in the cold rain on a beach made of small black rocks.
Continuing around the loop we dropped in on the Unesco World Heritage site, Mistaken Point. The words “Unesco World Heritage Site” may be something legitimate or they may just be making lemonade, but we saw that designation for attractions in Newfoundland a lot. Unfortunately, we had to pass on the offer to walk 6 km in our socks in the cold rain to the site of 500 million year old fossils of single celled organisms. Even if you made a lemon meringue pie, we were taking a pass. The fossils in the gift shop and Interpretive Center were old enough and we got a hot tip to look for moose and caribou feeding in the nearby bog land.
Looping further, there was a radio tower that received the distress call from the Titanic. The Titanic was 400 miles out into the North Atlantic and sinking fast so there was not a lot they could do to help. Still, the radio receiver at Cape Race was the first to hear the bad news which is technically historical, so why not make a commemorative plaque and put in on the tourist map. Along the hike, there were endless bogs full of flies and gnats, which we saw, and Moose and caribou, which we did not. Sort of glass half full of lemonade there.
The views along the Irish Loop are not obstructed by commercial enterprises like service stations or restaurants. When we finally saw a hotel bistro open in Edge of Avalon, we dropped in since it was our first and only choice. It turned out to be a restaurant that Amelia Earhart had eaten in years ago, long before she knew she would make it an attraction on the Irish Loop. We ordered the classic Irish lunch special, Fish Tacos, which were yet another way to serve up deep fried frozen cod. To be fair, they were pretty good when paired with a chilled mug of local Black Horse beer. Then again, that menu pairing works well for us in just about any location with all kinds of tacos.
Our map had whale symbols along the route indicating where we were most likely to see whales. Sure enough, we spotted more off of the Capahayden coast. We were impressed with the rigorous truth in pamphlet advertising that Margie put together. An old man in a craft shop in the village of St. Something was right out of a Newfoundland poster for The Old Man and the Sea. As it turned out, he had spent his life as a navigator in the Newfoundland Coast Guard so sometimes the stereotypes are right. His craft shop was pretty legit too and we picked up a little handmade item for a prospective arrival in the fall.
After a few bouncy hours of winding roads, we began to recognize the genius of Margie’s marketing. We had been doing this same thing all along, just with different names. At Twillingate, we drove the Isles to the Sea Pathway. In the Northern Perimeter, we followed the Viking Highway. The coast line, villages, scenery, Irving gas stations, and Liquor Express’ are essentially the same but the name of the loop changes. Being highly susceptible to advertising, obviously we had to loop them all – just like Margie intended.
As the weekend arrives, the formally empty Butter Pot Provincial Park comes alive. Dogs are barking. Music is blaring. Kids are screaming. Adults are screaming louder. We take a down day to stay off the loops and prep for our 18 hour ferry ride. Marine Atlantic has cancelled a few crossings already, which is not a good sign since they have only run the ferry once. Still, our date appears to hold so we have to make ready. It is a last opportunity to make art on the picnic table with 1,000 of your favorite mosquito friends, wash the same two sets of clothes we’ve been wearing for 30 days, and create healthy and nutritious meals using half-full bottles of condiments from the fridge and an old loaf of pumpernickel.
