July 9, 2001

The morning of the 9th, we set out for a day of travel up Newfoundland's western peninsula, or the Viking Trail, to St. Anthony. We lucked out with good weather. A straight-through drive would probably take only a few hours, but there are plenty of sights to see along the way, and we stopped frequently.

Our first stop was the wreck of the Effie, a steam and sail powered freighter that went down in a storm in 1919. The 42 men aboard were all rescued. There isn't much left of the wreck today.

Next, we stopped at the Arches, a natural stone sculpture carved out by wind and water. It reminded us a lot of Percé Rock in Gaspé, only with three holes instead of one, and a lot smaller. It was at this location that we began to notice the abundance and ferocity of the black flies. George climbed to the top of the Arches, but I opted to shoot film from below, fearing that trying to climb up the steep wall while lugging camera equipment and swatting at black flies would result in my rapid and untimely descent.

The black flies continued to plague us most of the way north. Our attempt to eat a picnic lunch at a scenic spot ended with us diving into the car after five minutes, with a multitude of the critters in hot pursuit of their lunch. Several uninvited guests joined us in the car and we ate the rest of our lunch while trying to evict them.

As we drove north, the mountains turned into hills, and the hills gradually disappeared until we were surrounded by a completely flat landscape, bordered closely on one side by the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We noticed that the quality of the road had deteriorated noticeably, and suspected that it is often awash during storms.

We noticed a couple of interesting things along the way that we later asked about. For instance, as we drove north, we began to see more and more piles of firewood and lobster crates stacked in neat piles alongside the road. Apparently the honor system is alive and well in Newfoundland. No one locks their doors, and no one bothers his neighbors' wood piles (the wood harvested in Labrador and carted south in trucks) orlobster crates (used for harvesting—what else? Lobsters!). There's plenty of space since the population in Newfoundland is anything but dense, so people just store their goods alongside the road where they're easiest to drop off and collect. We also noticed a lot of gardens of varying size. Newfoundland is referred to as the "Rock," and for good reason. It's an inhospitable environment for growing things. So, when the road was built, the soil was turned over in a wide swath. What better location to plant a garden than where rock-hard soil has been conveniently roto-tilled for you? The practice of planting gardens along the road caught on rather well.

Since we were passing right by the ferry terminal where we had reserved tickets for the ferry to Labrador a few days later, we decided to stop and confirm our reservation. It took a good while to get the information we sought. As wonderful and friendly as the Newfoundlanders are, it's often very difficult to get information from them. In fact, they often poke fun at themselves for this trait. Their sparse surroundings have apparently influenced them to use sparse language. For example, if you ask, "where is such and such location," they might say, "down the road." You then have to ask a series of specific questions, such as "which direction, which road, how far, etc." to obtain a useable answer to your question. When we were on the boatride on Westernbrook Pond, the interpreter related a story about a rock slide that occurred in 1994. It occurred at 11:45 AM when the tour boat was passing by. Apparently, it was quite spectacular and scared the pants off the passengers. The boat captain reported the incident in the log book as "big rock slide."

All along the Viking Trail, we met and talked with various other travelers, many of them Newfies who had moved away, but were returning for a visit. As a result, we collected many tidbits of useful information about where to go and what to see. One such useful tidbit was the best spot to see icebergs in July. We headed for St. Anthony "bight" (or bay), in which there were reports of a couple of marooned icebergs. There were indeed icebergs! Three biggish ones and a bunch of little ones. We were able to walk right down to the beach and pick up "bergy bits" that had floated ashore. In case you're not familiar with icebergs, they are composed of packed ice and debris that can be tens of thousands of years old. These particular icebergs most likely calved from huge bergs in Greenland and floated south on the Labrador current during the year. The bluish color normally associated with icebergs is because the ice becomes so packed down that it is highly condensed and bubble-free. (For interesting facts about icebergs, go to www.wordplay.com/tourism/icebergs/.) We found the bergy bits to be quite heavy and extremely cold when we picked them up.

We weren't the only ones interested in those icebergs in St. Anthony bight. There was a fishing boat circling the icebergs nearly the whole time we were there, and we heard continual pops coming from that direction. It looked like the boats were breaking off and collecting chunks of ice. We found out later at the restaurant where we ate dinner that selling iceberg ice to make vodka is becoming a lucrative industry. The target markets? Russia and Japan. The waitress brought us a small dish of 10,000 year old iceberg ice to taste. It tasted like ice. The Russians and the Japanese must have a darned good marketing plan.

It was noticeably colder up north. We had to don several layers to keep warm. No complaints though — no black flies. But the day was waning and it was getting pretty nippy, so we set out in search of the bed & breakfast we had reserved for the next couple of nights. We had some trouble finding it, and after playing 20 questions at a couple of different stops, we learned that it wasn't in St. Anthony as we had thought, but in L'Anse aux Meadows some 30 km to the north. The Viking Village B&B, rated as a 4-star place, was not quite what we thought it was going to be, but not too bad either. The B&B consisted of a large building that was partitioned into a number of rooms, with a common lounge that served jointly as a living room (with the only TV in the place) and a breakfast room. The rooms were tiny with bad sound insulation that allowed us to hear everything going on in our neighbor's room (which can be good or bad, depending on the neighbor and your point of view). Guests were encouraged to congregate each evening in the common room, lured by the evening snack prepared by the same person who fixed breakfast in the morning. Actually it was kind of fun since we got an opportunity to visit with the other travelers and share experiences and information. One fellow liked to take early morning walks and reported seeing moose in the mist each morning a short distance from the building. George and I searched around later in the morning & saw nothing. Other travelers reported seeing numerous moose along the highway coming north. We saw nothing! We are beginning to suspect that moose avoid us.

Another food note before ending this section: the farther north we went, and the sparser the population, the more bland the food became. However, although meals in general were uninspiring, the homemade rolls served at breakfast and dinner throughout the province were something to write home about. They were delicious, especially when spread with a bit of the homemade jams and jellies made from locally picked berries and fruits. In addition, the desserts tended to be quite good and often creative. In St. Anthony, we sampled something called a "slurry," which was soft-serve vanilla ice cream with your choice of candy bar crumbled up and swirled in. Decadence.

Wreck of the Effie

George Waving from the Top of the Arches

Gulf of St. Lawrence

Roadside Firewood Pile

Hurry, It's Cold!!!

Moose Crossing