rothandrambergblog

We finally got Maggie home and back up on her blocks in Portugal Cove. Tired and dirty, we had a bit of a sleep in but were up early enough to drive around Portugal Cove. We were pretty sure we had enough shots for the calendar but perhaps there was still a gem waiting to be found. Lunch of fish and chips by the ocean ended up taking priority, along with buying new outfits to wear to Mark’s cousin’s wedding we managed to get ourselves invited to.

 We joined Mark at the Legion after the supper and speeches were done. More drinks and beer. The party was rolling along and all of a sudden the music stopped. The lights turned on. The bartender grabbed the mike and announced that if guests were bringing in their own beer she was going to shut the wedding down. Then the lights got shut off and the music got cranked up again. Newfoundlanders love to have fun that’s for sure.

We stumbled home around 1am and sure enough there was yet another good old fashioned shed party going on. Men singing old Newfoundland songs, lots of rum and good times. Another 3am night.  Unfortunately we had to be up at 6:30am to catch our flight home.

post wedding shed party from roth and ramberg on Vimeo.

 We’re sad it’s over… but what an adventure! Wonderful, warm, hardworking, hospitable people. We can’t say enough about how great our trip was. The sense of community is strong in Newfoundland. We will be back for sure and you should go too.

We hope you enjoyed the blog entries if you’ve read them to this point. Stay tuned in January for the ‘Roth and Ramberg around the Bays’ Newfoundland Calendar. If you’d like a copy of the calendar just drop us a line and let us know your address.

Thanks to everyone in Newfoundland who took good care of us, especially Fred and Rosland.

Now it’s time to get some sleep, then start the detox and dieting. 

Thanks for coming along with us…

Dale & Michele

 It’s nearing the end of our journey. One of the many great things about Newfoundlanders is their generosity. Not only do they invite you into their homes, or sheds, or driveways, many give you something in return. We’ve managed to disrupt the daily routines of many on this trip and yet we leave with fresh cod fillets, antique spoons, handmade tea towels, fridge magnets etc.

Today we met up with a friend of Marks parent’s named Harold. After photographing him he treated us to some crab au gratin and as we were leaving he loaded us up with frozen scallops, moose burgers, crab etc. WOW!

 To back up a little though, we woke up by the ocean in Chaulkers Cove on Conception Bay. Yet more generous people, Richard and Elizabeth  allowed us to park Maggie in their yard overnight. We had a late supper of tacos in their kitchen, sat up and chatted for a while and in the morning had a nice dip in the ocean before we left.

jump in the ocean from roth and ramberg on Vimeo.

Today we decided to do the excursion around the Bay tour.  For us it consisted of going to Bay de Verde which is at the tip of Conception bay where it hits Trinity Bay. Vicki, who is Richard and Elizabeth’s daughter, made some calls for us and we had a few people lined up to photograph or help us out. One was a Newfoundland Dog breeder. The second the owner of a beach camping area. The third, someone who headed up a historical society in Bay de Verde.  Two out of the three… not bad.

We made the drive up the coastline, which of course was stunning. We stopped at Old Perlican where we hooked up with Harold. When we arrived he was drying out the capelin recently caught. If you remember day 1 of our journey we bit the head off a capelin to begin our journey.

 He took us down the fish plant where the Capelin and shrimp were being unloaded and packaged and shipped.

 After finishing in Old Perlican, we made the 5 km trek to Bay de Verde. Just when we thought the scenery couldn’t get any better… oh my. After wandering around a bit, we finally found the clothesline shot we’ve been hunting for. Clotheslines in Newfoundland are quite a common sight and it was kind of a quest to get a good one. The stick is used to raise up the line, as well as support more of a load. It rests against the ground and the weight of the clothes keeps it from moving.

Conception Bay from roth and ramberg on Vimeo.

We met and photographed a great old fisherman. (If you haven’t noticed by now, you’ll have to wait until the R&R calendar comes out to see those shots.) A quick visit there and we were on our way to the beach.

At the beach we met up with a man named Neal Oleary. He owns a wonderful campground/park with the best beach we’ve seen so far on our travels. We start talking with him for a bit. After a while he brings out his handmade wooden accordian and he starts playing us some great old fashioned Newfoundland music. Down to the beach we go with Neal and get the last shot of the day.

Now its back to the home of Maggie. We’re all feeling a bit sad as tomorrow is our last day of shooting.

 We overnighted in Square Pond campground, mainly due to their wi-fi connection. Another long night plowing through the video, blog, etc.

