Day Thirteen - Iceberg, and Vikings, Dead Ahead!

The last strains of, now, Tropical Storm Irene met the western shore of Newfoundland last night. Apart from a bit of wind and a few scattered showers, we didn't see much trouble out of her... until this morning.

It was our goal to make the 1 p.m. or 6 p.m. ferry out of Newfoundland and over to Labrador. With what was left of Irene churning away from the shore, the leftover winds were making travel arrangement next to impossible.   After breaking camp, we made our way directly to the Labrador Marine office to try and see if the ships would even sail with the surf and gusts in their current state.

Upon arriving at the ferry terminal, we realized why our few phone calls had been so um... abrupt and strange.   If you have ever seen the Discover Card "Peggy" commercials, that was basically what we were working with, except it was three women in the office, when they felt like it. If you have not encountered "Peggy" here is a video sample.

After a few trips in line and crudely deciphering what was meant, we had a number and were told to call back at 1 p.m. for the current update/schedule. Here is basically how our conversation at the counter went:

me - "Hi, we were wondering about and interested in the 6pm ferry?"
lady at counter - "Yeah"
me - "Well, is it running"
lady at counter - "Here's your ticket, call back at 1... it doesn't look good"

GREAT!

Having the option of sitting in a terminal all day or finding some ancient viking dwellings, we hit the road. Before making it to the historic site, we stopped in Flowers Cover to see the lighthouse.

Flowers is apparently also home to the bus graveyard. 

L'anse aux Meadows is a National Historic Site of Canada which contains the located foundations of a viking village and a reconstructed village with re-enactors. At first, this sounded like it could be lame, but we were amazed at how interesting and well done it turned out to be. Best part of all, JD was allowed in the park with us. The site was once used by roughly 90 vikings, lead by Leif Eiriksson, who used the site as a base while exploring the Bay of St. Lawrence. The ruins were discovered in the 1960's by a historian working off of a few hunches and the directions of locals.

Our other stops for the day included a visit to the "Deep Tickle Experience" which is actually a jam company that specialized in berry preserves made from fruit found only this far north. We also made our way into St. Anthony to explore the city. Our two main discoveries were another lighthouse and icebergs. We really are in the north!

Leaving St. Anthony's a bit earlier than we wished, we blew back down the road to the ferry. By the time we arrived we noticed that there were far fewer cars in the parking lot, which was either a good or bad sign. Basically, at 4pm they had taken anyone who was standing around and were "waiting to see how this one goes" before selling tickets for the 6 o'clock voyage, which they said was now pushed back to 8:30. There was nothing to do but wait.

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant, located adjacent to the ferry terminal. At one point I popped back in to inquire about an update to find the ladies turning out all the lights. Their answer was, "we don't know anything, and won't until we get back from dinner..."

To make a long story short, we had a standby ticket for boarding the ferry. We got in line, chatted with some locals, and waited to find out our fate. Finally, the official looking man told us to "get in dat line and go up der," which we took to mean "get on the boat." We were Labrador bound, only 4 hours behind what we had expected.