L'Anse Aux Meadows

L'Anse Aux Meadows is the site of a Viking community established around 1,000 years ago on the northern tip of the Great Western Peninsula. The site was discovered in the 1960s when an archealogical excavation of a number of grassy mounds revealed the remains of 6-8 buildings which were subsequently verified as Viking settlement, the first in North America. 

 

The grassy mounds remain, and Parks Canada built a visitors centre and recreations of some of the buildings adjacent to the site.

 

 

The Shipping News

When E. Annie Proulx was about to write The Shipping News, she relocated from New England to Newfoundland to get the right inspiration and sense of place for her writing.  She moved into the Valhalla Lodge in Gunner's Cove on the northwest tip of the Western Peninsula near L'Anse Aux Meadows.  By all accounts, she settled right in and set to work on her book. At a certain point during her stay, the B&B owners had to head south on a business or family matter and told her she had the run of the place, and could just ignore any knocks on the door by would-be lodgers.  When they returned, they found her cooking breakfasts and changing beds for guests.  Seems she settled into life in a remote part of Newfoundland just fine, doing what she could to help out as generations of Newfoundlanders up that way had done for centuries.

She was so taken by the area that she bought two houses near the Lodge and renovated them.  She called them Quoyle's House and Wavey's House after the main characters in The Shipping News.  She has since sold them to the owners of the Lodge, but it is easy to see how these places would appeal to a writer.

Quoyle's House

Wavey's House

Quoyle's House

 The housekeeper invited us inside the houses to take a look around.  It was all very cozy, with great views out the windows.

 With views like this, I could become an inspired writer too!

When they made the film of The Shipping News, it was shot on location in Newfoundland.  However, they shot it near the town of Trinity on the east coast of the island, not here in the isolated community of Gunner's Cove. 

St. Anthony - Whales!

St. Anthony is the largest town on the Great Western Peninsula.  There are about 3,100 people who live there on the circumference of a sizeable natural harbour bustling with the comings and goings of large and small ships and boats.  Like many of the settlements up the Viking Trail, we had a sense that the place had seen better days.  For a town of that size that is heavily promoting tourism, it was surprising that a number of the lodgings and restaurants had closed down.  There seemed to be only two choices for dining out, one a fast food chicken place, and the other an upscale place in a lighthouse.

The town seems to be all about a Dr. Grenfell, a physician who tended to the residents of the entire upper peninsula, established a school, and is generally regarded as their best citizen ever.  There is the Grenfell Museum, the Grenfell School, the Grenfell Residence, and the Grenfell Hospital.  The only other thing of note about the town was the fact that they now had a Tim Horton's - something every local was quick to point out.

We stayed at a very nice little place called Fishing Point B&B for three nights while we explored the area.  The B&B is run by a couple of retired school teachers, Donna and Lester, both life-long residents of St. Anthony.  The B&B is a three bedroom house that belonged to Les' father, a fisherman.  Les himself grew up in this fairly small space with his parents and nine brothers and sisters and a couple of uncles.  They are restoring the old fishing stage on a rickety dock out over the water.  Donna's breakfasts were enormous servings of traditional Newfoundland fare - bakeapple muffins, moose sausage, and brewis, a concoction of cod, potato, and onion.  Here are a couple of views, one from the water and the other looking out from our room.

The tourist draw to St. Anthony is not Dr. Grenfell's legacy or their new Tim Horton's, but the icebergs and whales that abound.  The area is known as Iceberg Alley, but we were a little late in the season, so we had to settle for the whales.  And, wow!  Did we see whales!

We went on a half-day whale watching tour with Northland Discovery Boat Tours, led by a marine biologist named Paul Alcock.  He really knew his stuff and how to track the behemoths down.  After about a half-hour on the water without a sighting (it was pretty foggy when we set out), he shut down the engines and listened for them.  And sure enough, no more than five minutes later, he had steered the boat along side this massive humpback.  We saw plenty of whales that morning, either travelling alone or in twos or threes.  But the most impressive was the one that showed us some tail from only a few yards off the starboard side.

The Viking Trail

Highway 430 runs some 400km from Deer Lake through Gros Morne National Park and then up the Great Western Peninsula to St. Anthony.  North of Gros Morne, the scenery becomes quite desolate with marshland on the east side and the sea, never more than 25 meters away on the west. 

There is not a lot of civilization along the way, just a smattering of small communities that become smaller and more sparse as you travel north.



Mostly what you see are long-abandoned structures that have seen better days ...

We spotted a pod of minke whales heading up the coast.  And, although it was early August and ice berg season was all but over, we managed to see one.  Rather far off the shore, but the telephoto lens helped.