 The average bedtime is about 2:30 am. Usually we have a few cocktails while we work. Best guess so far for alcohol consumed: two bottles of Old Sam rum, ten dozen beer or so, three quarters of a bottle of gin, one bottle of vodka, one and a half bottles of scotch and a bottle of red wine. Seafood comsumption: cod, lobster, scallop, crab, cod tongue, salmon, shrimp and squid.

Mid-day we made the determination to go to the lower part of Trinity Bay to cover that area, more specifically a town named Dildo.

 Yes, we shot the obvious… Dale with the Dildo road sign. There’s a clever bit of guerrilla advertising attached to the sign. It’s a handpainted sign. It advertises a wood shop which sells replica Dildo signs and other souvenirs. Sure it’s a small sign, but everyone stops to get their picture taken.

According to the Newfoundland dictionary a Dildo is a small round stick or dowel fastened to the gunwhale of a rowboat to hold the oar in place, just in case you were wondering

 All 12 year old boy humour aside, its a wonderful town with friendly people who take the name with good natured jokes and chuckles. We met a couple of young adults at the music festival inside the local hall and had a chance to take some great photos. That all said here’s the view from the harbour, absolutely stunning.

 Now we are heading down to the last of the four bay tour, which is where we started. That would be Conception Bay.

 We pulled in late last night onto Fogo Island. Friends of friends of Mark’s live at the far end of the island in a town named Tilting. One quick call to Cathy and Joe and we are invited over. We hit the scene close to 10:30pm. We ask Cathy about the best way to cook our fresh cod from Twillingate. A few minutes later Maggie is hooked-up out back recharging her batteries. Before we know it, Cathy is frying up a proper scoff of cod fillets and potatoes for our midnight dinner.  Best cod we’d ever eaten… even Dale had a fine feed!

 Cathy makes a call to her sister Mary who lives next door.  Instantly it turns into a good old fashioned kitchen party. A bottle of Sam’s is opened and the lid is thrown away. Mary took quite a fancy to Dale and gave him the gears all night long. The bottle is done and Joe walks in to the house after his own shed party at the neighbors. He’s suprised to see the three of us, but of course we were welcome with open arms.

 We’ve got lots of work to.  We don’t want to get caught on Fogo. We get up early and go find something to shoot. The last ferry is out at 6:30. Bacon and eggs courtesy of Mark, showers all around thanks to Cathy & Joe and then we hit the streets…

We begin to hear stories about a local woman from a town named Joe Batt’s Arm. She is quite a success story, having come from a poor family and now a philanthropist. She has attracted artists from around the world to stay in the community to work. As well, she has set up scholarships for students and set up a foundation to help businesses start up. She’s involved with the local ice cream shop which hires local high school kids and an incredible restaurant with a world class chef… of course we stopped there for lunch. From all accounts she is doing great things for Fogo Island.

 There’s a specific kind of boat called a punt. It’s is a type of rowboat used quite frequently in this area. It’s meant to be towed behind a slightly bigger boat and then used to haul the nets etc. for fishing. We hear there are a few boat builders in the area.  Our first quest is to find one of the boatbuilders. Poking around town we find a man named Aiden.  He won the first ever annual punt race from Fogo Island to Change Island and back. He lets Michele take her shot at piloting the boat… not so good.

 Throughout the day, we hear a story of a man who owns a Newfoundland pony. It’s a specific horse that is slighty smaller than a regular horse but bigger than a Shetland. There’s only one pony on Fogo. We manage to find him and his horse and they both agree and to let us photograph them.  His pony is named Midnight Trumpet.

After a quick drink with Joe and Katheine and family visiting from Alberta in their shed we haul ass to the ferry.  We make it with time to spare (good thing the boat was late arriving). We hop aboard and within five minutes Michele is steering the boat back to Farewell Harbour.

the island, mon from roth and ramberg on Vimeo.

Another link to paste into Google Earth to see more of Fogo Island.

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1243170&#Post1243170

 We heard the sounds of the icebergs breaking all night long. We decided to get an early start to the day for a change. Loading video, working on the blog, facebook, twitter etc. takes a long time. That of course would be fine if Rogers coverage wasn’t non-existent outside St John’s. It makes our little mobile internet stick “as stunned as a birch broom in the fits”, whatever that means…          

 We were determined to find a kayaker to photograph by the icebergs. After wrapping up our internet work, we spotted two kayakers in the bay.  We tracked down Bax for another boat ride.  Sure enough he was ready to take us out on his boat so we hauled ass across the bay towards the kayakers. We pulled up alongside one of the kayakers and there before our eyes was a wonderful redhead. We thought for sure her name was going to be Maggie but it wasn’t. While photographing her, we definitely drifted WAY TOO CLOSE to the iceberg.

