Next stop, Halifax

It's been a while I know I know! The internet is pretty unreliable in Newfoundland to say the least. An update of what we've been up to. We went to L'Anse-Au-Meadows on Wednesday and bumped into our Viking friend Bonnie (the Viking tow truck driver's wife). She told us about the construction of the old viking homes that were built on this site, 2' of peat/sod, 2' of gravel, and then 2' of peat again! She dressed us up in traditional Viking garb and took a few photos with us as well! It was a really fun morning.


(L'Anse-Au-Meadows site)


(Soon-to-be Battle Axe)


(Us with Bonnie, our wonderful new friend!)

We spotted an iceberg off the coast of L'Anse-Au-Meadows, and decided to take a boat tour. The lady in the gift shop's husband runs one as luck would have it! It's a small world in Newfoundland! So Mavis's husband Tobias took Dan and I out on his boat. We had a personal tour! He took us all the way to another iceberg we spotted when we got out there, and we even saw a few dolphins (they call them squiddowns in Newfoundland) along the way. We circled around the iceberg for a few minutes and then Tobias caught a piece that had fallen off and broke it up so we could chew on some iceberg ice on our way back to shore. Pretty incredible! The ice is SO clear it's like glass. That's the part that looks blue, and then other parts of the ice have all these tiny bubbles in them, which is what makes it look white. When pieces fall off into the water, you can hear all the bubbles bursting as it melts and it sounds like it's sizzling in the water. Talk about once in a lifetime!!


(A chunk of iceberg. You can see the clear and the bubble parts)





Dan and I headed south after our iceberg experience. We ended up driving a bit later than we wanted to that night and had a nerve racking drive through the upper end of Gros Morne with my face pressed against the front windshield looking for those nocturnal moose! Thankfully we didn't see any and got to the KOA campsite safe and sound. EARLY the next morning we set out again to meet our ferry. The Colonel had other plans though. We had to stop quite a few times to clear out our fuel lines (thanks again gas tank people for screwing up our tank!), and Dan even changed the fuel pump road side thinking it would help. We literally crawled onto the ferry, after begging customer service to switch us to a later one, and were the last ones on!!! We just BARELY made it by the skin of our teeth!!!


(A neat thing in Newfoundland is that people dry their wood on the side of the road, some times in teepee sort of shapes, some times just in piles. We're not sure how they tell them apart because it's not really on any one's property, just piled along the side of the highway.)


(Also, people randomly pick spots along the highway and plant gardens! So neat!)


(Dan chowing down on a mammoth Viking burger!)


(I went for local snow crab)

Today we made it as far as Antigonish, Nova Scotia. We had plans of making it to Halifax today, not a huge feat, but again, the Colonel had other plans. Thanks AGAIN fuel tank people. We're in a motel tonight getting a rest and a chance to catch up with email, and in the morning we'll fix the Colonel back up and hopefully get back on the road again. Sigh. Oh Colonel.