Gander, NL - The Adventures Continue!

Mango trees or squid rings? That is the question....

We have enjoyed some decent weather since my arrival in Gander, but things turned for the worse sometime Sunday night and for almost 3 days, we had rain, rain, rain... Thankfully, despite the rain, or perhaps as a direct result of it, the fun did not stop!

Cruisin' Together

Captains Cory & Pam took me on a driving adventure on Tuesday night where we did what I think is called the Bay Loop. We toured through a lot of communities right on the coast, most of them containing a SA Corps (of course). From a planning perspective, and from an Army perspective, these places fascinated me. Buildings perched over the ocean, tiny clusters of houses that manage to sustain a thriving Salvation Army AND a 'Pentecost' church as they call them here. What I also am as yet unclear about is what everyone who lives there does - both for work & for entertainment. With the freeze on fishing and a limited logging industry, I need to do some investigative work about the labour force.

With that said, it might be the "city gal" coming out in me - yes, to all my Toronto-ian friends, I am a big city girl by NL standards (everything is relative). Still, there is something about that lifestyle that I feel drawn to wanting to know more about: the fresh sea air, the brightly coloured sided homes, a rocky beach to walk along where you can find small motor boats moored to floating docks, the sense of community that can only come from a place that has a small population and is relatively isolated from the rest of the area. But I digress.

Two more things about our driving adventure and then I will move on to a new topic...

(1) I took my camera with us to try and get a picture or two of my time here on the Rock and some of the places I visit. I managed to get one - yes you heard right one photo. This is one of the many corps we saw that are within an hour driving radius of Gander (I know, a completely random picture choice considering all of the beautiful landscape, coastline, and islands I saw that evening - it was partially for you Josh). The real problem is, I just get caught up in the experience and forget to pull out the old Lumix. Still, look at the location of this church - not sure I would be able to remain focused on the Officer's preaching on a clear day (a little foggy here obviously), if there were windows facing out to the ocean. Water is something else that fascinates me!

(2) Our road trip felt very similar to Pooch's and

my "Search for a Mango Tree" when I visited him in the Caymans. One rainy day, we toured the island in search of a mango tree and along the way managed to have an excellent time and to make some random stops that really made it the adventure that it was - we enjoyed ourselves and found fun even with the dark, dreary, overcast and wet weather conditions. From my perspective, the same was true for the 3 of us on Tuesday night - but instead of mangoes, we had "squid rings" (not "calamari" as it is known by us "mainlanders"). Good times, good times...

Ok, I had planned to update you on my Wednesday (an excellent mid-week day all things considered), but I am officially a sleepy gal - so that update will have to wait for another day.