North Up the Viking Trail

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Heading north up the Viking trail Tuesday morning, we were on a mission to dump tanks and find some decent water. We stopped at the last campground in the park and found a dump station. Good. Now we needed water. Another boil water order! We skipped it and moved on.

The glacial valley of Western Brook extending east into the Long Range Mountains

Fishing Stage in one of the small villages

North of Gros Morne we came upon Arches Provincial Park. It was a short walk down some stairs to the beach to view the stone arches that had been eroded by the sea. Eventually the caves will erode away and collapse leaving sea stacks, or pillars in the surf.

Arches - this limestone resisted the glaciers but not the waves and tides

Driving north on the west coast, we passed through small fishing villages and passed by large beautiful mountains from the Long Mountain range. Our goal was to make it to the St. Anthony area, as far north as you can go on Newfoundland. Reaching near to the northernmost point that the road goes on the coast, it veers east into bogs and barrens. There were caribou signs, but we didn't see any, nor the moose that are supposed to be more numerous in the northern peninsula. Eventually we came to hills and woods and reached St. Anthony. It was much larger than we expected. We wanted to fill up with some diesel before going back out of town to find the Triple Falls Campground. The main road took us along the harbor, out to a headland. We stopped and turned around before we got to the end because we couldn't tell how big the parking lot was there. Just as we turned I saw an iceberg in the distance. Greg was already committed to the road back into downtown, so we thought we might find it again the next day.

Fishing rules posted at every bridge

Following the Long Range north

Nearing the end of the Long Range (a remnant of the ancient Appalachians)

Firewood drying along the road

Labrador in the distance

Typical roadside cemetery

The locals use the highway right-of-way for gardens, where the soils are good

Stakes to show edge of roadway in the Caribou barrens during the snow and wind

Following a logging truck on its way to the mill in St. Anthony

We found the campground 7 km out of town along a salmon river with falls. They only had a few spots left. Most of the sites were seasonal, and they seem to cater to caravans, organized groups of RV's traveling together. One large camping are was full of a caravan of airstream trailers. She said we could stay one night, but after that they were going to be full. We pulled in next to the washroom so that we could get wifi without going in the building. Not very scenic, but fine for one night. We had electric and water hookups. Good, clean well water for a change! We used the wifi to do some planning for the next few days. We knew we were interested in a whale and iceberg boat trip, and a visit to Burnt Cape Ecological Reserve, and L'Anse aux Meadows, the Viking site. Without the internet we only had a little written information to make choices, and find out times and prices. We also needed to check the weather to plan these things based around that. Of, course, we are finding that the weather forecasts are totally unreliable. They should call them weather suggestions!

Part of greater metropolitan St. Anthony