Thursday, August 17

The highlight of the day was a hike on the Skerwink Trail, which has been named one of the top hikes in North America. It passes by the towns of Port Rexton and Trinity, and is known for its sea stacks, sea birds, eagles, icebergs, whales...you get the picture. It's not long, just a little over three miles, but it's spectacular. Like many of the trails we'd been on, this one was well maintained with extensive boardwalks built to navigate the marshy, seaside topography. 

We also checked out a peninsula known for it's huge puffin colony. They nest in burrows that they've dug in the soft topsoil. There were thousands of them in the water surrounding the peninsula, it was quite a site. Here is a shot of the nests.

At the risk of stating the obvious, fishing is deeply embedded in the culture of the province. Museums, monuments, menus, clothing, vocabulary, etc all bear the marks of the sea. Here is one example in the town of Elliston. This monument commemorates the loss of the S.S. Newfoundland during what's known as the "sealing disasters" of 1914. https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/politics/sealing-disaster-1914.php That year many ships were lost, leading to new government regulations of the industry. 

We dined at the Little Dairy King. It was another of the local diner style joints I've described before. Non-descript, set oceanside, with a menu dominated by local seafood prepared in simple and delicious styles. We had pan fried cod and North Atlantic salmon, and cod tongue. It was our first cod tongue. It's not really tongue, I'm still not clear what the hell it is, we've had several descriptions from locals. Suffice it to say it's a delicacy from somewhere around the head of a cod. 

The highlight of dinner though was not the cod tongue. It was one of our fellow diners, for a minute I thought we were back in Indiana. Make sure to enlarge this one to fully appreciate the pride this gentleman had in his butt crack.