east coast of Avalon Peninsula

As mentioned in an earlier post, the big peninsula at the eastern end of the province is the Avalon Peninsula. Today, I made short visits to 3 spots on its east coast. 

Though there are scattered ponds all over the province with water lilies in them, these ponds seem to be bigger & more numerous on this coast south of St. John's. 

   

I'm pretty sure that you looked in on this blog to see a placemat.  :-)  The bit that intrigued me was this: "There are nearly 200 Atlantic salmon rivers in Newfoundland and Labrador. They represent >60% of all Atlantic salmon rivers in North America."

Tors Cove is just beautiful, & there's a little combo printshop & bookstore there where they print cards & such on an antique printing press. 

   

Petty Harbour is another cute little NL cove.    

   

Cape Spear was a zoo today, a beautiful warm Sunday afternoon, due to being close to St. John's. But the little schoolhouse/church in the nearby town of Blackhead was quiet. The grassy slopes going down to the beach remind me of some spots in Scotland.

Bologna is hugely popular here. This is just part of the bologna case in a medium-sized grocery store. The smallest roll is a kilogram, which I recall being over 2lbs.  

It took me a minute to realize what that green slope in the distance is; it's the first actual farm I've seen all summer. Almost this entire island is quite rocky with thin soil. (It is called "The Rock".) Family garden plots are tucked into small areas of rich soil, but most of the land is covered in trees, primarily spruce & fir. A little later, I saw another larger farm growing mostly hay, with smaller areas of corn & squash or potatoes (hard to tell driving by). There were also about 20 cows, the first time I've seen more than 1 or 2 cows together. Except for seafood & berry products, almost all of the food here is imported.