King Hans and the Crow's Head

What a day, what a day.  Today was a great one.  We woke up around 8 or so and had our breakfast and spent about an hour chatting at the table with other guests.  That is one thing I am really loving about this trip - all the conversations with strangers and fellow travelers.  Everyone is totally blown away by our trip and we are really starting to get the telling of our story down to a science.  And we love hearing about other peoples' travels and sharing experiences about similar stops and such.  And also just chatting about general stuff.  We are both very friendly people and we can easily engage in conversation but often when we travel we will keep to ourselves.  It is nice to break out of that.  Of course we had better get used to it.  We are about to spend nine weeks working at two different hostels and we will easily meet, chat, and hang with dozens, if not hundreds of people.  It will be a very different experience for us.  But that is getting way ahead of ourselves.  We still have over a week before any of that will begin and so many different adventures to be had between now and then.

After we got ourselves together we headed off to L'Anse aux Meadows, the site of the only confirmed Norse settlement in North America.  Dating from 1000 years ago, this basically proves that Columbus was not the first to "discover" the Americas (of course there is also much evidence that suggests the Romans made it over here long before any of the above but that is better saved for another time).  Because of this historical significance, L'Anse aux Meadows is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It is the fourth such site we have seen so far on this trip (we will see more but not until the last part of the journey).

Sadly there was a plumbing issue in the visitor's center so we were not able to go there, which is of course the place where all the artifacts are housed.  But we did get to see not only the modern recreation of some of the original Norse village but you can also see the foundations of the original buildings.  These were discovered in about 1968 and the archaeological digs occurred from about 1973 until 1978 or so.  While little is known about what went on there and why they left, there is a lot that suggests the gist of how they carried on their lives.  It is estimated that what has been uncovered amounts to only 25% of what is actually there but they are leaving the rest of the work for future generations so as to be able to appreciate what is there now and not make a mess.  Also something very interesting to note is that, among the findings in the site, were butternuts and other plant materials that are in no way native to Newfoundland or any of the places where the Norse would have been prior which means that the only option is that they traveled quite a ways south.  So they saw a lot more of our side of the world than even the Sagas would suggest.  The tour guide is a native to the neighborhood of the site and has worked on it from the very beginning (in fact, it is his photo on the front of the park pamphlet) and he gave us a lot of info, not only on what the Vikings were doing but also on the biological history of the area and his experiences growing up there on that land.  It was fantastic and totally worth the trip up here.

A fairly accurate recreation of a Viking long house at L'Anse aux Meadows. The walls are about four meters thick and made of peat while the roof is wood frame, covered in sod.  Those things that look like chimneys are actually skylights, the only kind of windows in the place. 

Inside one of the rooms in the long house.

This looks like a mound but is really the remains of one of the original Viking buildings.  Like the long house we saw above, this one had several living and working rooms and even evidence of a sauna.  Obviously, the family who lived here were pretty well in charge.

Hans and mounds.

This mound was once a work shop.  Freshly smelted iron works would be brought here to be re-fired and fashioned into tools and nails and other iron goods.

From there we visited Norstead, which is a recreation of a typical Viking village, in a similar style as Sturbridge or the Frontier Culture Museum, with replica buildings and folks in period costume who tell you the story of how it was.  It is very easy for something like this to fall into the trap of being kitsch but this place was actually pretty cool.  It could have been more extensive but they featured a long house, similar in nature to the one above, where many of the families and workers would live.  There is also a church and a blacksmith shop and, the most exciting thing, a huge hangar with a recreation of the boat the Leif Erikson used in his journey to this part of the world.  The guy who built the boat actually recreated Erikson's journey up the coast of Greenland, over to Baffin Island, and down the coast of Labrador and over to the tip of the Newfoundland peninsula.  He did it in 87 days with a crew of nine men.  A bold move but one that surely helps us all understand and appreciate what those guys went through to be able to work here in a time when most of the world had no idea this side existed.

Recreation of the boat that Leif Erikson sailed to Vinland.

The church and, to the left, the blacksmith shop.

Move over Ragnar and Lagertha....the Vikings have a new royal couple.  And they are vicious.

