Caribou!
We left the gravel yard of the St. Barbe RV park fairly early and drove south about an hour and a half to Port au Choix, the location of another National Historic Site managed by Parks Canada, the Canadian equivalent of the US Park Service.
The Historic Site, on the Point Riche Peninsula, is a result of the archeological finds in the area. The peninsula is primarily a limestone barren, which looks like gray gravel with little vegetation, but is actually the result of eons of sea action breaking down a limestone shoreline. The actual shoreline looks like cracked gray pavement and the gravel barrens are inshore from the pavement. A little strange to us but actually beautiful.
The archeological finds in the area were discovered as early as 1904 but most of the activity was from the 1960s to the early 2000s. With lots of small bays surrounding Port au Choix, the Point Riche Peninsula extends out into Gulf of St. Lawrence and has always had a rich marine life off its shores, naturally attracting people wanting to harvest that bounty.
The findings have shown inhabitation by four early cultures over a period of about 4,000 years before the Europeans arrived. The earliest were the Maritime Archaic Indians who were hunters and gatherers and are represented at Port au Choix by several extensive burial sites. The area seemed to be used as a special burying place. This indigenous group disappeared about 3,500 years ago.
Several hundred years later the Groswater Paleoeskimos arrived they were primarily seal hunters and used the area seasonally. This lasted about 1900 years before they were displaced or assimilated by different Paleoeskimo culture, the Dorset, who were also seal hunters, but had different tools and established permanent encampments.
About 1,300 years ago, the Dorset group abandoned Port au Choix. It is unclear why, but two possibilities are that the warming climate was not conducive to their seal hunting activities; or they may have been displaced by the First Nations cultures moving in at that time. These were known as the Beothuk. They, like the early Maritime Archaic Indians, were more general hunters, fishers and gatherers. They occupied the area for about 1,200 years overlapping with the Viking explorers and the Basque fisherman, who were temporary inhabitants. The Beothuk were gone by the time the French and English arrived to battle it out for permanent occupation and control of the area and its fishery.
The Parks Canada visitor center has a series of exhibits with artifacts describing each of these periods and the archeological excavations done in the area. It was a new museum and its displays were very well done.
But then there are the Caribou.
When entering the visitor center there is a sign advising visitors to stay clear of the Caribou. We were told that they roam the peninsula because it is open and windy and there are few insects to bother them. They subsist on the sparse vegetation of the limestone barrens. We were also told that they are often found out by the Point Riche Lighthouse which was our next stop for coffee and molasses buns, a local specialty.
Sure enough, as we were looking at the light and the Gulf, a group of caribou appeared. We were told that we should keep 30 meters (the distance of three buses) away from them, no one told the the caribou. They just walked up to the parked vehicles and passed by without paying much attention to the people there. Then they just strolled off down the road towards the visitor center. As we headed back that way, we were caught in a "caribou jam", since the animals just stood there in the middle of the road, blocking traffic and ignoring the cars.
This was right at the entrance to the visitor center and several people got out of their vehicles to take pictures of the breasts standing right in front of them. This caught the eye of the staff who came out to chastise the folks for being too close to the animals—a perpetual chore of wildlife staff.
We were finally on our way when the animals decided to head back up the road passing right by Speedy, too close to even photograph.
We drove over to the other side of the peninsula to have lunch and hike the trail out to the archeological site of Phillip's Garden, a Groswsater Paleoeskimo site. At the site a modern sculpture has been placed on the shoreline depicting a seal hunt. It was also a good birdwalk with 13 species (a respectable number here in the north) including a Blackpoll Warbler and a pair of Black Guillemots.
It was then on to do some provisioning and decide where to go for the night. Right across from the grocery store was a shoreline campground run by the local Lions Club. It looked quite pleasant being right on the beach and the sites were a reasonable $20 donation to the Lions Club.
It turned out that there were only unserviced sites available, which wasn't a problem, because all of the electric sites were being occupied by Fantasy RV Tours. This group included 25 mostly giant Class A motorhomes with a few fifth-wheel trailers, Class C motorhomes and a single Class B van. This was a 61-day tour of the Canadian Maritimes. We ran into an an earlier version of this same tour on one of our Gaspe trips at Pearce Rock. It must be a yearly event but they take up a lot of room. Luckily the unserviced sites were set well apart from this group, directly on the shore.
Tomorrow is the start of the Port au Choix Cod Festival. We may stay around for the Fish Cakes and Baked Beans Brunch, but will most likely be heading south toward Gros Morne National Park.
Ellen's photo's from Port au Choix
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| Click Photo |
https://magnell.org/pictures/Port-au-Choix/
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