Day 28 to L'Anse aux Meadows
Sun Jul 7 2024
Distance covered: 402km
A pretty good day of riding up to the northern tip of Newfoundland; each hour got better and better, until I ran out of road at the old Norse settlement at L'Anse Aux Meadows.
It rained overnight--real rain, not the misty drizzle stuff--and that continued after I cracked my eyes open at first light at 4:45am, so I rolled over and snooozed until I smelled coffee from downstairs and knew Gary had woken up, so I should as well.
Packed all my cruft back on the bike and pushed off for the north. Slightly drizzly but mild at 17C, but with annoying ground fog... sorry folks on your Western Brook Pond boat tour this morning, you won't be able to see the fjord cliffs. The fog really prevented me from really seeing ahead on the road more than 200m or so, making it difficult to pass the many slow camper-trailers, and I find it also messes a bit with my sense of balance as there's no obvious horizon... and with moose and caribou about I don't want those encounters either.
Fortunately, after an hour the fog had lifted a little bit and stopped at Arches Provincial Park for a stretch before heading north. I was really expecting the road to be a goat path, but it was really well paved, with just enough deep potholes to keep me attentive.
Fuel was also not a problem--stopped at an Irving with "Viking Shop" swag--and the weather turned from thin fog to sunbreaks. The scenery wasn't terribly interesting, with the dense tuckamore forest giving way to thin short conifers and finally fens as I approached St Anthony, yet it was varied enough not to lose interest.
At St Anthony, the forest got really dense, the air warmed up to 23C, and the clouds all disappeared. Wow, this is great. Checked into my B&B, headed north to the entrance to the park, then on to the Norseman for moose dumplings and lobster dinner.
Finished up at 8, sunset not for another hour (I'm now at the same latitude as London), so rode the scooter about 45 seconds down the road to the actual end of the pavement and walked along the Norsted trail towards a headlands--I asked the server where a good place to walk was, and she said "go to the sea cave! though the tide is high, so might not be able to make it". I didn't make it, but I did just enjoy a moment of quiet in the sun and warm breeze and looking at shells and flowers and grassy swales and thought "now it's the journey back home" and got a little melancholy. This is as far as I'll go... on this trip 🙂
