Port au Choix Things to Do Tips by Redlats

Port au Choix historic site

The interpretive centre is a building which contains artifacts from the archaelological digs and exhibits from the different prehistoric cultures found in the area. We also saw films showing how someone in town (in 1967) was excavating for a basement and discovered he was on top of an ancient burial ground.

It appears that these different ancient cultures would come to the Port au Choix area to fish or hunt seals and camp on the beach for hundreds of years. Over thousands of years, weather patterns change and sea level changes, resulting in distinctive sites from the different beach locations.

Whilest we were taking in all this history, it quit raining, so we decided to go on another hike to some caves that were used as tombs by past cultures. Again 3/4 hr into the hike, it starts raining buckets again, and we decide to call it quits on the hiking. We hiked back to the centre in pouring rain again, and changed into dry clothes again (which was stretching our vacation availability of warm clothes).

Fees to tour the interpretive centre in 2004 are $5.75Cdn per adult. Our historic pass worked for this too.

Website: http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/nl/portauchoix/index_e.asp

Hiking at Port au Choix

The first thing you should do if visiting Port au Choix is visit the interpretive centre to get an overview and to find out the various archeaological sites in the area.

We did not do this, but attempted one of the hikes that left from the town of Port au Choix nearby. We did this as it was threatening rain (Newfoundland [NL] seems to get the tailends of all the hurricanes that hit Florida - once they reach NL, they become all-day rain/wind storms).

Halfway through our hike to the Point Riche lighthouse, we got rained out at Phillip's Garden. We arrived back at our car soaked to the skin after walking an hour in a downpour. We changed into dry clothes in a picnic shelter and drove to the interpretive site.

Apoplogies for the quality of the picture - best I could do in the rain. If it wasn't so wet, it would be interesting to imagine what life on the beach would have been like 3000 or 4000 years ago.

Directions: Port au Choix is approximately 16 km off the main highway (Highway 430).

You can drive to the Lighthouse!

As we were leaving the Interpretive Centre, we found we could drive to the Point Riche lighthouse (built 1892), so we did.

This lighthouse is quite alone! On a rainy day in September there was nobody there but us, the clouds and the seagulls -- almost eerie.

Aside - we saw a lot of lighthouses on this vacation, and took pictures of about 1/3 of them. One could plan a lighthouse tour of the Maritimes if you wish. I bet it would take months to visit all the various lighthouses.

Directions: From Port au Choix, follow the road to the National Historic Site. The lighthouse is about 1.5 kilometers past the site.