Long day

First:  Happy Canada Day from my parking lot perch in Newfoundland.

 Several others have found my internet cafe!  Since the sun is still shining and it's mostly warm ths evening, they don't think I'm that weird and have joined to get their own connections.

This morning, some of us were up and out on the trail at 6.30 to see what kind of birds were awake on the way up Gros Morne.  We didn't go too far as the birds were not really cooperating.  They were singing and singing but only deep among the trees.  The only song I recognised was the whine of the mosquitoes. 

Off to Rocky Harbor for breakfast.  This was the view from the roadside. 

Fed and watered, we bowled down the highway to this historic lighthouse. Isn't the approach pretty? Our park interpreter was the mst delightful young woman.   wanted to put her in my pocket and bring her home.  Her manner, accent, way of speaking and enthusiasm were just so engaging.  She even had some of the visitors up and dancing.  One was a very large man on a motorcycle who we've been seeing off and on all the way from Bonavista. He was a really good sport.
 

 
Then we get to spend a couple of hours walking the boardwalk trail in to the Western Brook Pond.  This is essentially a land-locked fjord.  Very big, very deep and with the most amazing bog land vegetation along the trail. 

There were so many different flowers and many we still have to research tofigure out what they are.  Here's one that was growing in the watre.  We kind of guessed that it might be some kind of lily.  But maybe not.  The color was absolutely striking it was so vivid.

A trip to visit one of the old summer fishing sites.  The families would work as lumberjacks all winter and then come and fish for cod and lobster in the summer.  They worked so hard making everything they used by hand:  traps, nets, boats.  \They processed the fish after catching it: salting and drying the cod as well as canning the lobster.  The merchants' vessels would come up the coast to take away the products and the families could pay down the account.  The merchants supplied them with everything that they couldn't make:  twine, cans, lamp oil, cloth.  It would seem that their whole existence was to service that debt.  But what a gorgeous setting in which to do it.

A few families of eider ducks went swimming by with their babies in tow.  We counted over thirty little ones out on the waves.

This is Cow Head.  We enjoyed a delicious church supper here.  It was a lobster festival - the last day of the lobster season - and a celebration of the Canada Day weekend. 

Now I'm off to bed.  We must be on the road by 5 am tomorrow.  Yikes!