July 19
Today was a travel day and
we saw three amazing things. First was
"The Arches". A huge rock
carved by the motion of the ocean waves.
Second was a fish ladder
for salmon where we got close up views of salmon.
Third was the most amazing
- a giant iceberg. It was bigger than
three of your houses!
Adults
Today was a travel day, we
headed north on Highway 430, across the northern tip of Newfoundland over to St Anthony, where 430
ends. We decided to break from the routine caravan groups, and traveled instead
with Phil and Nita on our own. There were just too many stops we wanted to
make.
Our first stop was at the Arches Provincial
Park , just north of
Parson’s Pond. This was an amazing place! Big, monstrous rock mountains along
the shore that have, over millions of years, been eaten away by the power of
the surf constantly pounding against the base of the rock. There were several
arches, and evidence of more that had already given in to the ocean’s power and
crashed to the ground. These arches were big enough for all of us to walk into
comfortably. The rocks on the beach were once again round, and rolled under our
feet. The sound of the rocks rolling in the surf, combined with the sound of
the crashing waves was music to my ears, could have stood there all day!
Our next stop was the Salmon Interpretive
Center in Hawk’s Bay. I
think we were all very impressed with this stop, we had our own guide and she
was very informative! The center is built on the Torrent River
as an effort to reintroduce the Salmon to the river further upstream. Before
the center was built, the Salmon traveled up the stream to the base of the Torrent Falls and spawned there. So the system
for the Salmon to bypass the falls and go further upstream was built, and at
first a dismal failure, the Salmon would only go as far as the falls as that
was where they were born. So they began to transfer adult salmon from another
river, by helicopter, to the streams above the Torrent River ,
the stocking program was a success. The count at the fishway increased from 58
fish in 1971 to a high of 7,000 in 1996 and has remained at approximately 4,000
salmon in the years since. Atlantic Salmon differ from the Pacific variety in
that they don’t die after spawning, they can live to spawn up to 7 or 8 times,
on average. Young fish remain in the river where they are born for 2-3 years
before they migrate to the ocean. Another interesting fact is that you can tell
a salmon’s age by counting the rings on their scales, just like a tree. If you
are ever in this area, the Interpretive
Center is a must see!
We had about 210 miles to
cover today, so we decided we’d better quit messing around and get down the
road. After we left the ocean on the western side, it was kind of boring
through the middle anyway. We came out on the eastern side at St Anthony, and
arrived at the campground around 4:00pm. There is a lot on the agenda at this
location, so we decided to take advantage of the remaining daylight hours and
go see the lighthouse at Goose Cove, just past St Anthony’s. The view from this
point was fantastic! The wind was blowing a gale and we took refuge behind the
lighthouse to keep from being blown out to sea. Luck was with us today, we have
seen our first ice burg!! A really huge one, the part we could see was as big
as a small cruise ship, we are told that about 70% of the ice burg is under
water. Phil and John took lots of pictures trying to get the burg in a close up
shot without blurring it. They were leaning on us, the building and crawling
all over the rocks trying to keep the camera steady to get a close up in focus.
Mean while, Nita and I were talking to an interesting couple from New Jersey , not far from
where we live. They had a camera that had GPS that showed on the picture where
it was taken and the date, pretty cool!
We had a long and busy
day, looking forward to tomorrow!