As with all the coastal towns in this province, Rocky Harbour is a long narrow town built around the cove. It is busier than many due to its proximity to Gros Morne National Park and is the home of a full hookup park very popular with the many RV caravans. Making it popular with me, is the fish plant that carries a wonderful assortment of fresh fish, including cod, sole, scallops, mussels, and salmon.

We briefly reunited with two of the couples from the group we came over with. Chet and Gaye were there as well and we had a happy hour the first evening and lunch the next day. The lure of wifi on the site (sort of and sporadically) kept us there for a few days, but then we moved on to a beautiful national park campground, Green Point. No hookups, but a great view of the water. We squeezed ourselves into a site right up front, with our back wheels up against the cement bumper block and the bedroom hanging out over the hill going down to the beach. We spent the next couple of days geocaching and hiking, including to the famous Western Brook Pond – it was too windy for the boat trip that day, but still provided beautiful views. The mountains here are rounded and very green with beautiful pine trees. Gros Morne is a geologically significant park, marking a time when the continents of Africa and North America collided. Combined with the effects of glaciation, the park is full of dramatic cliffs and valleys, as well as an area of barren alpine-like terrain.

While at Green Point, we had the worst day of weather in the entire trip. For two days, the wind howled and the rain was relentless. Winnie was rockin’ and rollin’, and while logic told me that we were just as stable hanging over that hill as we would have been further in, I was still a bit nervous. Dick hangs a step ladder off the back of Winnie – the bottom had come loose and was banging around, but with the way we were parked, there were about 30-40 feet between that ladder and the ground, so it just continued to bang away. Howling winds can get on your nerves after a while, and we felt a bit of what it must be like here in the winters, when, we are told, the winds are ferocious.

The S.S. Effie was a ship that wrecked off the coast in 1919. All aboard were saved, but the remains of the ship are strewn along the rocky beaches for quite a distance, all rusted but identifiable, and quite dramatic. Nothing has been done to alter the site – a really effective way of commemorating the event.

We took a few moose-hunting trips at dusk, and were successful every time. Moose are not indigenous and were introduced in 1904 (along with squirrels and rabbits) to provide another food source for the locals during the winter. Predictably, however, they have multiplied to the place, that although they are great fun for tourists to watch, they cause numerous traffic accidents and are threatening the native balsam fir and white birch forests of the park.

It was time to head to the northern peninsula – which feels like the end of the earth. For you RVers, the road is not nearly as bad as we have heard, and if you just slow down, it is fine. The weather was spectacular and we had breathtaking coastal views all the way up. Boy, I can understand how people get addicted to living on the water. Although many people just come up here for a couple of days to see L'Anse Aux Meadows, the first (and only) Viking settlement in North America (1000 A.D), we had planned to stay for a week or so to see the rest of the area as well. I am so very glad we did. We fell in love with the province all over again. It is so remote and wild and beautiful.

We are camped at Pistolet Provincial Park, another dry camping site looking out over bog and pine forest. Moose are rampant up here (a local counted 24 going home the other night), and Dick is disappointed because he missed a 4:00 a.m. visit to the site across from us last night. Just a few miles from here is the town of Raleigh (pronounce Rally), the home of the Burnt Cove Ecological Preserve, providing a glimpse into a unique world of rare plant species. It is a large barren area with the lowest summer temperature and the lowest average annual temperature of any coastal location on the island. Combined with the effects of wind, the growth of plants is restricted and keeps them hugging the ground. I am really glad that we decided to take the guided tour, because otherwise, we would have thought it was just a big rock with a little scrubby looking ground cover. The guide pointed out lots of tiny plants, most of which bloom in mid-late June – Burnt Cape Cinquefoil, Small Roundleaf Orchids, Fairy Slipper Orchids, Dwarf Hawk’s Beard and River Beauty among them. The pictures we saw of them in bloom were amazing – and all maybe an inch or two tall. We saw a 200 year old willow tree, flat on the ground maybe 8 – 10 inches wide – they call it their old growth forest. The trunk was gnarly and twisted – I am usually not overly interested in botany, but this stuff was fascinating. We found ourselves tiptoeing around to avoid stepping on these tiny plants.

