August 7, 2014 Iceberg! St. Anthony Bight, Newfoundland

In the previous blog I included a photo of a long, low iceberg in the St. Anthony harbor.  This is late summer here, when the icebergs are melting and crumbling and disappearing, til new ones arrive next spring.  On this day, just on a whim, we drove to nearby St. Anthony Bight.  And LO!  What did we see?  You betcha!  The big berg in St. Anthony harbor was breaking up, and here was a huge piece of it.  And this one, too, was breaking up.  We count ourselves very fortunate to even see such a thing this late in the summer.  Sorry to say, these pictures do not give a true indication of the size of this thing.

Young boy sitting and watching the berg.

The man and the berg!

Look!  Look!

Two intrepid kayakers from Ottawa came prepared!
They paddled out and grabbed some "bergy-bits" of ice to take home....
They told us glacial ice is the purest form of water on the planet.

They let me hold a piece of it....

In this photo, the right-hand end had just broken off into growlers and bergy bits.
(growlers are car-sized pieces of iceberg)

August 6, 2014 St. Anthony, NF

We did some errands and then drove out to Fishing Point, where there is a lighthouse and a grand view of the St. Anthony harbor and the Straights of Belle Isle.

Blooming cow vetch - this stuff is everywhere up here.

Automated lightghouse.

Sod-roof dinner theatre where they do a Viking Feast every weekend during the summer.
(think audience participation and Viking behavior....)

It was very windy and very cold!  And way back there in the harbor is a long white thing -
an iceberg!

Here is a closer view of our first iceberg sighting.

August 5, 2014 L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland

And here we are, finally, at Leif Erikson's place:  L'Anse aux Meadows.  It was discovered in 1960; when I was in elementary school it was talked about and in the news, and is now a UNESCO site.  Never would have imagined that I would be standing here!  We took the guided tour, and learned that after the archaeological dig was complete, they covered the remains with sand and then backfilled them, leaving mounds to show where the foundations of the building were.  Nearby is a reconstructed longhouse and outbuildings based on the results of the archaeological dig.  Thank you, Canada, this is a wonderful National Park!

The area is a peat bog, with acidic properties, so a lot of relics were destroyed; however, some wooden pieces were well-preserved.  A single iron cloak pin was found.  They wasted nothing.  When they abandoned this temporary camp, they took everything with them, even the wooden building frames, and burned what was left.  They spend a total of 10 years here, over the course of a 25-year period.  They were here to harvest supplies needed in their Greenland settlement, which had no trees and thus no building material.  They wintered here on each visit.

Here is the story.

Here are the discoverers.

Actual site.

Longhouse that was reconstructed.

Happy Viking woman! 

Site of the one-use iron ore smelter.  They needed nails to make boat repairs, so they dug up some iron oxide from the peat bog and smelted down enough to make 100-200 nails.  

Captain's wife.

Me and a Viking Dude.

Trying my hand at net-making.

Weaving loom.

The building is a wooden frame, with thick peat walls, and sod for the roof.  There were vents on the roof that could be opened or closed from inside. 

Peat walls.

Kitchen/sleeping.

Captain's quarters. 

Oh lawd, be afraid!  She's got a sword!

Man with a hammer!

We are sitting in Leif Erikson's bedroom....

August 3, 2014 Town of Port au Choix, Newfoundland

Here are some random pictures of our travels around the town of Port au Choix.  We fell in love with this little place!

We are on the road that leads to Leif Erikson's place.....

One of the three harbors at Port au Choix.

Animal-proof garbage bins at every house.

We like this little boat!

The Anchor Cafe has a boat sticking out the front of it! 

This fellow greeted us at the Anchor Cafe.

Moose and caribou antlers, just piled up in the yard.

Now THAT is a stack of firewood.... 

We saw roadside piles of firewood like this everywhere we went.
With a permit, a person is allowed to cut 8 cords a year.
They stack it to cure and put their permit number on it.
Roadside means easily accessible....
Most houses here are heated by wood-fired furnaces, and
it takes 4-5 cords a year for heating thru the winter.

August 1, 2014 Torrent River Fishway, Hawkes Bay, Newfoundland

Found a sign for the Torrent River Fishway (think: salmon!), so we stopped to see what it might be.  We spent a very fascinating hour on a tour of an "interpretive center" and then we went down to see the salmon fishway up close and personal.  A enthusiastic high school summer student named Kelly treated us to an in-depth explanation of just what they do here.  They count the salmon, they make a record of any noticeable scarring, they note any "other" fish such as trout, and then they open the gate and the fishes all swim on upstream.  That is some detailed record-keeping of fish!  Then we walked outside to see the falls and the fishway from above, and hike along the boardwalk a bit.  A nice interlude!

Fishway.

Bubba is a great photographer!

Nannie, besieged by biting insects!