Saturday, October 5, 2013

July 31-to the ferry

We woke to a rainstorm again, which petered out before noon.  Breakfast in town, then on our way south to get on the ferry by 6 pm.  We had lots of time, so we decided to detour into Stephenville again and try to find the 300 million year old tree fossil that we couldn't locate on the first leg of the trip.  We finally found it marked on the side of the highway, and parked the trailer nearby to hike along the river to the fossil site.  It was pretty cool, a very big fossil section, about 12 inches in diameter, about 5 feet long, surrounded by rock, just laying in the stream.  
 
The elusive sign we were looking for


The dark grey streak is the tree fossil


Devon was thrilled to be able to hold this piece, and carefully put it right back in it's place

After checking this out, we carried on west to explore a bit more of the peninsula, but the fog rolled in and we lost the view and decided to turn back and have some lunch in town.  Once we left town, Rob got an email from Marine Atlantic, at about 2 pm, saying our ferry was cancelled.  By this point, we were about 2 hours away.  They gave us an 800 number, Rob called and was told to phone back at 6 pm, they didn't know anything yet.  Turns out the ferry Blue Puttees that we were supposed to take that evening had run aground that morning leaving Port aux Basques, stranding all occupants aboard.  They worked all day to get the ferry off the spit of land and re-docked so they could unload all those passengers, then they reboarded them on the other ferry, filled it to capacity, and left the dock by about 9 pm, leaving us behind for the night.  We were one of the few who were to have left at 8 pm that didn't make it on, because we had a trailer to sleep in.  It was understandable, but not fun spending the night in a parking lot where all night long people were driving in, talking right outside the trailer.  Hardly slept. (310 kms)

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