Across the water

Today, we sacrificed a few hours of sleep for a truly spectacular. day

But first...no more parking lots for me...

This is my view for blogging today's happenings.  We are  now in L'Anse au Clair in Labrador  a small village on the Gulf of St Lawrence.  Here's how we got here.

After our early start, we travelled to St Barbe where we caught the ferry to Quebec.  It's quite a bit different than our frries but really ferry travel is much the same anywhere.  It was sunny along the way but as we neared Blanc Sablon, the fog began to roll over us.

All was not lost, though.  The weather turned  hot and summery again.  This is the first summer we've had and believe me, we enjoyed it.  In the water were dolphins playing.  We could see them very well without binoculars but they proved difficut to capture with a camera.  This is our best attempt. Dolphin is dark triangle below small rock in the middle of the photo.  I took this on full zoom and any attempt to enlarge just becomes pixillated.

We saw a huge number of birds: puffins, razorbills, murre, gulls.  All out to sea and our camera lens not nearly powerful enough to show you.  But this little savannah sparrow posed for us.  Actually, he wasn't posing but rather guarding his nest which was in the scrub next  to the beach.

The scenery we were treated to ranged from the grand beauty of Brador Falls

whose waters flowed into the ocean via the Brador River.

The riverbanks and bars are the most lush part of the valley.  Mostly, the land is a tundra like this with sparse vegetation and a lot of rock.

Here is a sample of the beautiful lichen...

And some small plants which grew everywhere like a mat.  Walking on this mat felt quite wrong as there were no paths.  We've all been so well-trained not to walk on the plant life. 

It's been a long day and at dinner I feasted on local scallops and a delicious bakeapple cheesecake.  Bakeapple is also known as cloudberry and is kind of a golden color.  It grows wild here  and our driver has promised to show us fields of the plants tomorrow.  Then I hope I  can show  you.  I'm ready for a good long sleep tonight.