the land of icebergs and Vikings.

We are VERY far north!  If you look at a map of Newfoundland, the Northern Peninsula sticks out like a finger pointing straight north.  We are at the top of it.  There are icebergs, snow at sea level and, until last week, there were a few polar bears around (now they have finally swam back the 18 miles across the channel to Labrador.  I am sorry we missed them.....).

We left Gros Morne early, taking advantage of the morning light to have a last look at the Table Lands over breakfast.

 It is then about 200 miles straight north to get to St Anthony, a small town that serves as the service center (medical,  insurance, etc...) for the entire area, including the south of Labrador.  So although it has only 2500 inhabitants, it has a large hospital as well as a lot of services (the largest grocery store we have seen in a long time for instance). 

As we drove up, we got some very good pictures of a caribou who was grazing by the road, and - unlike yesterday- was not hidden by bushes at all.

 Then as we got further North, we started noticing small icebergs in the bay.. (the land  on the other side- in the haze- is Labrador)...  it was tempting to turn here and keep going North,,,,,,

In St Anthony, there are several large icebergs (and a lot of smaller ones), some floating around, some grounded (which means that the bottom has hit the bottom of the ocean and they are stuck).  We took a boat to get a closer look.  It was a beautiful but cold day out there!  Our guide said that in order to live here, you have to really love winter - like won't do it.  You have to LOVE it!  He talked with a lot of enthusiasm about snowmobiling until early June, and going hunting on the ice in the middle of winter.  We got to circle a couple of beautiful icebergs:  This one is about 70 feet tall, and grounded on the ocean floor, which is about 260 feet deep right there.

 This one has been battered by waves into very pretty sculptures.

After our boat ride, we drove to the "Anse aux Meadows", where the Norse settlement that proved that Vikings had made it to the Americas 1000 years ago was discovered in the 1960's.  The discovery itself is a great story of detective work and persistence:  The Icelandic Sagas describe two trips in a great deal of detail, but it took a lot of work to figure out where the landing was, in part because the Norse never established permanent settlements in North America:  they used this area as a base to get lumber and possibly grapes (that's still not proven) from the areas south of here (maybe New Brunswick). 

But they only stayed around long enough to load the boats, wait out winter and sail back to Greenland.  Now, the general understanding is that they kept going to Labrador for a long time after they abandoned the site here, but never stayed long enough to leave any structures.  Right is a re-creation of what one of their larger structures looked like - this housed about 30 people throughout winter when 15 to 20 feet of snow is normal....

What is left now are just mounds that have been excavated, showing the first iron making in North America, as well as remnants of wood that did not exist on the continent - thus proving the presence of Europeans.

 The park was not just very interesting, it also was a great place to see more icebergs, and the pack ice that is still around (this is a tough place to live in.....).

We went to the lighthouse for a great dinner of local seafood (I had the locally caught snow crab - it was great!).
Tomorrow is our last day:  we will take our time driving back to Deer lake and hope to catch a few more sights on the way down.