Month: August 2023

A Vintage Car Museum Extraordinaire: Travelling in Newfoundland

It’s been more than a few years now since we last visited a vintage car museum. It was the last time we were in Monaco when our son worked there. It was over the Christmas holidays, and we had a few empty hours. Although we’d visited the tiny principality many times (because of the aforementioned son), we had never visited the car museum.

Owned by Prince Albert of Monaco, that museum featured a nice collection of cars (see above), including one that had been owned by his mother, Princess Grace. We were impressed with this museum until this summer. It pales in comparison to where we were on our summer vacation.

In a tiny spot called Swift Current Newfoundland, there is a collection of over sixty of the most extraordinary vintage automobiles, meticulously restored. How did we even get there?

As we love to do, when we decided to visit Newfoundland this year for our summer holiday, we booked a private tour (more about that in the next post). The weather in Newfoundland can be changeable, to say the least, but we experienced mostly spectacular weather until the final day of our tour. It rained. Our private guide called a friend, and the next thing we knew, we were being treated to a private tour at Vernon’s Antique Car Museum. Owned by a private collector, the cars have won awards from some of North America’s most prestigious car shows, including Amelia Island Concours, Meadowbrook Concours and Pebble Beach—and with good reason. They are spectacular.

The collection includes beautifully restored models from a 1908 Buick Model 10 to 1970 muscle cars with something for everyone. The collection even includes a rare specimen of an amphibious car—a design that never really took off.

[We’re pretty sure you only get to sit in them on a private tour!]

What struck us the most were some examples of early auto technology that faded away only to return in recent years as if they were new ideas. The push-button start was but one. And what about that bar in the glove compartment? Well, it might not be practical these days, but you must admit it was a pretty innovative idea!

One of the things that strikes modern car owners the most (especially us) is how well-designed the interiors were. There was a time when the interior aesthetic reflected the exterior. These days, we have to work hard to get our cream-coloured interior instead of the ubiquitous black.

For anyone of a certain age, there is a lot of bling and a whole lot of nostalgia. We defy you not to discover at least one car someone in your family owned back in the day. It made for a wonderful morning. You never know where your travels will take you!

Join us for our private visit and hear Vernon, the owner, share his extensive knowledge about his vehicles. Happy driving!

Visit Vernon’s online at https://www.vernonsantiquecarmuseum.ca/home.

Boating on Western Brook Pond: A Newfoundland Inland Fjord

Boating on Western Brook Pond: A Newfoundland Inland Fjord

Deciding where to go for a summer vacation takes a bit of thought. We live in a big city that’s hot in the summer, so we’re never likely to choose anywhere that won’t provide a bit of weather-related relief. This year, we decided on Newfoundland—specifically, a private, escorted tour of the easternmost province of Canada. Before we tell you about the tour itself in a later post, let’s start with our spectacular visit to one of the most beautiful pieces of mother nature, Gros Morne National Park. And our first stop there was a boat tour of Western Brook Pond.

Western Brook Pond is a glacier-carved, land-locked fjord with myriad waterfalls and billion-year-old cliffs—the only way to really appreciate it is from the water.

We arrived at the car park at the edge of this magnificent land-locked fjord and hiked the three kilometres to the shore. The shoreline is entirely pristine—untouched by development (it is, after all, in the middle of a national park). The only structures on the shore are the building where the boats are housed in winter and a tiny restaurant at the dock.

We boarded a boat for a two-hour tour, surrounded by 600 m (2000 ft) high cliffs cut off from the sea millions of years ago by glacier movement. The melting glaciers eventually flushed the salt water from the now-land-locked fjord, leaving a fresh-water pond. Interestingly, it’s located within The Long Range Mountains, the northernmost part of the Appalachian Mountains. [Can you see the man in the mountain in the first photo below?]

A moment to explain the term “pond.” In other parts of the world, a pond is usually the term used when referring to a small lake. However, in Newfoundland and Labrador, the term pond is applied almost uniformly to land-locked bodies of water, regardless of their size. Almost. There are a few “lakes” in Newfoundland—Deer Lake and Quidi Vidi Lake in St. John’s come to mind. Although historians noted that the term pond was used even back in the nineteenth century, lake seemed to be the term of choice whenever the body of water was located close to an American base—and there were several on the island of Newfoundland over the years as a result of its strategic position. So, the term pond doesn’t mean it’s small—it’s sixteen kilometres (ten miles) long.

Although the weather can sometimes be unpredictable (cue the rain, drizzle and fog), the day was a perfect July day. The sunshine illuminated waterfalls, rock formations and the sparklingly clean water.

As spectacular scenery goes, it doesn’t get much better than this. For a better appreciation of our trip, here’s a video where you can come along with us…