I woke this morning and was greeted by a lovely email from a guest who travelled with me on our ‘Dandy Line’ tour back in June of 2014. It made me smile; as does nearly every piece of correspondence I receive from this wonderful group and the incredible memories we share.
For those of you who aren’t aware and may even be confused by the frequent references I make about this trip in my blogs and Facebook correspondence – the ‘Dandy Line’ tour is not an officially sanctioned program offered by McCarthy’s Party. Rather it was simply a fun title our group embraced on the third evening of our 12-day excursion across the island and through the lower coast of Labrador.
To provide a little background for this story you must realize that this was the first McCarthy’s Party Tour I had escorted in more than 20 years. I had just returned from Vancouver that spring and having completely divested myself of all my western business interests, was ready to make Newfoundland my official home again.
I had no plans in place and was actually looking forward to a “Sandals Summer” when my brother Mark stopped by the house to see if I was available to do some guiding. Of course I said “Yes” and three days later I was on a plane to Deer Lakewhere I jumped right back into the same routine we’d grown up with in our Mother’s family business – welcoming guests and interpreting our provinces many beautiful sites and intriguing features during our University summer break. Just as my Brother Mark suggested when I expressed an element of apprehension regarding my time away from the business – “Ahhhh Andy, You’ll be fine. its just like riding a bike!”
I should acknowledge that I had a great driver who had our highway times dialed down to the nanosecond, the hotel and restaurant staff were more than familiar with our tour routine, and the girls at the office had everything perfectly organized and provided me with fool proof documentation. The weather was spectacular, the food divine, the itinerary had been perfectly tuned to optimize our guests experience at every scheduled stop, and my travel companions were willing, able & lots of fun.
It had the makings of a perfect trip and I hit my groove early. Our first day we started to trek down the Great Northern Peninsula where I explained the ‘Theory of the Interloper’. The fact that we would experience such an extraordinary variety of historic sites ranging from the most ancient indigenous peoples to the era of the Norse, the Basques and Captain James Cook – all of which remain mostly undisturbed due in large part to climate change. From the lowering of sea levels to the many mild but significant temperature swings – no attempt at civilization has ever managed to survive on this coast. Let alone grow its population to such densities that would encroach on the settlements of their predecessors. One Interloper after another, you might say.
I even went so far as to quote my Brother David who loves to remind us that “This is the only place in North America where a man could actually die of scurvy!” Dramatic enough you might think – but of course I had to take it one step further, and I swear to this day I don’t know why I thought that Dandelion flowers wouldn’t grow on Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula – but that’s what I told them. “Sure you wouldn’t even find a feed of dandelion down here!”
I know they won’t grow in the village of Terra Nova and perhaps I misunderstood a conversation from our moose hunting trip in Plum Point the year before. Regardless – the further North we traveled the more prolific and larger the dandelion became. By the time we hit St. Anthony I swear they were as big as Sunflowers, standing as mighty columns along the edge of every roadside, hemming the foundations of every shed and carpeting every lawn along the way.
I took their ribbing well and soon began to make my own joke of it, from there on qualifying everything I said with; “Now I’m telling you this as I remember it but you have to realize this could just be another one of Andrew’s ‘Dandy Lines’!”
