Plum Point, NFLD

Total Km = 192

Happy Canada Day! We have Raindancer decked out with a Canada flag on the antenna as our way of recognizing the day.

Last evening while we were at the B&B the lady of the house called us to have a good look at the resident moose. I guess this one pretty well stays around most of the time. He ran off a ways but then immediately came back. Doug is getting used the B&B idea and starting to enjoy it. May even turn him into a breakfast eater yet!

Woke to heavy fog and mist so put on the rain gear. It wasn’t as cold this morning due to less wind but the thermometer still read +5C.

Made our way to L’anse aux Meadows, the first occupation site of the Vikings over 1000 years ago. They have done a lot of archeological examination to determine a pretty good idea of what had happened. They have reproduced sod buildings and have actors dressed for the period and in the buildings telling you of the life. Bjorn the beautiful (self named as you are told by his wife Thora and the blacksmith Red Beard) is the chieftain. They were all “doing” period things like weaving (Thora), forge operating (Red Beard) and telling tall tales (Bjorn). They used to have open wood fires to heat the sod houses, now they use cleaner, more controllable (they had a fire in 2000) propane fires that look authentic. Because it was Canada Day we didn’t have to pay the entrance fee into this Parks Canada site.

By the time we got back on the road the “mist” had stopped and there was a glimmer of blue sky. After lunch we actually found ourselves in sunshine.

As we were riding back down the peninsula we went through several small villages having their Canada Day parades and celebrations. Nice to see everyone taking part.

Stopped at Flowers Cove to see the Thrombolites, which were living beings at one time. Doug was thrilled and Norma was resigned to make this stop. They look like big split rocks near the shore.

We are now starting to see more moose on the roadsides. We were told today that the bear sighting from last evening is pretty rare in this area so we feel privileged. People have these hexagonal wooden boxes at the ends of their driveways for garbage. They would be useless at home with our bears but I guess they are more to keep the birds, etc out of the garbage. We have a mental picture of one of our bears rolling the thing down the hill trying to get at the contents.