I was in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, NL this past week. It was a challenge getting there. On Monday I was scheduled to fly Toronto-Ottawa-Halifax to Goose Bay. Problem was I missed my connection in Halifax and ended up in St John’s, NL for the night (without my suitcase and on Air Canada’s dime) before flying from St. John’s to Goose Bay on Tuesday morning. It was a little better on the way back, just a Goose Bay to Halifax to Toronto uneventful flight.
I was in Stephenville, NL last week for work, it was my first trip this calendar year. Getting there was no problem, getting back was another story. I was scheduled to fly back from Deer Lake on Thursday afternoon, through St John’s. The storm that went through Toronto on Wednesday, came through Thursday morning with the same snow, ice pellets, freezing rain and then rain. My flight out of St John’s had already been delayed before I got to the Deer Lake Airport, when I checked in, they re-routed me through Halifax instead.
I was able to get to Halifax with no problem, which was good since my flight from Deer Lake to St John’s had been cancelled shortly after I landed. Halifax was pretty busy, I have never seen so many colours on the arrival/departure screens.
I headed to the lounge to wait for my 17:20 flight, only three hours. Eventually my flight was slowly being delayed and eventually cancelled. It turned out that the weather (winds) in Toronto were wreaking havoc in the other airports. There was a hold on all incoming flights until 16:30, anything that hadn’t left their airport of origin were being held. I was able to get booked on another flight for 20:30, originally they tried to re-book me for Friday morning. The incoming flight arrived so I headed down to the gate. The screens were still about the same.
The plane left the gate about 30 minutes late and I arrived at YYZ by 22:15 and eventually in the front door by 23:00. In the end only 5.5 hours behind schedule.
Here is a photo of one of the intersections in Stephenville, note the single traffic light for all four directions. This year is the 50th anniversary since the US closed the Air Force base.
I was meeting with a colleague from St John’s, we made a visit to one of his weather stations down in Burgeo, which was about a 2 hour drive from Stephenville.
I spent a few days in Happy Valley-Goose Bay this week. I was out there to do some refresher training at our site that had been shut down for 6 months due to some asbestos discovered during a renovation and the subsequent asbestos abatement. It is always a challenge to get to Goose Bay, it was only one connection through Halifax on the way there, but two connections through Halifax and Ottawa on the way back due to the cost. It was pouring rain when I landed and I got a soaker as I crossed the tarmac to get inside the building. Before I could get through the front door on the other side, the rain stopped and the sun came out to produce this rainbow.
I spent the week out in Newfoundland for work. I flew into Gander and was picked up by one of the regional techs out of St. John’s. We then headed to Head of Bay d’Espoir.
The forecast for the week was cloudy and showers everyday, but as always wait 5 minutes and the weather will change. Wednesday turned out to be a great day. The evening ended with a nice sunset.
At lunch one day the cook came out from the back and asked us “what’s you working to?”, it took a few seconds for me to process it to english, to figure out she was asking ‘where we were working’.
It was a good trip for wildlife, I saw a moose on the highway down to Head of Bay d’Espoir, a black bear near the site, and some caribou on the way back to Gander.
I drove back to St. John’s with Brent to catch my flight to Toronto. It was a good drive, only a few showers along the way. While in Newfoundland I only encountered 4 traffic lights, one in Gander coming out of the airport and three in St John’s, not bad considering I drove close to 800km. After three weeks on the road, I’m back for a week, before heading to Champaign, Illinois in a couple of weeks.
When I was a kid, I remember Dad going to Winnipeg. When he had the roll of film developed, there were probably pictures of relatives, but the one I remember is the picture taken out the window of the wing of the airplane.
These days I take between 30-40 flights a year and usually choose an aisle seat. This week on my way to Gander I was seated at a window. Upon looking out the window I saw the airplane wing and the first thing that came to mind was Dad’s picture taken almost 40 years ago. As a kid airplanes were such a mystery, and my only encounters were what you saw in the sky or when we went to the old Terminal 1 at Pearson to meet arriving relatives.
I didn’t fly on an airplane until I was 15 years old, now I take it for granted and just consider it part of my job. Here is my photo of the CRJ-200 wing of Air Canada flight #8862 from Halifax (CYHZ) to Gander (CYQX).
Here are a couple of GoPro videos from when we cooked up our lobster dinner. The first shows the lobsters going into the pot.
The second is me ripping apart the lobsters for the girls.
On Day 7 we did the Lookout Trail hike, it started at the Discovery Centre and went straight up (or at times it seemed like that) 300 metres to the top of Partridgeberry Hill. Once we got to the top I setup the GoPro on an Ikea egg timer and set it to take a picture every 5 seconds while the egg timer would count down from 60 minutes. Halfway through the egg timer stopped working, so there is an extended period of the same view, except for the changing clouds. I restarted it and it finished it’s rotation. At the end you can see us setting up for a family photo.
On day 8 we drove from Glenburnie to Herring Neck. I set the GoPro up in the front window of the van and took a photo every 5 seconds and then strung them together in iMovie. Add some Newfoundland tunes and this is what I ended up with. A 5 hour drive in 7 minutes.
Number of days on The Rock: 13
Number of digital photos taken: 1,221
Number of kilometres flown: 4,277
Number of kilometres driven: 2,668
Most kilometres driven in one day: 652
Number of relatives visited: 0
Number of ferries taken: 2
Number of provinces visited: 2 (stopover in Halifax going)
Price of most expensive gas: $1.429/litre (2013-07-20) in Gander, Newfoundland
Price of cheapest gas: $1.314/litre (2013-07-22) in St. John’s, Newfoundland
Price of gasoline for trip: $370.91
Number of pounds of lobsters consumed (family): 10.92
Taking the girls to Newfoundland for sea kayaking, whale watching and walking on the earth’s mantle : Priceless
A map of some of the trip points of interest and gas prices around the province.
Our last day in Newfoundland started like our first with the sun shining and temperatures in the 20’s. We headed out to the airport and the Maple Leaf Lounge for some lunch. Claudia waiting for the soup to be ready.
Angela playing her DS.
A Canadian North plane heading for Winnipeg.
At times Gillian seemed to be more excited about the lounge than the trip.
Our plane arriving on time.
Our flight today.
Gillian and Angela on the plane. Angela had the devil child sitting behind her.
We arrived back in Toronto on time, our bags were slow coming out, but it did allow us to watch the news that the Royal baby had arrived. We used the valet Park’N Fly on this trip and that worked out well. After dinner we headed out to Carolyn and Danny’s to pick up Chloe. She was as excited to see us as we were to see her. A big shout out to Carolyn, Danny, Alex and Emi for looking after Chloe. I’ll do a trip summary and post some more videos that we took over the two weeks. Thanks for following along on our epic adventure.