Wreck of the SS Ethie

The SS Ethie was a coastal steamer than ran aground off the coast of Martin's Point on December 11, 1919 in a ferocious storm.  Remarkably, all 92 passengers and crew survived.  When the ship hit rock and started to list, a line was shot to the shoreline.  But it fell short ... One of the locals sent his dog into the churning sea, a Newfoundland, of course, who retrieved the line and brought it onto the shore.  The passengers and crew were ferried across the line, including a newborn baby tucked into a mail bag.

Salt, sun, and time have eroded the wreckage, but there is enough rusted out detritus left close to the shore and scattered on the rocky beach to bring home the magnitude of the disaster even to this day.  A spooky sight to visit, to be sure.

  

Martin's Point is within the boundaries of Gros Morne National Park at its northern tip.  Well worth a stop if you are starting the 400km trip up the Viking Trail.

Western Brook Pond

If Gros Morne is a "must see" for visitors to Newfoundland, then surely Western Brook Pond is a "must see" within the "must see". 

Every body of fresh water on the island is called a pond, regardless of its size.  Western Brook is an actual fiord about 16 km in length and never more than1 km wide that was originally an arm off the Atlantic Ocean.  Some geophysical event thousands of years ago caused the land at the western end to rise, cutting off the Atlantic waters.  Over the years, the salt water was replenished with fresh water cascading down the cliffs from the many waterfalls tumbling into the pond.

There is a 3km trail to hike from the highway before you reach the pond.  At the end of the trail there are two boats that will take you out onto the water and down the fiord.  One of these boats was dragged over the swampland on either side of the trail one winter when it was frozen over.  The other was carried in by helicopter in three pieces and reassembled there.  The boat trip itself is a couple of hours in duration, and presents so many photo opportunities that the sound of cameras clicking away is constant.  I would try to describe the stunning beauty of the place, but will instead let the pictures speak for themselves.

Gros Morne National Park

Gros Morne is a large National Park covering about 1,800 sq. kms about halfway up the western coast of Newfoundland.  It is definitely a "must see" for those visiting the island.  The park is divided into northern and southern parts by Bonne Bay.  It is quite mountainous and stunningly beautiful - it seems that every bend you round while driving reveals another brilliant vista.  We spent four days here, camping in our tent at one of the numerous campsites inside the park boundaries.

It had been raining for several days just prior to our arrival, and our campsite was quite soggy - as was the firewood we bought at the campsite office.  But, the sun came up and dried everything out and we had warm, bright days and mild nights for the duration of our stay.  Thankfully, as this was the only place that we planned to pitch our tent on our trip.

On our first full day there, we opted to visit the southern part of the park.  From our campsite, we drove for about 90 minutes to the town of Woody Point only to see the place where we set out from across Bonne Bay only a couple of kilometers across the water.  Woody Point is quite the pretty little town and is known for its annual writer's festival that has been attracting authors not only from Atlantic Canada, but from the UK and Ireland as well as other parts of Canada.  We missed that by just a few days, but I'm sure it would have been really interesting.



Norris Point across Bonne Bay from above Woody Point

 The southern part of the park is dominated by an area known as "Tablelands".  Regarded as a geologist's paradise, the area is characterized by a large ridge of reddish rock called peridotite.  This is apparently rarely seen on the planet's surface as it comes from far, far below at the earth's mantle.  Some massive eruption eons ago forced this rock to the surface.  It is dense in iron and other minerals that aren't plant-life friendly.  As a result, there is very little vegetation in the area.

We hiked an 8km trail along the bottom of the ridge, past a number of streams that come tumbling down from the slopes.  The terrain is rather like those photos we see of the surface of Mars ...

Where there is plantlife, however, it is beautiful. There are plenty of small clusters of wild irises, and these, called "Pitcher Plants" which are the provincial flower of Newfoundland and Labrador.

This was only our second day in Newfoundland, and the friendliness and generosity of the people became overwhelmingly evident.  It seems that this rubs off on visitors as well - we met a retired couple from Edmonton who were touring eastern Canada.  After finishing the hike at Tablelands, they invited us into their trailer for a refreshing glass of ice-cold cranberry juice.  It was quite a hot day, and nothing could have been better than that.  Later that evening, we had returned to our campsite and were discussing what we might cook up for dinner when someone came walking up the pathway to our picnic table.  I said "Hello" thinking he meant to be at another campsite, but he kept on walking towards us and I could see that he was carrying a tray.  "What do you have there?" I asked.  "Salmon" he replied "For you".  Fresh caught salmon, cooked at his campsite and personally delivered.  And it was delicious! Our dinner dilemma resolved, we began to realize that we really, really liked Newfoundland!