We arrived in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, population 20,000 and a place to go where everybody knows your name. The town knows how to welcome a cruise ship! Plenty of signage directing one to the tour busses, shuttle busses, walk to town, and the "marketplace"...two tents set up on the dock. A couple of the locals even brought out their huge Newfie dogs to say hello.
It was a glorious day and our field trip guides met us at our transporation, a school bus, for a two-hour hiking adventure along the Glynmill Inn Stream Trail. Garry, the ringleader, said that usually, the tour consisted of a couple of short hikes and a couple of bus rides, but they changed it and we did the entire trail loop. It was not the easiest walk but well worth it. We heard a lot of "I'm going to feel this in the morning" on the ride back to the ship. Jenna, one of the guides, taught us some local names and lingo. Things have odd and rather literal names in Newfoundland. For example, the tallest mountain in the area tends to be very windy so it's called "Blow Me Down Mountain". When you meet a friend, you say "whachat?". Roughly translated, "what are you doing?". And the correct answer to everything is "yesbye". If someone tells you a funny story, you say "yesbye". If they tell you a sad tale, you say "yesbye".
Corner Brook's source of income since the 1800's is their paper mill. The mill blows its whistle twice a day, at 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. unless there's an emergency, then it blows the hell out of the whistle. They even helped out some lost hikers once by continually blowing the whistle in hopes that they would walk toward the sound. It worked. The mill runs on hydroelectricity and the water is provided by a very large, very long pipeline that was built in the late 1800's. It's like a hot tub lying on its side, made from wooden slats and barrel stays. And it leaks.
We had a beautiful sail away with plenty of light, because we were up where sunset is after 10 p.m. and sunrise is around 4 a.m. Now we had two days at sea and after a quiet night (save for the foghorn for half of it), Pati looked out the window and thought she saw a strange looking ship. She put on her glasses and it was still strange. Binoculars revealed a HUGE iceberg. For the remainder of the day we watched icebergs of varying sizes float by.
