Rocky Harbour to Port au Choix

The road up the coast toward St. Anthony is called the Viking Trail, from Rocky Harbour to Port au Choix it was mostly flat with wonderful seaside vistas. We travelled along at a very leisurely pace and enjoyed the ride. Today's ride was 169 kms, so we were all set up in our beautiful new campground by noon.

The Oceanside RV park is run by the local Lions club and has the most wonderful view that we look directly into. We met for a second time a couple from Pentiction, they have already been up to the Vikings, travelling a much faster pace than us.

After lunch we drove the km into town, went to see the bake oven from the French fisherman and over to the Phillip Garden walk. The area is very famous for the discovery of settlements from the first people who came here for fishing some 4000 years ago. The Phillip Garden is where some of these digs took place.

We then went to see the National Historic Site that has quite a display of these early peoples and then down the road we found the Point Richler lighthouse. The coastline seems to be made up of layers of rocks, quite impressive.

I heard you could buy fresh cod down on a boat by the dock so off we went. We found these gentlemen getting ready to go out, baiting their cod line with herring. Each cod line has 350 hooks and was impressively in a neat bundle, they say they will usually catch about 600 to 700 pounds of cod on one line. The boat with the fish was out but they said to come back in awhile and his buddy would be in.

So we decided to drive back to Port Saunders, which we had passed coming in to look at some large boats we had seen in the harbour. Poppa Ron looks like a peanut.

Back to camp for a happy hour and just heading out to chinese dinner when Mike and Jodie Benedict arrive at the campground, so they joined us.

After dinner we went back down to the dock and found the boat had been in so Jodie and I both bought a 7 pound codfish, for 75 cents a pound. Now this fellow would not fillet it as he says he can not do a good job but they will usually do it for no extra cost.

But we found Mike a knife and he did it and did a very good job, can not wait to have it for dinner tomorrow night.

Jodie was looking for the cod tongue but Mike persuaded her to leave it in place.