The Chasing Moose Tour - Day 3

We left Rocky Harbour at 7:30am. The drive to L’Anse-aux-Meadows was nice, it was another foggy and rainy day, but the landscape is beautiful and the drive along the coast is breathtaking. There are many small villages along the way and I wanted to stop in each one! We saw quite a few men fishing by the side of the road wherever there was a brook...I have to find out the definition of a brook. I always thought it was a small river...the brooks here are huge!

We arrived in the l’Anse-aux-Meadows area around 11:30am and we were both really hungry. We decided to eat at a restaurant called “The Norseman”, we had read some reviews about the restaurant and we were not disappointed! The food was amazing! I had pan fried cod and Eric ate a caribou burger. Both were delicious! The plates looked so nice I wanted to take a picture, but I was too shy.

After lunch we went to l’Anse-aux-Meadows. It is really a beautiful sight. You can see that great care was taken to decorate the site as it would have been. We walked around the four buildings, and then we walked on a path that took us up hills and around rocky cliffs overlooking the ocean. It was beyond beautiful. It was a grey, rainy, foggy day, but it didn’t matter.



We then went over to Norstead, a Viking village, where there was a festival going on. We toured the site, and talked to all of the “characters” at the village. While we were watching the ladies use a loom and knit, we decided to buy Eric a hat that was made on site by them. While he went back to the car, I stayed talking to the ladies, I had just started to talk to them about the surprise I had planned for him later when he came back and the ladies were making all kinds of noise (they didn’t realize that it was supposed to be a surprise), saying "Oh that's nice...oh you'll like that!". Eric was confused, and I told him that he had to go back outside so that I could finish telling my story. So by this point, he knew something was up. I asked him if he wanted to know what the surprise was, and he said no, so we finished our tour and it was almost time for us to catch the boat over to the surprise location. We got in the car and I drove to the little town of Quirpon (the people here pronounce it "Carpoon"), I told him that there were supposed to be some Icebergs there and I was hoping to catch a glimpse.

We drove down to the dock and when we saw the sign for the Quirpon Lighthouse Inn, I said here’s your surprise. At first, he thought that we were we were just going on a boat tour, so he was a little confused when I told him that we had to bring our back packs on the boat, I then explained that we would be staying at Quirpon for the night, and he was rather surprised afterall! We got our things together and waited for the boat to arrive to pick us and the other guests up. There was a couple from Germany, and a Mom with her daughter and her grandson from Pennsylvania and us. The waters were pretty rough and it took us almost an hour to get to the other side of the 6km island. We saw 2 icebergs on the way – they were pretty far in the distance, but they were icebergs! Eric enjoyed the boat ride and he spent most of the time talking to a local celebrity, Earl Pilgram, an author. He was standing on the edge of the little boat, with the spray splashing in his face...and he loved every minute. The fog was so thick that when we arrived, we could not even see the lighthouse! As we stepped off the boat, the inn keeper said to us “now just walk on up to the house beside the lighthouse”. We began walking on the path, but we couldn’t see the lighthouse, and we weren’t too sure about the path...but eventually the lighthouse came into view and we arrived at the house.

The lighthouse is on top of the hill on the right...what? can't you see it?!

Oh! There it is!

We were welcomed in by Madonna, she told us where we could find our room, and we headed up to find a cozy little room. It was perfect! It really felt like we were staying at a friend’s house! I had a little nap before dinner. We headed down to dinner at 6:30pm where our group was joined by a couple, who had been at the island for 2 days and had 2 days left before they were off on their tour of Newfoundland, Labrador (1 night) and then on to Nova Scotia. We ate Jiggs Dinner for supper (salt beef, peas pudding, dumplings with molasses (YUMMY) potatoes, turnip and carrots) – it was delicious!! With lemon pie for dessert...the pie crust that we have had in Newfoundland is quite different than any other that we've tried, it's not flaky, it has a cake-y texture. After dinner we joined the other guests in the living room to chat, then Eric and I went for a walk – since we were leaving in the morning I wanted to get the most out of our time on the island. We walked only so far because it was starting to get dark out, and it was so foggy that we couldn’t see anything. I was pretty disappointed about the weather – I realize that there’s nothing I could do about it, but since we were only going to be there for one night and the weather really wasn’t cooperating...I wanted it to be rainy...because at least then we would have been able to see the ocean...with the fog...we knew the ocean was there, but we couldn’t see it.

We headed back in to the Inn, where we had a glass of wine with the other guests before they all headed up to bed. We stayed up a little later and chatted, and had a little more wine. We asked Madonna if it would be possible for us to stay on the island until the afternoon, because we knew that there was a boat of people coming back to the island that night, she told us that it wouldn’t be a problem, we could stay on the island until 5pm. We were thrilled, I set the alarm for very early because I wanted to go for a walk and maybe watch the sunrise if the weather was going to cooperate.

Moose Count – 0