 We safely got out with no iceberg tipping over on to us. To celebrate we headed back to our favorite stage for a few beers.

 Lunch time. We had to have some seafood by the ocean… Mark and Michele anyway. We drove a few km out of town and took a back road to Doyle W Sansome and Sons. There’s is a little wharf with a few buildings to hold live lobster and the tiniest kitchen ever.

 We got two lobster specials. In one of the buildings one of the owners grabbed two live lobsters handed them to Michele. She plunked them each into a lobster pot sitting on the concrete floor.

 A few minutes later… lobster by the sea. Yummy. 

Here’s the difficult math… the fisherman sells the lobster for $3-4/lb and then the restaurant sells it to us for $20/lb.

 After a few stops to buy some clean underwear for Dale, stock up on more beer, shopping in an art gallery by the sea.. we are now off to the ferry at Farewell. It’s an hour from Twillingate and we caught the last ferry to Fogo Island.

iceberg heaven from roth and ramberg on Vimeo.

We drove into the night and arrived at Dildo Run Provincial Park (yes we covered every joke). A few hot showers and some drinking by the campfire we went to bed refreshed. In the morning, we drove the last few kilometres to Twillingate, the drive in was unbelievable. Every vision we ever had of Newfoundland was right before our eyes. If you haven’t noticed we like to eat out a lot, mainly because its a chance to meet the locals.

 The Harbour View restaurant seemed perfect and it had wireless. For the first time in a long time we’re back on the grid. Dale went outside to take photos while the rest of the crew worked on the blog etc. Carrying two blackberries, Dale was stopped by what may have been the owner, Cal. They got to talking and within a few minutes we were packing everything up and driving down the road to meet Bax, but first we ate toutons (panfried bread dough with molasses).

Bax had a boat and was ready to give us a tour of the icebergs. What a beautiful boat ride getting close to the icebergs, taking photos and watching them break apart.

After a few drinks with some freshly caught iceberg ice on Roy’s fishing stage we found out where a 96 year old fisherman lived that we could photograph. Then a little boy showed up with his wooden toy boat on a string, click.

 We wheeled Maggie to an oceanside picnic park for the night. BBQ, a little Fat Bastard red wine and rumbling sounds from the ice bergs all night long. I wonder what they’ll look like when we wake up. Unfreaking believable… a perfect day and a perfect night camped out right beside the icebergs.

It was a dark, stormy night… literally. We woke up on the beach but the rain had begun. Yesterday was not great photowise and today the weather could limit our shooting. We drove around an area called New-Wes Valley which is a collection of small villages located a few miles apart. One of the villages, Newtown, has a heritage village so we thought that might be the place to start. We had heard they had a gondola which navigated the river which runs through the town. Perhaps a photo there… only to find out the gondola man was not around. We found the name of a local artist and continually phoned him throughout the day with no luck.

 Spirits were a bit down as we desperately drove around trying to find something… anything. We were crusing around Greenspond and drove past an incredible house right on the ocean. Someone was wandering outside so Dale jumped out and started chatting. A few minutes later we were inside getting the tour, drinking coffee and arranging to photograph Josephine. The rain started as we shot outside and water was dripping from Jospehines’ face as we finished the last shot.

 Turns out there was an iceberg in Greenspond and sure enough the view from the hill was incredible. We shot, got soaked and afterwards drank some Sam’s rum.

summer showers in newfoundland from roth and ramberg on Vimeo.

 We kept passing  a sign on the highway Norton Cove Studios, and on a hunch we tracked it down. Inside was a great little art gallery print shop. The owner Janet was incredible as we photographed her. In the end, she offered up her shower and wireless interest to us and invited us for a porkchop dinner and but we knew we had to push on to Twillingate.

 Driving down the highway eager to get to the campground for a shower, we passed by some fly fisherman fishing at the mouth of the ocean. Both Michele and Dale wanted to get to the showers, but Mark was the voice of reason and we turned around….glad we did as we got some photos, and watched one of the locals hook a nice Atlantic Salmon.

 We went in search of a lighthouse and a man who makes small sized handmade Dory boats. We ended up in Glovertown and couldn’t find anything. We attempted to photograph a woman who was selling homeade goodies. After buying some beets and fudge we asked if we could photograph her. For the first time in a long time we were turned down. We tried the fudge. It was horrible. After one bite we spit it out. Lesson learned… don’t buy fudge from strangers. I think we will toss the beets too??  We stopped by a shipyard in the hopes of finding someone, all we found was what we believe to be a friendly guard Beagle.

We also attempted find somewhere to park Maggie for the night, a place with internet etc. with no success, however in Newtown there might be something interesting. We’ll go back in the morning and see what comes up.

