After searching endlessly for a breakfast place, we drove on the TransCan until we found a truck stop with a restaurant. Picking up our route again on Hwy 80, we stopped at Heart's Content to view the cable station, site of a major relay station point for transatlantic telegraph messages and the place where the first transatlantic cable landed in 1866.
We don't always join a tour group at museums, prefering to move along at our own pace. This museum tour proved to be quite informative, not so much about the cable industry, but the lives of the people of Heart's Content during the height of the cable business. Originating in the British Isles, the business brought employees from England to operate the machines (the building still houses original equipment). A community of ex-pats developed apart from the local community: churches, schools, clubs, etc. It cost $5.00 to send a child to their school and the local fisherman could not afford to pay the tuition. Almost all the operators were imported with the exception of one notable Newfoundlander and his name is remembered by locals to this day, but I can't remember it. Also noted is the fact that during times of war, women were used as operators and proved to be faster and more accurate than men.
At Heart's Desire Lighthouse we searched for yet another geocache, but came up empty-handed.
Because John Cabot told the world about the abundant codfish in the area, an influx of fishermen from Europe began to fish the area seasonally and then began to settle permanently. At the tip of the peninsula sits Grates Cove where evidence of its Irish past still remains - rock fencing on hillsides.
Driving back down Hwy 70, along the pirate coast, we traveled through several small communities and settled for the night at Brigus' Crow Rock Camp, a brand new campground whose dust had yet to settle.
At Harbour Grace, we followed our noses to get a better view of an iceberg just offshore. Parking the van along the road, we hiked across a stretch of tuckamore. Back in Harbour Grace, an airplane and an Amelia Earheart statue commenorate her transatlantic flight which began here in 1932. Aground in the harbor is the SS Kyle, a former cargo/passenger vessel which worked up and down the coast. Grass now carpets the decks.....
At Cupid, we stopped to tour the Legacy Centre and met the manager leaving for home on a bright Sunday morning. He was most interested in telling us about his childhood growing up in Cupid. Precious little commercial fishing operates out of Cupid today, but most residents are descendents of those intrepid fishermen who came to carve out a living on this most fertile, yet unforgiving coastline. The three fishermen who still ply the trade fish with longlines for crab and shrimp. The Legacy Centre was built not as a museum, but as a reminder of where they came from. Most of his school friends have left for various parts of the world, but still consider this their home.
Not far from the centre is an archelogical dig, site of a colony during the 1600's. So far over 100,000 artifacts have been found. Pre-dating Jamestown in Virginia, the findings suggest a well-organized and successful colony.
