Wednesday, July 18 - Ride to L'Anse aux Meadows - 220 miles

We finally saw some moose today! (mooses, meece ....?)  Newfoundland is supposed to have more than 120,000 moose, and we hadn't seen one before today.  Everybody warned us not to hit a moose, but we couldn't hit one if we couldn't find one.  So finally today we saw seven moose, two groups of three and another single one.  Fortunately we didn't hit any.  They stayed off the road, but we did get within about 25 yards of them, so we got a good look.  Only one was a bull, a young one with a pretty good set of antlers.  The others were cows or young ones.  That was fun, to get to see them in the wild.

With this morning's bright sun, as we rode we could see across the "Strait of Belle Isle" to Labrador.  In this area, Labrador is only about 20 miles from Newfoundland, and our route took us up this strait.  Near the coast of Labrador we could see two very large white objects - icebergs!  This was from 20 miles away, remember, so they must be very large.  We hope that tomorrow when we are on Labrador we can see them at close range.

As we understand it, all of the icebergs in this area are calved in Greenland, and they float down the eastern coast of Labrador until they reach this area.  Then the ocean currents more or less hold them in the vicinity of the southern coast of Labrador and the coast of Newfoundland, until they melt.  Apparently very few go any further south.

Our main goal for the day was to visit the reconstruction of a Viking settlement of about 1,000 years ago, L'Anse aux Meadows.  This was on the very northern tip of the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland.  This also marked the farthest-North point of our journey. 

We thought the choice of this area for  settlement, on a rocky point jutting out into the cold sea was not too good. 

  Also there was an iceberg sitting and melting just outside their little harbor, on this July day, with a 46^o F temperature.  (You can guess how cold and windy it was, with Deane wearing all of his motorcycle multiple layers of clothes to keep warm in the wind and cold.)  However, apparently at that time, 1,000 years ago, the average temperature of the earth was about 3^o higher than now.  That made a tremendous difference in the climate this far north.

L'Anse aux Meadows is the only authenticated Viking settlement in the New World.  This reconstruction consists of the three sod and wood houses and a blacksmith's workshop.  There were no more than 75 people there at its highest population, and it is thought that its main purpose was to be the base of exploration efforts by the Vikings.  Apparently they were the scouts for timber, fishing, and other resources for the Greenland colony and for the mother country also.  Although they did not build ships here, they had skilled ship repair people, and they even had a crude arrangement for smelting iron which they found here.  Skilled blacksmiths were also here.

The little settlement didn't last too long, only a few years, and no records show where they went next, but the Vikings did not go further in colonizing the New World.

Then we rode over to "Iceberg Alley", along the eastern coast of Newfoundland, almost at the northernmost tip.  The town of St. Anthony, a fishing town, is at the center of another iceberg melting area.  We did indeed find four small icebergs, of which the small white object in front of Deane is one.

All in all, we had a busy and fun day

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