L’Anse aux Meadows to St. Anthony

July 11th and we are off to St. Anthony.

But first it is a day of discovery at the Viking Village National Park visitor centre.
After a short video we headed out on a guided tour of the entire area including an area that they have recreated to the best of their knowledge based on known Viking settlements in Norway.  The recreated buildings include living areas, wood workshops, metal/forging shops, etc. it was all very interesting. All the buildings were made from the peat bog surrounding this area. The inside walls were all made of small logs and/or branches/sticks. The walls on the larger buildings are 6 ft thick, once inside it was quite warm even though it was a wet rainy and windy morning.
Probably the best part was that our guide who was in his early 60’s grew up in L’anse aux Meadows and as a child he played in this area and they always thought that these were native indian settlements. It was not until the early 1960’s that a Danish archeologist discovered this site with help from a local fisherman. So, as a child he said they had “front row seats” to watching the archeological dig take place. Then as a young man he helped reconstruct all the buildings and the settlement to where it is today.
Finally on the way out of the area we came across a cow moose and her calf, unfortunately the calf was hidden too well to get a good picture.
After this we headed back to St. Anthony, hoping to see the large iceberg in the harbour. Well when we arrived there was noting but a bunch of small chunks and some remnants of it floating around the harbour. When we asked around folks said it had broken up the previous afternoon, after we had left. Fortunately someone caught it on YouTube and posted it, take a look https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtlholi6qYU.

We did see other large icebergs on our way into town so we backtracked to see if we could get closer to them. No real luck getting much closer than the one from the harbour but we did get to see more large icebergs from a distance.