Happy Birthday, America! 🎆🎇It's strange thinking about celebrating the birthday of your country when you're not in your country. No fireworks or parades for us today, but I am sure Newfoundland will have plenty of surprises in store!
After breakfast, we stopped back at the Port Richie Lighthouse to take more photographs of it without the fog looming and then we hit the road for St. Anthony.
(Click on a photo to see it in a larger view or before downloading photo)
Port au Choix
This is the Dorset Doorway. It is an artist's conception of a native Dorset house from Phillip's Garden. The stone wall is representative of the sitting and sleeping platform that formed the perimeter of the house. The arches imitate the whale ribs that would have been used for framing and would have been covered with seal skins.
This is the Sealskin sculpture, one of several sculptures along the Port Riche Trail.
This house looks mighty lonely out there.
While exploring the lighthouse site, someone in our crew found a geocache. We all signed the book inside and left a kindness rock and some other goodies for the next people who discover it.
Way out in the middle of nowhere was this solitary outhouse. John had just come back from up where it was and proceeded to inform us that this outhouse was the most north westerly outhouse in all of Newfoundland. Of course believing my husband, I had to walk all the way up to it and all around it, and even inside it, looking for the plaque that said that this was true so I could photograph the placard.
Needless to say, my husband LOVES to get people to believe these outrageous tales, and how he can keep a straight face when telling them and for so long afterward is amazing! Maybe that is why I wasn't the only one who believed him.
On our way of Port au Choix, I made Grant stop so I could photograph a few of these.
You might wonder what these adorable little log cabins are. They are Newfoundland garbage cans. They are put out by homeowners at the end of the driveways for their garbage to be picked up from. The designs can be as creative as the homeowner. Many homeowners just use hexagonal shaped boxes, but these families have style! Since they don't have to worry about bears or raccoons, these work perfectly to keep crows and gulls from breaking into the black plastic bags they use to put their household garbage into.
Ben's Studio, he certainly has quite the imagination!
We saw a moose hiding in the bush along the side of the road. Can you spot the moose, or am I just taking a photo of a telephone pole?
Thrombolites are only found in two places in the world, here in Flowers Cove, and in Australia.
As we approached our first Thrombolites.
another sign
As we were continuing our drive down the road, looking for a craft store, we passed a sealskin workshop.
We continued on towards St. Anthony. In St. Lunair, we went in search in of the Leif Ericson statue. While driving, we came upon a huge iceberg grounded in a cove. We stopped to take photographs at a pier. Finally, an iceberg that is bigger than a dust speck!
...and we have found him!
Karen and Lionel
Julie-Ann and Grant
As you can tell from the way we are dressed, it is quite cold in St. Anthony, around 45 degrees F.
Terry Lee never lets go of a good man when she finds one, ask her husband Ron.
Insert your own comment here ***
After saying goodbye to Leif, it was off to the Visitors Center to see the Viking Settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows National Historical Site.
The Viking Settlement was discovered in 1960 by Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad who was searching for early settlements in Canada and the United States. The 1,000-year-old settlement was found the old-fashioned way: a local resident showed Ingstad a few overgrown bumps which turned out to be Viking dwellings. It is the earliest known Viking settlement in North America.
Yes, today is July 4th and that is snow you see! As I said, it is cold here in St. Anthony and this northwestern part of the province.
We saw this while driving around St. Anthony.
We pulled into the Triple Falls RV Park for the night. One settled, we all climbed into Dave's RV and drove into town and had dinner together at the Lightkeepers Restaurant.
X marks the spot in the above and below pictures!
“X Marks the Spot” is where on August 10, 2009 Francis Patey threw a sealed plastic soda bottle containing a 2 page letter about his hometown into the ocean. For 544 days it traveled along an unknown journey until being spotted and picked up on a Brittany, France beach by Joy Nash. Francis had included his contact information in the letter and Joy did just that. It made the newspapers and is now a tourist spot.
Dinner was delicious and there was a great store across the street that stayed open late so we could get some Retail Therapy in. The items that follow were in the museum part of the store. I guess they felt they needed a place for the men to be entertained while the women shopped.
I hope this isn't the only puffin I see. The one I have at home is in better shape than this one.
This is explaining about all the roadside gardens we have been seeing in the middle of nowhere.
All in all, it was another great day in Newfoundland!
