Following the Viking Trail, Day 7

June 28 St. Anthony to Corner Brook

How can it be the last day? We're all sad that this great trip is ending. The day starts with seeing 15 moose in the first hour out of St. Anthony - did our guide somehow stage this finale? We even watched a cow with her calf and saw a fairly big bull plus lots of yearlings.

We stopped at Port aux Choix, a national historic site whose web site explains its importance.

"For over 5500 years, this small peninsula on Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula has been the crossroads of various native North American and European cultures. The area's rich marine resources,. . . wild game and abundant berries, have drawn these people to the shores of Port au Choix. The people who occupied this site connect the area southwards to Maine, northwards to Greenland, as far west as the Canadian Arctic, and of course eastward to Europe.

"The remains of these many cultures have been preserved at Port au Choix, thanks to the limestone bedrock of the area. The soils are alkaline rather than acidic and many artifacts have survived, including those of bone and ivory."

The town of Port aux Choix is the shrimp capitol of Newfoundland so while eating lunch there we checked out the Shrimp Chowder and the Shrimp Salad Sandwich.

I realized that for an entire week we'd been eating food prepared as it was ordered. No fast food joints on this tour - hurray!

In fact most restaurants had signs noting that it takes time to prepare good food - probably to remind frantic Americans to slow down a bit and savor the moment.

At Corner Brook, second largest city at around 20,000, we stayed at a historic inn, Glynmill Inn and learned this area is known for producing paper and paper products. In the late 1960's, the local pulp and paper mill, then owned by Bowater, held the record for highest newsprint production in the world.

Our farewell dinner, at the Wine Cellar restaurant at the Inn, topped off the fantastic week with wonderful meals and my desert was a Partridgeberry Parfait (Lingonberry to the Scandinavians).

We'll take a bit of Newfoundland home with us in addition to the memories of the stunning scenery, our new friends and our photographs. That would be the Cloudberry and Partridgeberry liqueurs, Cloudberry Wine and lots of jam from these two most popular berries in Newfoundland.

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