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!