Port au Choix

I made the decision to blow through Gros Morne National Park, for now, to spend a couple of days way up north. It was a weather decision. More rain predicted for the south with much less of a chance north. People are talking about the weather. There is a mix of snow predicted for tonight in lots of locations. Below freezing predicted tonight here in the north. This is, even for Newfoundland, a late and cold beginning of summer. If you look at the first photo, which to me looks like a "hook'em horns" gesture, you see that the little finger is the north wing of Newfoundland. I'm way up in the fingernail! I drove through a cloud/fog/rain obscured view of crazy mountains (with snow still visible in lots of patches) to get as far north as possible. I got hungry and tired around Port aux Choix and boy, am I glad I did.
The sun was getting lower(it was about 7:30pm) and I was doing my scan for a safe place to sleep. There was a sign for an information station and I followed that through town. As I rounded the bend at a little harbor, I noted a couple of fishing boats. As I headed up a hill, I saw vehicles lined up overlooking the harbor. I pulled in and here's what I found: In this town of 896 people, give or take, it felt like half of them were on this hill or across the bay on the opposite point. Mostly trucks. Everyone with binoculars. Old people. Young women with babies. Whole families. I counted 37 vehicles at one point. And the object of everyone's attention was a little fleet of fishing boats. Four of them. And three small skiffs.
It was like a Friday night football game in Texas. I found the whole scene fascinating. A boat would drop a huge net and the skiff would take the end of it and loop it back around to the boat where it would be attached to the arm that would reel it in when the fish were caught. It looked like there were three or four crew on each boat, plus a captain. There was a single fisherman in each skiff. I learned, when fishing for salmon in Alaska, that when there is a river with people lined up, the lead person had the best chance of catching a fish. Once that person caught one, it was etiquette for them to retreat and move to the end of the line. At this point everyone would scooch a few steps toward the sweet spot to take a turn at higher odds. It looked like the boats were adhering to something like the same system. It was then that a woman pulled up next to me in a maroon colored truck(that's her in photo 2). I put my window down and asked if she knew what they were catching. She said 'capelin'. Which are the beautiful herring-like fish that are the target for the whales that love this area of the world. I told her that I was figuring that everyone on the hill must know the people that are fishing in front of us. She said, "Yes! That's my husband down there." Her guy was one of the people in the skiffs and the fish are not usually right there in the bay where everyone can see them. That made this a big event. She said that they had been fishing since four that morning and we talked about how tired and hungry and sore they must be after a day on the water. I asked if the four boats were working as a team or were they in competition with each other. She said that they all helped each other to the point that they share catch at the end of the day. Meeting her, hearing the story, made me appreciate even more, where the fish I eat come from and what effort is expended to make that happen. The other aspect I thought about as I sat there and watched were the conditions. It was 30 degrees on land. And it was summer. These people are doing cold, dangerous work every time they go out.
I sat and watched, with everyone else, and they just kept at it. The sun got very low, a rainbow appeared(!!) and they just kept fishing. At one point, one of the boats had their nets out so their engine was off. It started to drift dangerously toward the rocky shallows. The skiff, with a tow rope attached, tried to pull it into deeper water. With a full haul in it's belly, the boat was too heavy. Now you could sense the energy change. There was a lot of animated movement and the other boats in the group started to react. On one of those boats, the small skiff, and it's skipper had already been loaded out of the water and onto the boat. We all watched, now holding our breath for the ship that was in danger, as fisherman scrambled to get that docked skiff back into the water with it's human. And then we all watched as they motored hard and fast to the foundering ship to add additional tow power. Just in the nick of time! Crisis, for the moment, averted.
At about 10:00, as the sun was setting, I finally left with three trucks still there. I slept in a spot overlooking the beach bundled into down coats(2) and a hat and my hood up. I soon got toasty and slept hard until just before sunrise when I got up to head further north. Next stop is St. Anthony's which is the northern tip of Newfoundland. I could see Labrador, across the ocean, to my left. And I saw eight moose on this ride after not seeing any yet in Newfoundland! The last two photos are just weird tidbits of info: You might see the moose in the road way off in the distance. In the foreground is a small pothole. The roads here are mostly terrible. HUGE potholes everywhere. So happy to have a truck. The last photo is this weird phenomenon I keep seeing everywhere. The random, floating-in-space door. I asked some people about it this morning and they laughed and said, "It's a Mother-in-Law door." Seriously, it gives you an idea of the amount of snow that is possible. When the ground floor door is buried, you don't have to climb out a window.Read more