 After a dinner of cod tongue we ended up parking by the beach and drinking some Old Sam rum, can’t wait to how spectacular the beach is in the morning…. stay tuned.

We were bee-lining for Twillingate.  What started out as a quick turn off for gas just past Terra Nova National Park turned into a day and a half adventure.

We landed smach dap in the middle of the Beaches Accordion Festival in Salvage.  They had 4 different ‘stages’.  The ‘stages’ were actually fish ‘stages’.  Wood buildings where local fisherman keep there nets, supplies etc. We photographed a wicked accordian player and his musical partner.  Some incredible Newfoundland music.

accordian festival from roth and ramberg on Vimeo.

Quickly we discovered the place to hang out was the Ocean Breeze Cafe which is a convereted Orangeman Hall. Now it’s a great restaurant and stand up bar.  Michelle, one of the cooks, arranged for us to go on a boat ride with her husband Bill.

 An dusk boat ride with Bill, chasing whales taking photos… it was spectacular.

Bill had a freezer full of iceberg ice and asked us to stay in his yard with Maggie the motorhome. We ended up with a good old fashioned shed party with Bill and his wife Michelle. Ice cold beer, 10 year old scotch, 30 year old moonshine and half cut rum. We stumbled to our beds late once again, but what a day… fortunately for us his yard has an incredible view of the bay and we slept with it out our windows.

moonshine at a shed party from roth and ramberg on Vimeo.

 Rough start to the morning but off for more adventures.  Moonshine isn’t so funny the morning after…

 If you’ve got Google Earth loaded, paste this link below to see some more photos.

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1242182&#Post1242182

 We’ve only got a couple of minutes with some wireless internet so we’ll be quick.  We arrived in Savage in the hopes of a quick photo. A day later we are still here, but heading out shortly to find a lighthouse keeper in Badgers Quay. Come back to read about the tales of Savage… 30 year old moonshine, accordians, the best RV spot in the province and tons more… stay tuned.

Well after a night of Screeching and serious, serious drinking (fun) we found out there are icebergs in Twillingate. Not only would that be cool to see, but apparently we can get some iceberg ice and perhaps have a great scotch!! So the plan for day one is to drive the 500 or so kilometers to Twillingate and then over the next few days photograph our way back to St. John’s. We’ll be driving in our mobile command unit named “Maggie” the motorhome.

Technical complications in the morning delayed our launch by quite a few hours, however you can now follow us on Facebook and Twitter (key in Roth and Ramberg).  Also our new Hasselblad camera has a handy little GPS feature. If you have Google Earth on your computer the links at the bottom of this post will show you some of our photos along with the Google Earth location… give or take a few feet that is. 

So there she is Maggie… up on blocks with the last bit of equipment ready to be loaded. Launch was delayed by hangovers and technical difficulties thus we left Portugal Cove at 5PM. 

So now we have to introduce the cast of characters. Here are the three travelers, Dale Roth, Michele Ramberg, and the tall guy, well he’s Mark Scholz who is a longtime friend, former A Channel Edmonton breakfast television host, awesome musician, CBC Radio host, and MES Communications owner. Most importantly though, he’s a proud Newfoundlander and freaking funny guy who will video, audio, edit, cook, tour, translate and drive his dad’s motorhome in a safe and courteous manner throughout the whole trip.

It turns out Mike Meadus, creative director from McLaren McCann is a Newfoundlander and his parents live in Clarenville so we had a quick shot of Screech in honour of him.

road kill from roth and ramberg on Vimeo.

After hours of travelling and a couple of stops, it was time to fill up Maggie. After chatting with the gas station owner we found out three important things. One… the RV park is just down the road and they have full hook ups and wireless. Two… the Ocean Breeze cafe is the place to meet people. Three… there is an accordian festival in town which should provide us with perhaps our first photo subject, we will be stalking them in the morning.

A night of steak, scallops, and sausage and a few drinks later we are working on blog etc… tomorrow the work starts. Come back and visit… dont forget to copy and paste the links below to see on Google Earth just where the hell we’ve been.

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=824468&Number=1241189#Post1241189

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=824468&Number=1241189#Post1241189

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=824475&Number=1241196#Post1241196

The first night after we arrived in St John’s we didn’t get too far. Down the road near Portugal Cove we did the traditional Screech-In ceremony. If you’re not familiar with it, it involves drinking, fish and whatever else the locals dream up in order to make you an honorary Newfoundlander. We continued with the celebration into the wee hours of the morning. Tomorrow our journey begins in the motorhome.  Be sure to watch the video.

More tomorrow…

screeched-in in portugal cove from roth and ramberg on Vimeo.