Port Aux Choix, Newfoundland

Once again, I find myself hopelessly behind on the blog. This is not due to lack of things I want to memorialize, but rather to a steady stream of road trips, the last of which was to San Antonio, Texas by air for Thanksgiving and our youngest daughters  promotion to Major in the Air Force.  To be honest, there is a bit of blog aversion thrown in for good measure.  It seems that procrastination breeds more of the same-who knew.

As our Canadian trip, now in the distant past, is in its final week or so, we headed from St Anthony to Port Aux Choix for an overnight stop in our push south.  The drive along the coast was scenic and we landed in this small village in a Lyons Club camping parking lot right on the Gulf of St Lawrence. This area has been inhabited for over 6000 years with the  first Europeans being French fishermen in the early 1700's.  We had a wonderful view.

 

Since we were just here for an overnight visit, we headed out to explore the area on arrival.  First was the Port Au Choix National Historic site and the Cape Spear  light house which was just next door to our campsite. Here you learn about the long history of the area and navigational important of the lighthouse on the Gulf in safety of navigation.

After checking out the visitor center and visiting the lighthouse site, we hiked some of the trails in the park to enjoy the view and vegetation.

Then we took a quick tour of the village.  It seems that in this part of the world, they just cannot help to be very photogenic. 

Back at the campground, we decided to try and start a camp/bond fire to await the sunset.  We, of course had plenty of drift wood but no accelerants to get a good fire going.  We were a sad little group trying to start the fire.  I have mentioned before about our experience with friendly locals everywhere we have been on this trip. As we were considering abandoning the fire idea, we saw a big four wheeler approaching us at full speed. He stopped and introduced himself.  Long story short, he got the fire going with some local fine reed material that he rounded up and spent about an hour telling us tales of his life and the history of the town. It was time very well spent.  Then he said he had to be off as he was going to be late for an important family dinner. By now, we had gathered a good group of our caravan members around the fire along with others who were also just spending the night here. About 20 minutes later, we hear the now familiar sound of the four wheeler.  He was back with another huge load of drift wood.  He said he did not want us to run short-and then he was gone again.