[Pentaxian1954]

Welcome!!!

There are several Pentaxians in Newfoundland. Me for one (see my albums if you want...they're public) and 2 or 3 others I see from time to time around. I'm the only one who posts here much any more--sadly they've mostly gone to fb.

Re. size of Canada comments: I got asked once by a royal follower from Texas if I was going to drive to PEI to see one of them (forget which). That's literally a 2 or 3 day journey just for travel time alone by road/ferry/bridge! That said, we had two nonPentaxian (to the best of my knowledge) locals drive to the Labrador ferry (for nonlocals: it's 10 hour drive each way just to the ferry) and then over to Lab City to photograph some Eurasian blackbird that blew in from England just last month on a "quick" 2 or 3 day sojourn. I think they said they drove about 2800km. Here's their radio interview... A rare Eurasian Blackbird sighting in Labrador | St John's Morning Show with Krissy Holmes | Live Radio | CBC Listen

Newfoundland is an outdoor photographer's wonderland...


Here's a vicious caribou!

A happy seal

Some tuna feeding




Some fisherman on the calm waters here!





some birds




Runner near North Head


and of course an obligatory whale...

Reminds me of the couple who flew to St. John's hoping to drive to BC in two days. No concept of just how big our country is.

[jgnfld]

Reminds me of the couple who flew to St. John's hoping to drive to BC in two days. No concept of just how big our country is.

Yeah...a classic question on the Newfoundland subreddit (according to my daughter, anyway...I don't do reddit) is "I have 3 days and want to see all of Newfoundland. What should my itinerary be?" Heck...There's important places on the Avalon alone I haven't yet seen, let alone the rest of the island!

[Pentaxian1954]

Yeah...a classic question on the Newfoundland subreddit (according to my daughter, anyway...I don't do reddit) is "I have 3 days and want to see all of Newfoundland. What should my itinerary be?" Heck...There's important places on the Avalon alone I haven't yet seen, let alone the rest of the island!

I spent 15 years as a geologist and saw almost every Sq km of the island either by road or helicopter. I took thousands of pictures during that time. The camera I used was one of the first digital cameras that stored the images on a 3.5 inch disk. That was about 40 years ago. All those images are lost but the memories are still with me. We have some astounding scenery.

[jgnfld]

Geologist? Wow. The Rock is certainly a good place for that!


Mistaken Point Ediacaran fossil you may have photographed (~565mya) ...

[jcdoss]

Mistaken Point Ediacaran fossil you may have photographed (~565mya) ...

Wow. Do you know any more about this?

[jgnfld]

Wow. Do you know any more about this?

First, it's a fairly easy day trip from St. John's. Call it 150km each way or so...I forget.


Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site - Environment and Climate Change

https://mistakenpoint.ca/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistaken_Point_Formation

These will get you started. Note, these are deep water fossils possibly from around volcanic vents. Locals knew about them forever (centuries, likely, as the area has long been used for hunting, berrying, picnicking, and fish drying...though no fish flakes there any more, of course), but no one knew about their great significance till some grad students from Memorial were having a picnic in the area and one of them--Misra--realized they were pretty much unknown to science at the time. A few months later, he got a pub in Nature which not every grad student does at the master's level! (I certainly never did...sniff.)

It's not a very hard hike though it is quite a remote area so you want to be careful as you're many hours from S&R help. The first time I went was about 30 years ago. I took my young kids and eventually turned around after seeing just a few fossils/fragments as it was totally undeveloped at the time and it was not really safe for young children to go all the way out to the best bedding planes (better now, but I'd still worry). It's actually quite close to Cape Race which is within hiking distance or easy additional drive (that would be the CORRECT point!--there are wrecks in the area from getting this little distinction wrong the most famous being the SS Florizel which killed Sir Bowring's--of the London merchant Bowrings--niece among many others back in 1918). I've been out there a few times and it's wonderful each time. These days you must be escorted as fossil pirates--usually fellow citizens of and from the US, I sadly note--have tried on several occasions to take diamond saws to the bedding planes. This pic was from later fall this last year and I hit the lighting perfectly with low, very bright later afternoon sun at an ideal angle to give contrast. Usually this area is very foggy. It's gone now, but years ago there was a very haunting wave-powered horn buoy offshore there that reminded me of nothing so much as that Bradbury story The Fog Horn out there in the typical fog.

BTW, the Myrick Wireless Interpretation Centre over at Cape Race has all sorts of early 20th Century wireless gear to commemorate Cape Race's reception of the Titanic's distress calls and is quite worth it if you're a tech geek for early radio gear. As well, this fall there were a large number of bluefin tuna hunting within sight of shore from the lighthouse which is always wild to see and a 4 or 5 foot mola (ocean sunfish) which are becoming quite common here now in the summer as the sea gets warmer was literally right next to the cliff. In June/July you'll pretty much always see whales. Finally, you often come across caribou here or nearby at Cape Pine or near St. Shott's. As I've said, Newfoundland is an outdoor photographer's paradise.