The decision to ride a couple days in the rain paid off with a crystal clear sunrise. I finally had time to wash a load of laundry the night before and for some reason woke up with an extremely sore muscle in my lower back. I think it was due to pushing the bike off the center stand a couple of days before without having the side stand down, and the bike got a bit off-balance which I had to muscle back up. It's about the only thing I can think of but it made getting out of bed a royal pain.
It was in the low 40s when I got moving but the forecast said the temperatures would get into the 60s. A few miles outside of Deer Lake I turned off of Highway 430, a.k.a. the “Viking Trail”, onto Highway 431 for Trout River. In short order, the scenery and road were a highlight. The area was rolling with high hills, forest and lakes, a bit more dramatic than the small amount of the eastern coast I had seen. It was a sunny and crisp ride.
I stopped briefly at the Canadian National Park ticket booth, as I was unsure if I needed to pay entry. The kind lady said that as long as I drove through there was no need. I pulled over in the parking lot afterwards to peel out of a layer in anticipation of it warming up, and also to top off my engine oil. The odometer had rolled over 5000 miles for the trip and the oil was low in the sight window.
The road stayed in the forested region with fantastic views of the water and small towns on distant shores. Just outside Bonne Bay the road to Trout River turned sharply and begin climbing. It wasn't long before the way had entered a high valley with gnarly brown bluffs on either side. The scale was massive and brought back feelings of riding in Alaska for some reason. The winds picked up substantially through the area, before the road began descending down to the community of Trout River on the coast.
The little town was quiet, with few people out. The two or three little shops along the waterfront were closed. I parked and looked at the bay, then explored the few streets before heading back out for the Viking Trail north.
Back at Bonne Bay, I rode through the little community of Woody Point and checked out the lighthouse.
I’d left Deer Lake at 9:30, and didn't roll into Rocky Harbour until 1:30. It was hard to believe I’d spent four hours in such a short stretch, but was beginning to feel hungry. Rocky Harbour only had one place open, a small tourist shop with self serve coffee, snacks and luckily for me, decals. The man there, whom I’m guessing owned the little shop, struck up conversation about my travels. He had been to Central America and Chile, sailing a ferry boat from Rocky Harbour all the way to Costa Rica for a sale and training the buyers. He said he plans to return to Chile someday and explore, so I told him I would tell him hi when we met down there one of these days. He laughed from the porch and waved goodbye as I pulled away.
My goal was to make Port au Choix, still a hundred miles north. The dramatic terrain of Gros Morne and the surrounding area slowly transformed into a flatter and more rugged landscape as the road hugged the coastline north. In all my time spent in Canada, I'd only seen one or two Royal Canadian Mounted Police cars, but for some reason was lucky enough to end up directly behind one for many miles north, keeping me honest on the speed limits.
The winds were strong and constant and despite being 54° it felt cold as hell. The short and sturdy evergreens had been certainly affected by lifetimes of the wind, as those being closest to the water were growing parallel to the ground. It was something I had not seen before, and the trees that were successively farther away became more and more vertical. The growth looked like a fallen stack of dominoes.
As I continued further northward, the lowering sun illuminated the wind driven air filled with mist and spray from the sea. I stopped in Hawkes Bay for a butt break and to warm up at a convenience store, sucking down a bag of potato chips and a cup of coffee to warm up some before riding the remaining few miles to Port au Choix. The sun was setting when I grabbed a hotel, and after dumping my gear wandered across the street to the boat docks. The wind continued, but the temperature had dropped dramatically and after a few minutes I was shivering enough to hoof it back to the hotel.
For the first time on this trip, I began to feel that I was a long ways from Texas...