We had an amazing time at Gros Morne National Park. The weather was good, there weren’t too many people, and the berries were ripe. In fact, there were so many berries that one day Little Kid and I got out pails and went picking. I got pretty tired of eating berries after I ate about forty of them, so Little Kid and I made jam together. It was delicious!

On one day, we went to the Tablelands, a huge mountain made of the earth’s mantle. We walked around the base, the barren yellow mountains towering over us. At the end of the trail, there was a beautiful brook that led up to a snowfield at the top of the mountain. It was a snowmelt stream, but that didn’t keep Little Kid and I from swimming in it. After hopping around from rock to rock for a while, Little Kid and I persuaded Ma and Pa to have lunch on a rock in the middle of the stream.

Another day, we did a short hike that brought us to a dock that a boat ride left from. We had an awesome time on the boat, even though it was a bit crowded. The lake was very narrow, we were less than one hundred feet from the giant cliffs that loomed over us. We heard stories of huge landslides when chunks of rock came flying down, and I had no trouble imagining the cliff breaking apart and crumbling into the clear water. There were lines of striped rock where rocks had fallen off, and other sections of rock that looked like they were about to fall down the 2000 foot cliff. It was so amazing!

We spent almost six hours driving up to L’Anse aux Meadows, at the northern tip of Newfoundland, but the drive was worth it. On our first day we went hiking on a little point of land. There were no plants, except for in the weird craters that were filled with shrubs. Even though there was not much life on land, there was plenty in the water. When we hiked to a huge beautiful sea cave, we saw a ton of whales out on the ocean slapping their tails and fins. It was so cool! It sounded like a huge drum beating. Then we saw what the whales were after: a huge school of capelin, a small fish that whales eat, was near shore. Man, I wish I had brought my net! Another day, we saw a whale jumping completely out of the water.

We would have been happy to watch the whales every day, but we decided that we had to go to L’Anse aux Meadows park, which is what we had driven to the Northern Peninsula for. L’Anse aux Meadows was a Viking settlement in the 1000s. Yes, you heard me right. Vikings were the first Europeans on North America. There was a reconstructed Viking house, and Little Kid and I had fun dressing up in Viking clothes and trying to hold a sword and shield.

One day, we were hiking along a road in a town named Goose Cove when some people named Gordon and Mary invited us into their house for tea. After chatting for awhile, they gave us a tour of the small house where Gordon had grown up with ten other kids. The ceilings were very low: they used to entertain themselves by trying to kick the beams. The bedrooms on the second floor had even lower ceilings. They were so short that Pa couldn’t stand up in them. Gordon was 63, and he told us that when he was a kid they had no roads, no electricity, and used a dog sled to get around in the winter. They also had an accordion that Little Kid and I got to play.

Our time at St. John’s was a bit gray, wet, windy, and cold so we mostly did errands. We shopped at the only Costco in the province, where they sold a local food: big tubs of salt beef! St. John’s also had one Old Navy, but no Trader Joes… does this city sound like the mega Newfoundland big city where half the population lives? Well, it is. And the population of St. John’s is about 250,000.

Despite the bad weather, we went to Cape Spear, the eastern most point in North America, and a fort called Signal Hill. We also saw the rows of brightly colored “jellybean houses” as we explored the port and downtown of St. John’s.

We stayed in Elliston, the root cellar capital of the world, right near a puffin colony. The puffins were adorable, and very curious. Sometimes they would fly from the little island that they lived on to the mainland, and sit a few feet away from us. They would look at us with their cute little faces, like they were wondering what the heck we were, and then go back to their normal business. I loved when they would land by flying, hovering for a few seconds, and then dropping straight down onto the rock.

Along with the puffins, there was the puffin festival right in the campground. We all loved the music, especially Little Kid. There were also lots of fun games, and one of them was led by a Member of Parliament. He was very funny. When he asked who was from outside Newfoundland, Ma and I were the only ones. He asked where we were from, and he was pretty surprised when I said Arizona. I was called up on stage to do the “puffin dance” with him and another Member of Parliament.

There were also tons of root cellars, and Little Kid and I had a lot of fun playing in them. In the tiny town of Elliston, there were over 150 of them!

When we were at the lighthouse in nearby Bonavista, we saw a whole pod of whales. One of them jumped completely out of the water!

On our way out of town, we stopped in another town named Trinity. There was an old forge that was still being used, and we spent a long time watching them black smithing. It was very cool. Pa also started chatting with a sailing couple, and before we knew it, we were helping them get to the fueling dock.

I am definitely going to miss seeing puffins everyday, but there is cool stuff ahead!

The end of the earth? Well, a long time ago the Flat Earth Society believed that Brimstone Head, where we were staying at Fogo Island, was one of the corners of the earth. It did look like the sparkling blue ocean just went on forever.  On the ferry ride over, Pa and I were invited in to the bridge by the captain!  They had and old fashioned steering wheel that they actually used, no auto pilot, and a repeater to send signals to the engine room (they didn’t use it).

Fogo Island looked liked a mash of different centuries and places. The tundra with stumpy trees reminded me of Alaska, and the little red shacks along the water looked like a picture of an eighteenth century village. The people were very friendly, and it was pretty hard to just take a walk without spending hours chatting with locals. A lot of people had Irish accents!

We did a few hikes, and one of them was to a sculpture of an auk, an extinct bird. We got an added bonus: a herd of caribou was grazing near the trail!