Day 9 - 10 Sep - L'Anse aux Meadows to Port au Choix, Nfld

What a day! I don't know if the wind had anything to do with 'Hurricane Whatever-It's-Name' or it was just another 'windy' day in Nfld, but it was a doozy! I had woken up through the night to hard rain and then the van started to rock! Believe me...all from outside influences! It wasn't unpleasant...kind of like sleeping in a rocking chair.
When we finally got up we could see it was not a nice day and you could hardly stand upright outside. I was for holing up for the day but future weather reports indicated that if we wanted to see the Cabot Trail during a sunny day, we had to start heading back down south to make the ferry to Cape Breton on Saturday.
We drove into L'Anse aux Meadows to see the viking settlement. Although I had been there, Wayne hadn't and it really was worth seeing again. It was dermined to be an authentic Viking settlement in 1953 by an archeologist from Norway who had looked at the various routes Lief Erikson had taken to Iceland and Greenland. Ancient manuscripts had described another landing he'd made and had called 'Vinland' and the archeologist felt Nfld must be the place. It took many years but a chance conversation with a local in L'Anse aux Meadows, who described the 'mounds' that were in the area, led to excavations and artifacts that were Viking in origin. Parks Canada has built a wonderful interpretation centre as well as a re-creation of the settlement beside the original mounds. It is the only Viking settlement to have been discovered in North America.
While we were getting ready to leave the interpretation centre, someone pointed out a huge male moose not too far away with a glorious rack of antlers. I only had my small lens so doubt the photo will do him justice but we'll see.
We then hit the road and it was a real rough ride down the highway...the cross-winds were around 40-50 mph and after a couple of hours, Wayne's shoulders were aching from holding the LuvMasheen on the road. We pulled in to Port au Choix and had there not been an RV park open, we'd have checked in to a motel.
There WAS an RV park, run by the Lion's Club, that had electricity & water and we drove in, only to find it was right on the ocean...maybe 75 feet from our van, and while it certainly had a spectacular view, it made me a bit nervous as the waves were huge and a real gale blowing. In the end, we figured we'd leave the back door unlocked and if we felt 'damp' through the night, we'd just bail out through there. Once more 'check-off' on the bucket list!
I can tell you that the sunset that night was beyond beautiful....the entire sky was pinks and oranges....and we slept like logs. Must be that 'rocking chair' effect.