2016/08 Newf'land trip - Port aux Choix |
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Thursday August 11th
It was dark, drizzly, and windy, but this was going to be mainly a driving day, heading south to Gros Morne national park. This was where we’d spent most of our time back in 1989 when the failure of two trailer tyres stalled our trip. There’s only the one road so we were going to retrace our route past St Barbe and the ferry terminal. Along the way we encountered a cow moose but luckily she changed course before we actually met.
Our route took us past large almost empty areas known as the limestone barrens. These have similarities to Australia’s Nullarbor, but these barrens get more rainfall and have less topsoil, having been recently scraped by glaciers. There are very few trees and plants only grow in the spaces between the rocks.
We stopped near Flowers Cove again, this time to hike the trail through the White Rocks barren and look for unusual flowers. Some of 
the trail was on boardwalk but mostly we just crossed the rocks, careful not to step on the plants in the cracks and holes. The rain came and went but the wind was persistent, making it hard to balance on the rocks.
There were pitcher plants here too and Sandie took this picture of the pitchers, looking like the mouths of hungry 
chicks.
Far out in the bay we could see the Flowers Cove lighthouse, warning of the near invisible reefs it is built on.
We found plenty of flowers but struggled to photograph them in the wind. These are a few of them, plus a nice example of the lichens.
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Northern Peninsula Flowers |
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Further down the coast we visited the national historic site at Port au Choix. The coastline there was a foraging area for many peoples over the centuries and the site is peppered with archeological digs. By now it was raining sideways so we contented ourselves with looking at relics in the museum. The staff there suggested we buy an annual pass to all of Canada’s national parks as we’d be visiting a few on the island. They discounted the price by all the places we’d already visited, the whaling, lighthouse, and Vikings sites, though I had to go out to the truck to sort through our sack of receipts.
The area has been populated for thousands of year; the museum described how “archaic Indians” were replaced by people from the Arctic and then by the Dorset, also from the Arctic, and more recent Beothuk Indians. The latter retreated into the island’s interior when Europeans displaced them from the coasts, and there, cut off from most of their food sources, they died out.
Pressing on towards Gros Morne we began to see hills looming through the murk. Just outside the park we stopped at Arches, which are
just that, arches cut in the rock by the sea. It had stopped raining.