After lunch at Burnt Cape Café – a lovely little restaurant with free wifi – we drove to Cape Shore, a tiny village on yet another breathtaking cove. Icelandic poppies were in bloom and the villagers love to decorate with “yard art”. Someone built a charming miniature lighthouse and village on a rock jutting out into the cove. We walked a trail up to Cemetery Lookout (named for the pretty little cemetery at the very top). It is a beautiful area covered with the local ground cover, a spongy plant that looks like tiny pine boughs. It was a windy day, but we found a little protected spot on the backside of a rugged rock and enjoyed one of the most amazing views we had seen…….and we have seen plenty of amazing views!! Large sea stacks jutted out of the ocean, the water was bright blue, and the seagulls were suspended in air fighting the winds. This is a truly magical island.

The next day, on the peninsula west of our park, we drove to the very remote Cape Norman Lighthouse. This is another barren area, but mostly flat slate type rock. The locals have built a nice stone path with look outs along the way. While eating our lunch and staring at the ocean (a favorite pastime), we saw whales, our first since Bonavista Bay. Suddenly we saw more activity and four dolphins provided us with quite a show, racing along the shore like synchronized swimmers. What at treat.

Our next stop was down a very bumpy 10 mile gravel road (the Jeep was fine, of course, but Dick was pretty sure that that bikes bouncing on the back would never make it) to the abandoned town of Big Brook. Along the way, we passed the remains of a cargo ship that had been wrecked by a German U-Boat in 1942. The hull was still largely in tact, and like the S.S. Effie, pieces of the ship lined the shore for at least a quarter of a mile.

We reached the town of Big Brook and were amazed to find very nice houses, one at least that was still fully furnished, but completely abandoned, the electric service having been pulled from outside all the houses. Once again, it sits on a beautiful little cove, and the fishing dock is very much intact. Very eerie. After we got back to the park, we found out that it had just been “resettled” two years ago. When Newfoundland became part of Canada in 1949 (they still consider themselves the Republic of Newfoundland and see the federal government as nothing but parasites), the government found that they could not afford to provide services to all the tiny remote villages lining the coast. They started resettling towns, paying residents to move to larger villages, consolidating the population, which is still only 500,000 for the whole island. The fully furnished house is probably still used as a cabin, powered by a generator. So, in the end, the story wasn’t quite as dramatic – I had sort of conjured up a scenario where people fled in the middle of the night or something, but still interesting.

Along the road are huge piles of logs, all stacked very neatly, or arranged teepee style, each with a board nailed to it displaying a number. These are the stockpiles of wood for the winter, and the number indicates the owner. Wood carrying sleighs sit along side to transport logs in the snow.

Fenced in vegetable gardens are also very common in the ditches along the highway. The idea is that why would you dig your own garden when the provincial government comes along every year and “till’s” this fertile roadside land for you? Root vegetables are all that are grown in these gardens, due to the short growing season.

Chet and Gaye have joined us again, and yesterday we went to St. Anthony, the largest town in the peninsula. We saw the first stoplight we have seen in weeks (the only one in town). We were pleasantly surprised to find two grocery stores carrying better than average produce – a rarity here. We also toured the Wilbur Grenfell Museum. Dr. Grenfell was a British doctor who first brought modern medicine to Newfoundland and Labrador in the early 1900s. The stories of the poverty and disease in the local population were horrifying. There was one account in which a father had to amputate both of his daughter’s legs at the knee with an axe to stop the gangrene which was killing her. Dr. Grenfell heard about it and took the young girl to Boston where she was educated and fitted with prothesis, although she never saw her father again, as he was killed in an accident before her return. The doctor is a revered figure here, and the Grenfell Medical Center still provides most of the medical services here and in Labrador.