The sun had set, and I had 100 miles to go.  Sam’s wipers were on high, but the rain was so intense that they did little to keep the world from looking like a million tiny dots.  My complete focus was on driving.  I knew from the numerous signs along the road that moose, thousands of them, lurked in the shadows.   I should have waited it out, but doing so would have made me miss the overnight ferry back to Nova Scotia.

Three days earlier, I had arrived on Newfoundland, the penultimate province in my trip.  I was giddy with excitement.  Newfoundland had a certain mystique in my mind that had only been intensified during my time in the other provinces.

Port aux Basques, NL at dusk, eh b'y?

All across Canada, people had told me about how wonderful everybody was in Newfoundland.  Sure, they might have teased the “Newfies” a bit, much as some Americans characterize certain people who live in Appalachia as “hillbillies,” but any such mockery seemed always to be followed by notes of admiration.  Newfoundlanders, they said, were some of the nicest people on the planet.  So went my experience.

While I did not have the legendary adventure of being invited into a home for a cup’a tea, many little encounters combined to give the flavor of the culture.  There was Gerard, a kind old man in his 70s who I found admiring Sam in the parking lot of a grocery store in Deer Lake.  Then there was Tom, a retired teacher with a red convertible in Gros Morne National Park who chatted me up about many things, including the virtues of high-yield American REITs.  And of course there was Pete, who chatted me up about photography for the better part of an hour in Corner Brook’s Brewed Awakening coffee shop.

It's a 5+ hour ferry ride between Port aux Basques, NL and North Sydney, NS. Plenty of time to engage in some self photography, eh b'y?

Was there hockey?  Well, there was certainly interest in hockey.  The local paper, the Western Star, wrote up a piece about my trip, and the local CBC station interviewed me at the rink in Corner Brook, where I would go on to play at the lunchtime skate.

People were as nice at the arena as everywhere else I went on the island.  Turn-out was a bit light, just five skaters and myself, but we made the most of the situation.

The arena itself was slightly annoying, in that they were the second arena on the trip (the first being in Montreal) to charge me, a goalie, for playing in a drop-in skate.

I felt a bit guilty about my irritation when one of the skaters, a man named Tyrone, came up to me after the skate, wished me luck, and told me that he had a son of his own.  He then pushed $20 into my hand, which I attempted to decline, but he insisted I take it.  “I know it gets expensive, being on the road,” he said.  I was touched by his generosity — for he did not seem to be a wealthy man — and I thanked him profusely.

A rainbow near the road near Stephenville, NL, eh b'y?

The only problem I ran into on Newfoundland was the dialect.  Most of the people on Newfoundland seemed to speak standard Canadian English without much of an accent, but a few of the guys sounded like they had just gotten off the boat from Ireland.

One man in particular tried to talk with me in the parking lot of a Tim Hortons while I was tending to the air in one of Sam’s tires.  It took considerable effort to figure out that his name was Russ and that he worked as a hunting guide.  I think he was trying to convince me to go on a moose hunting trip, but I’m not certain.

Small building seen near Rocky Harbor, NL. This was as far from Port aux Basques that I ventured. St. John's will have to wait for another trip, eh b'y?

Fall colors in Corner Brook, NL, eh b'y?

Waterfront view near Norris Point, NL. The hills in the background are part of Gros Morne National Park, eh b'y?

Back on the road, several hours slowly passed,  and still Sam and I were plodding along through the inky black. Unknown danger continued to lurk just beyond the white boundaries of the road.  It was a lonely pursuit, but then a large number of trucks began to appear going opposite my direction.  I looked at the clock; the 7:00 p.m. ferry from the mainland must have arrived not long before.

An orange sodium glow appeared on the horizon and gradually grew to surround me.  I pulled into the ferry dock.  Sam and I had made it safely.

As for the moose?  Well, there were supposed to be 150,000 of them there, but I saw exactly zero during my time on the island.