While we were at Norstead we followed a trail that went out of the park and up a small mountain.  I saw the trail go up and got a wild hair and, more or less, ran up that puppy.  It was a nice little workout with some fantastic views from the top (icebergs, the Viking village, and even the deck of my room).  Krissy met me up there as well, shocked to see me tear ass up a mountain.  We hung out for a while and then came back down.

I totally busted up this hill.

Success!

Some icebergs near the hill.  In the distance you can see what Krissy likes to refer to as "Big Ol' F**k-off Icebergs".

After we came back down the mountain we headed out to the car, made some sandwiches and ate right there.  We went into some of the neighboring towns and popped into some shops and had tea at a trinket and jam shop called Dark Tickle which Krissy liked to tease me about, on account of me being horribly ticklish (it's not funny).  After that we decided to take another hike and took on the trail at Crow's Head, which is also visible from the deck of my room.  This also happens to be the northern terminus of the International Appalachian Trail.  It was very pretty and not too long a trail but much of it was straight up, and some of it was in a few feet of snow, but the view was spectacular.  It was, however, the second windiest place I've ever been, next to the Cliffs Of Moher.  I got a little worried about getting blown off the side of the cliffs and that windchill was something fierce.  But it was worth it.

The view from the top of the Crow's Head trail, right before the fog came sweeping in.

Hans at the end of the Appalachian Trail.  Note the hair.  That was the wind.  Whoa.,

Krissy at the end of the trail.  She looks colder than I do but her hair is far less crazy.

On the way down we saw a moose, our very first while outside our vehicle.  He saw us before we saw him and he/she retreated into the woods before we could get a picture.  It was a pretty moose.  Very big but almost blond in color.  Odd.  Oh yeah, that totally reminds me.  Yesterday when we were heading here from St. Anthony, we were cruising down the road and a car came the other way and they were flashing their lights like maniacs.  Now, being where I come from, my first thought was that there was a cop up ahead.  So, naturally, I slow down.  No cop.  Instead we find a bull moose, right there on the side of the road, eating grass.  Now, the side of the road dipped down into a ravine so he was pretty much head-level with the road.  So we were looking down on him.  Amazingly, unlike all the other moose we've seen so far, he already started growing his antlers for the year and had a pretty impressive rack going.  Being that we really don't want to agitate a bull moose we did not stop for pictures, just snapped it into the mental file and moved on.  Still it was cool.

We got back to our room and rested for a bit and then went out for a delicious dinner at a small but classy seafood joint called The Daily Catch where I tried cod tongues for the first time.  A Newfoundland specialty, they were quite tasty.  Something a little different from your usual fare.  The fish and chips there was among the best I've had yet.  I gotta say it is great to be in a place where you can order fish & chips and you get cod, and lots of it, and it's cheap.  A dense, hearty fish that tastes like heaven, it seriously blows haddock, herring, tilapia, and all other whitefish out of the water.  After I leave The Rock, I don't think I will ever be able to take fish & chips seriously anywhere else.

All in all we had a wonderful time up here and we are bummed to be leaving tomorrow.  There are still a few things that we wanted to see that we did not get to, such as the Raleigh Historic Village, the Grenfell Museum in St. Anthony, Pistolet Bay Park, and the Burnt Cape Ecological Reserve, as well as getting out to Belle Isle.  And more.  We also hate to leave the place where we're staying.  This is unlike any B&B we've stayed and is by far the nicest.  And the greatest view I've ever had from a bed.  All the reason to come back some day.  I don't think we can arrange to get here later in the trip but maybe we will return to Newfoundland before too long and pay this area a visit again.

Tomorrow we head down to a tucked-away park about 30 minutes northeast of Deer Lake.  It is a provincial park that has some stuff to do but will probably end up being more a place to string up the hammocks and read and not really do much else.  We could use that.  We will be there for two nights, and one full day.  The drive from here is seven hours, the longest we will take on this whole trip, so I should probably shut this thing up and get to sleep.

So, as they say in Viking-land - may the wind always be behind your sails and your horn be always full of mead!

I am your new leader.  King Hans The Ridiculous.