We were treated to another family exploration day during our trip to Newfoundland. So get ready for lots of pictures as we got to see more of this beautiful island with our nephew, niece, and their four children. Newfoundlanders use the phrase "take a spell." According to the Dictionary of Newfoundland English, this means "to take a break from work to rest."
Today our first stop to "take a spell" was at the Manuels River near Conception Bay. This is a natural conservation area with trails to explore the ten-kilometer river that eventually ends in the ocean.
There were more rocks to scramble over as we got close to the waterfalls that cascade down the rocky hillside.
They've taken a guided tour in this area before, so our hosts guided us through the highlights as well. Then we all decided to "take a spell" and admire the river below the bridge.
We were driving towards our next destination when a sign advertising mooseburgers caught our eye. It was at a concession stand at a local softball tournament--our favorite kind of place to try the local cuisine.
We can now add "moose" to our list of unusual meats we have tried. It was lean and little dry, but didn't have any wild taste different from a beef burger. Not everyone in our group was as excited about tasting moose as Mark and Denisa were. But we all had to "take a spell" while Denisa and Mark ate their mooseburger.
We drove on to the lovely little village of Brigus. Perched on the side of the hill, the houses of Brigus slide all the way down to the ocean.
We found more of those red adirondack chairs overlooking the bay, where we could "take a spell" and enjoy another day of beautiful blue sky weather.
Besides the scenery, Alexia had read about the Country Corner Cafe and their "World Famous Blueberry Crisp." We also tried their brownies and their partridge berry crisp, and we can verify that it is all world famously delicious.
We had only meant for this to be a dessert destination, but the rocks in the harbor were calling to us to come and play. Mark is so excited to be traveling with so many rock scramblers! You might notice that Denisa is content to be on the beach, taking pictures of the scramblers making their way to the end of the peninsula.
Just around the corner, those scramblers also climbed on top of another rock structure. But this one had a hole in it.
We found the Brigus Tunnel. Blasted with gun powder charges in 1860, the tunnel made an easy way to load and unload cargo from the ships in the deep water harbor on the other side of these rocks. You can see two of our group silhouetted in the tunnel overlooking the deep waters of Brigus Harbor.
Even though we walked around the village of Brigus, our real hiking destination today was the Chance Trail on down the road. Three-year-old Cooper was the leader of our hiking tribe as we started this trail. The sign at the trail head describes it as "Moderate--but difficult in sections."
We climbed quickly to heights far above the water--that must have been the difficult section the sign warned us about. But that climb quickly gave us beautiful ocean views far below.
We paused often to soak it all in. Just like it says on the bench, in Newfoundland they would urge you to "take a spell."
We took several more "spells" as we admired this rough coastline.
We wish we would have counted how many times we saw "beware of cliff" signs along the Chance Trail.
After hiking far above the water, we finally got to another difficult section. In order to get to the beach below, we had to go straight down a steep cliff. We were glad to see that a rope is provided for this descent.
That let us enjoy a nice little beach with some rock scrambling for Mark and his fellow scramblers.
The rocks on the beach are great for propping up a cell phone for a group picture on a deserted beach.
Our hosts had visited that beach the first time they took this hike. But that day they didn't have time to go to the second beach. So we are here today to make the even steeper descent down into Big Cove.
The sea stacks are bigger and the rocks even more fun to scramble on here at the second bigger beach.
The closest sea stack is our focus today, since they had noticed a sea cave at its base.
Mark was the first one inside the cave, but the rest of his explorers were close behind him.
Mark and the three older children made it inside the cave, that turned out to be very shallow once they got inside.
From inside the cave, they took a picture of Denisa and the youngest explorer.
Instead of exploring sea caves, these two were perfectly content to chase the shallow waves in this protected bay. They would get as close to the water as they dared, and then run back up the rocks laughing and screaming when the wave chased them to higher ground.
It's hard to believe that we had such a beautiful place all to ourselves on a beautiful weather weekend!
That's part of the beauty of Newfoundland. Even though we have experienced so many jaw-droppingly stunning places, none of them have been crowded. In fact, we are often all alone in some of God's best wonders here in Newfoundland.
It makes for a great place to "take a spell" and take way too many pictures!
We have plenty of photographers with us, so we have a record number of pictures of the two of us together.
We came prepared today, with a harness to get Cooper back up that steep climb out of Big Cove.
We went just a little further down the trail to get an aerial view of Big Cove, the sea cave, and the North Atlantic behind it.
By the time we made the return hike back to the car, it was time to make the return drive back to St. John's. We've finished another great family weekend exploring Newfoundland with one of our favorite families! We're glad they had time off work and school to "take a spell" with us!
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