Picnic in Tickle Cove

There was another iceberg stranded in Tickle Cove in the town of Twillingate. We had been to check it out the evening before, where it was drawing quite the crowd...

It was back-lit by the sun...highlighting all the turquoise hues....

Twillingate is one of the larger coastal fishing towns, and is known as the Iceberg Capital of the World. The icebergs originate in Greenland (upper right in map below) and are carried on the ocean currents west towards the coast of Labrador, and then south directly towards the Twillingate area. It takes an average of two years for them to arrive, and they are melting and breaking up all along the way. Environment Canada releases satellite reports daily to keep ships informed.

The iceberg in Tickle Cove had been stranded there for almost a month already, and was originally over 300' tall - and that's just the tip of the iceberg, seen above the water.  We were excited to go see it again, and were surprised to see that it had rolled over in the night....

and there were pieces of ice floating all over the harbour....

Bella, Sara and Alex though it was such a nice day it would be the perfect spot to have lunch...

with a view of the iceberg, which looked quite different from their picnic table...

then after lunch, we went through town....

...to check out the lighthouse at Long Point...

high on a cliff overlooking the ocean.

At some point while we were away sight-seeing in another part of town, the iceberg at Tickle Point had rolled over...

 and broken up - again - with large pieces of ice floating everywhere...

Proving once again why icebergs, while beautiful, are so dangerous to get close to, as they are completely unpredictable and can break up or roll over at any time.

Then before leaving the area and moving on, we went to see the Bayview iceberg one last time. There were two iceberg tour boats circling at a safe distance...

The following photos were taken using my tele-photo lens, making it look like the boats were a lot closer than they actually were. But it certainly showed how big the iceberg really was...something which is almost impossible to judge from a photo of just the iceberg alone..